18. CHAPTER 18
For the next month, nothing changed. I’d wake up hoping Easton would sit next to me in class, look at me, see me. But he never did. Every time I heard his voice, my neck would snap in his direction, and nearly every time, he was looking the other way.
The few times he did glance in my general area, I’d flinch like I’d been caught doing something wrong—not because I regretted what we’d done but because I kept trying to pull him into something he clearly didn’t want.
Practice used to be my escape. Now it felt like a prison. I couldn’t turn around without seeing him. I kept my head down, chasing the same goals, but it all felt hollow.
Baseball, the game I’d built my life around, now seemed pointless.
We would stand around for twenty-one outs, hoping a ball would come our way, just to run in a circle or sit back down.
What a joke. And he made it worse. He spoke at me, not to me.
The eyes that had once locked onto mine now looked anywhere else. We were magnets flipped the wrong way.
The only thing keeping me from quitting was Ricky, Maddux, and Silas. I owed them at least that. I kept grinding. My play even improved a little. But my heart wasn’t in it. Not really.
February came and went. March dragged behind it, full of chilly mornings and long practices. I kept showing up, even if I didn’t always know why.
I didn’t talk to anyone about what happened. I stayed in my room and watched random videos, as if they’d solve all of my problems. I ignored Gavin and Zach as much as I could.
Then spring break came. We survived the ten-hour bus ride to Dallas, the two early practices, and the suffocating warm-up routine. And suddenly, I stood at shortstop in an actual game, and everything started to feel different.
The sun hit my face like a jolt. The sound of the crowd, the crack of the bat, Gavin the bat boy chirping from the dugout—it all came rushing back. Maddux pounded his glove like a war drum at first base. And for a second, existing in the world didn’t hurt.
I slapped my glove, stinging my hand. The grass smelled like spring. I dragged the toe of my cleat in the dirt, starting a game of tic-tac-toe with the opposing shortstop. I shouted to Maddux for the hell of it. Baseball was back.
In the fifth inning, with a runner on first, Easton needed to look at me so we’d know who was covering second. He glanced my way—and I laughed.
He tilted his head, confused. His eyes found mine for the first time in weeks, and he looked like he was seeing a stranger. I kept laughing anyway. Because he was still such a dumbass. Because I was still stuck on him. Because I didn’t know what else to do.
We won the game easily, 8-2. I went zero for four with three pop-ups. But for once, I didn’t care.
For the first time in months, it seemed like baseball season. I felt a little like myself again.
I woke up from my post-game nap and looked around the hotel room. The other three seniors had their own room, and I was lying on their floor, groggy and sore from the carpet. Maddux and Silas played MLB: The Show while Ricky flipped through Moneyball on the bed.
I watched Maddux and Silas’s game for a couple of minutes, content with the mood of the room. For at least a moment, and for the first time in a while, my angst had disappeared, and I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else but with these guys as we prepared for our senior season.
At some point this year, we would play our last game together. Maddux and Silas were still debating where they’d be going to school, but they both had offers locked in from D1 programs throughout the Midwest. Who knew where Ricky and I would be—we probably wouldn’t even be playing baseball.
The fact that I’d been spending less and less time with them since Easton had arrived pained me. I was going to miss them. I decided to get all our friendships back on track.
I stayed silent for a couple of minutes, fine with not letting anyone know I had woken up. The door to the room swung open, hitting the wall and breaking me out of my trance.
“Tanner,” Zach said, standing in the doorframe. “Can you come here?”
I took one look at Zach’s face, and my good mood shattered. Zach’s eyes were sharp, and his jaw was as clenched as his fists. No one else in the room seemed to notice. Maybe I only noticed thanks to my ability to read my brother; regardless, I knew whatever he had to say wasn’t going to be good.
We walked into the hall. I had grown accustomed to the musty hotel smell since we had arrived, and the plain white walls and generic pictures were feeling too much like home for my liking. I waited until we rounded the corner and I heard the door shut behind us before I said, “Is everything okay?”
“It’s Gavin,” Zach said. “I got back to our room. He was crying, man. Like, hard. Wouldn’t say anything at first. Just said he lost a friend. I thought someone died. He said no. Then said you told him he couldn’t talk about it. What the hell is going on?”
Easton. It had to be.
We walked to the hotel’s workout area. There wasn’t much equipment—a treadmill on one side, a weight bench on the other. In the corner, ESPN played a Twins-Mariners game. A box fan stood in the corner, louder than the TV.
I walked to the weights and picked up the heaviest set I could handle. I said nothing—just nodded at Zach.
He counted off my reps with tension in his voice. When I sat up, he said, “Start talking.”
“I can’t tell you,” I said. I pounded a fist against the bench, furious about the situation I had put myself in. My left hand pulsed, but I ignored the pain.
“Then don’t talk to me if you don’t trust me. But go talk to Easton and handle it, or I will. I doubt either of you would prefer that option.”
My head snapped toward Zach at the mention of Easton’s name. I tried to feign ignorance, but my face burned. “What do you mean, talk to Easton?”
