Fire Season, page 10
Charlie should move. His hands ache, an empty space in his palms the exact dimensions of Reid’s shoulders, the line of his jaw. His ribs or hips or—
And Reid is licking the remnants of whatever he’s eating off his fingers.
Charlie isn’t certain what a heart attack feels like, but this might be one, if heart attacks also planted urgency to run his beard over Reid’s slick chest. To drape him across a bed or the sofa or pull him to the hard terra-cotta tiles of the floor right this second.
“Some good running this morning,” Reid says.
Charlie makes a strangled noise of agreement.
Reid starts talking about the hills around them, and the pleasant little parks nearby they could take Avis to, the running trails in the Presidio. About how the hills slope to the beach. Oblivious to Charlie’s heated panic, except for the slight tilt of his smile.
The coffee maker beeps. Charlie revives himself enough to grab two mugs from the cabinet and the milk from the fridge, which he hands to Reid before he can ask for it. He scrambles for words, for something other than the cadence of his own arousal drowning out any other thoughts. “Everything, uh, good? I mean with the room.”
“All good. That’s a great mattress.” And Reid stretches his back out, arms laced above his head, emphasizing the interplay of muscles in his chest, the scattering of hair there and the thicker trail down to his waistband. Charlie latches his gaze to the floor and breathes purposefully.
“Think I might go check out the shower,” Reid says, after he’s downed his mug of coffee in three gulps.
“Oh. Uh. Yeah.”
“Any trick to it?”
“The shower? Um, not really.” Except for the visual of Reid under the spray, separated from him by the mere barrier of a door.
“I’ll try not to use all the hot water.”
“Tank’s pretty full.” Something about the way he says it makes Reid laugh.
The water starts running a minute later. Charlie doesn’t sprint into his room to get his laptop, if only because his running might scare Avis. His hands shake slightly as he opens a window on his browser, trying to find an exact search string for what he’s feeling, other than being both confused and turned on.
He saw Christine yesterday, recently enough to confirm that he likes women—that he still likes women—even if there’s now an undercurrent, a question he definitely can’t search for and find anything meaningful in response. Is this about Reid or men in general?
He’s had other teammates, guys he was close to, friends with, ones he would watch take at bats or go out with for a few beers after a game. Ones he wanted to be near, for the pleasure of being near them, something he’s now seeing through a new lens. If that was anything other than liking loud guys because he was quiet, guys who would cajole him into another drink, into staying out later than he would have, who he could be comfortable around enough to be sociable. Even if that flush of good feelings might have been something else, an attraction he pushed down or purposefully ignored.
He considers their lineup: Gordon, who guys tease for being handsome, because he is, the kind of player born to be on a cereal box. Hayek and Montelbaum, who look like second and third starters, which is to say, like guys who wear hats professionally and who do commercials for local car dealerships. The other guys—Glasser and their backup catcher and outfielders and bench players—none of whom inspire anything other than either friendship or tolerance, the kind needed to endure a hundred and sixty-two games a season together.
Or the ones he’s played with or against, a collection like a folio of baseball cards, players in the majors, minors, college ball, high school. Back to the poster of a Constitution infielder he had growing up. That famous photo of him: dirt-streaked, triumphant, the open neck of his jersey revealing the tantalizing vee of his chest.
He demanded Charlie’s attention, and Charlie looked. In admiration. In jealousy. With the steady, dreaming heartbeat of That’ll be me one day. With a nebulous feeling that he couldn’t put into words, only that maybe when other guys looked at that poster, they weren’t seeing the same things—the depth of his eyes and the tuck of his jersey at his waist, the thickness of his forearms.
Charlie should get ready to go to the ballpark. Except he can’t move. How’s he supposed to go to his throwing session? To convince the gears of his brain to mesh and spin properly when his entire body feels lit up?
His laptop, with its blinking cursor and blank search bar, offers no answers. He types: How do I know if I’m bi... The word auto-fills to bisexual, enough to know he isn’t the only one who’s had this question.
There are articles; there are videos, the latter of which are aimed at people younger than he is. He clicks one, skimming through it for the seventeen signs he might be bisexual, but really only one—that he’s thinking about Reid like that. That he’s thought about men like that. Probably for most of his life.
He could ask someone: Christine, Gordon, his mom. A pastor, a therapist, a bartender. Anyone who could help him confront whatever the hell this is. Namely, if he’ll be able to get up and leave his bedroom and drive to the ballpark and not do something stupid, like try to kiss Reid or touch the muscle at his waist or wrap a hand around his shoulder or the back of his thigh, pulling him close.
He should focus. Needs to. Has to. A litany of mental skills coaches’ advice. To think about one action, then the next. To inhabit his body but hover slightly apart from it. His hands rest on the bedspread. His laptop clicks as he closes it. His bedroom smells like cleaning supplies and dust. His toes dig into the flooring. His muscles shift as he gets up. He breathes in on three counts and holds it, then exhales gradually.
He searches himself for signs of rejection, signs of disgust, seeing if this newly affixed label is ill-fitting or if it settles across his shoulders the way that first Elephants jersey did—something sought-after and right.
The water shuts off. Reid might be stepping from the shower, water sluicing from his legs onto the mat. Did Charlie leave towels for him? He gets a flash of Reid coming in, shorts pulled on but clinging, hair plastered against his neck, asking Charlie for something to dry off with. His surprise, then his eagerness as Charlie reaches out, as they both fall into his bed. A thought that leaves him grateful for his en suite shower. For the capacity of his hot water tank and the groan of floorboards as the house around him shifts, covering his own sounds.
He should feel guilty. Reid’s a teammate. A roommate. A friend. But he doesn’t feel anything so much as incredibly turned on, hot all over in a way that has nothing to do with the shower’s steam. He jerks off with the kind of desperation he hasn’t had in years, hand against the shower wall and the other on himself, mind stuck on a repeating, fantastical loop.
He emerges feeling entirely new, both certain—that the pull he’s felt since Reid dropped into the chair next to his all those weeks ago now bears a name—and entirely uncertain. Focus on one action, then the next. He laughs at that, a little hysterically, voice echoing off the tiled bathroom walls.
One action... His beard really could use a trim. A barber nearby books appointments online and has an opening for twenty minutes from now. “I’m heading out,” he yells and gets a muffled affirmation from behind Reid’s closed door.
Despite taking online appointments, the barbershop is cash only. Charlie withdraws a set of twenties from the ATM, then glances at the menu of options before saying, “Uh, can you just make me look better?” Which makes the barber laugh and get the clippers and hot towels for a shave.
It’s late morning. The shop is clean and quiet, though the barber, a middle-aged guy with an unsurprisingly sharp haircut, is chatty the way dentists are, talking but not expecting much in the way of a response. He also recognizes Charlie, not that Charlie’s really taken any effort not to be recognized. He has a gratifying number of opinions about modern baseball and the decline of base stealing that Charlie doesn’t necessarily agree with but doesn’t need to do more than acknowledge.
He gets a shave, his beard trimmed and moisturized with some admonishment that that’s a thing he should be doing and hasn’t. A haircut and the question of what he wants it to look like.
He can’t ask if there’s a signal for I like men, especially one that Reid might be attuned to. “I mostly wear a hat for, um, work.” Which makes the barber laugh.
Afterward Charlie hands the guy a stack of twenties, not bothering to count it, and emerges with a few products in a brown paper bag like they’re illicit materials.
When he gets home, Reid is sitting in his living room, legs stretched on the sofa. Noises come from his unmuted phone in a video-game cha-ching. Relievingly, or disappointingly, he’s wearing a shirt. His neck is bent in concentration, the ends of his hair damp