“I mean Easton hasn’t talked to me since Christmas,” Zach said.
“He was fine when I went to bed that night. You’ve been spiraling ever since.
You’re even shitting the bed at practices.
Silas and Ricky see it, too, they’re just too scared to talk to you.
I don’t know what happened between you two, and I don’t know how Gav is involved.
I thought you guys would figure it out, so I didn’t want to interfere. ”
His voice was strong. I couldn’t look at him because even now, I still wanted to deny it.
“I do know, though, that you’ll handle it today. Because there’s no one you love more than Gavin, including me. Or Easton. It’d be a good idea to remember that.”
He was right, as much as I wished he wasn’t. His words hit me like a runner sliding cleat high into second base. I had allowed this to stretch too far.
I looked at Zach and realized how much he had grown up in the last year. He now stood less than a quarter of an inch shorter than me, and he had muscles starting to bulge all over his body. But even more, we wouldn’t have been able to have this conversation six months ago.
If he could step up his brother game, it was about time I stepped up mine.
“Go tell Gavin I’m handling it. I’ll talk to both of you later.”
I stood up and strode out the door without looking back at Zach.
Anger had burned inside of me for three months, and Zach had just added gas.
I took the stairs two at a time, feeling the cold of the steps on my bare feet and inhaling the staircase’s nasty smell.
I nearly sprinted to Easton’s room. My knuckles pounded on the door a dozen times before it opened.
“Settle the hell down, Tanner,” said Joe, our right fielder. “What’s the emergency?”
“Is Easton here? We need to have a conversation,” I said. I tried to keep my voice steady, but I was doing an awful job of it.
“Yeah,” he said, shifting his body and exposing the room. Easton lazily watched TV on the bed, either ignoring or not hearing my voice.
“Can you give us the room?” I said.
“No way in hell I’m staying for this,” Joe said, closing the door behind him. I latched the bolt to make sure nobody could walk in; I learned from my mistakes.
I turned toward Easton, who sat up and had his feet dangling over the bed. He twisted his head to the side, his eyes open in wonderment. We hadn’t been alone in a room together since Gavin had caught us in the basement—Easton had made sure of that.
I started on him right away, no longer controlling my voice. “What the hell did you say to Gavin?”
“What do you mean?”
“You heard me. At some point earlier today, you saw Gavin. What did you say?”
“I don’t know why you’re so upset. He just came up to me and asked if I wanted to play catch, and I told him I couldn’t. Settle down.”
“Are you fucking kidding me, Easton? You couldn’t just play catch with him?”
“Why? He’s your brother. You play catch with him.”
“Get your damn head out of your ass, Easton. Six months ago, you told him you looked at him like a brother. You would have been the one asking him to play catch! Do you know what he’s doing right now?
He’s in his room crying because you haven’t talked to him in three months.
He fucking idolizes you, and you won’t even talk to him because he walked in on us.
That’s not his fault! He’s thirteen, for Christ's sake!”
I paced the room, spinning around every ten feet, my words bouncing off of the walls. I smelled citrus but ignored it.
“Even though you’ve been awful to him, he still hasn’t told anybody. Zach asked him what was wrong, and he refused to say a word because he knows you don’t want anyone to know, so he bottles up what he needs to say to his actual brother!”
During my speech, I had walked to the point where I was almost standing on top of him.
He finally looked up at me, and I could see tears welling up in his eyes. “I’ve wanted to talk to him. I miss him so much. But he saw us, and he knows. I just can’t be gay, Tanner,” he said.
I backed off and sat on the edge of the other bed.
After a few seconds, I spoke again, trying to keep the rage I was feeling below a ten.
“I don’t care what you are. You can be straight, gay, a goddamn tiger if you want.
I don’t want to have that discussion right now, and I don’t think you do either.
“This is on us. Not Gavin. I’ve been mad as hell at you, and I didn’t stop to think about how this was affecting my brothers.
As Zach just reminded me, there’s no one, including you, that I love more than Gavin.
It took me too long to remember that. It’s time I put Gavin first. I’m leaving.
You’ve got two hours to make this right with Gavin. ”
I locked into those hazel eyes. I hated what I was about to say—but I knew I had to. He left me no choice.
“Because if you don’t, everyone finds out what we did.”
Easton's shoulders shook, barely, like he was trying to stay still and failing. “You wouldn’t.”
“I don’t think I’ll have to,” I sighed. “Can you grow a sack and talk to Zach, too? He won’t admit it, but he misses you as much as the rest of us.
I don’t care if you’re so embarrassed about everything that this is the last time we talk off the field, but those guys are still your friends.
I’ll stay away when you’re around them so you can act like nothing happened.
You don’t have to worry, I’ll never touch you again. ”
I didn’t wait for a response. If I did, I’d say something selfish, or hurtful, or that I’d regret, and deep down, I still cared about Easton too much for that. I walked to my room, threw on my Nikes, and started my run in the middle of the hotel.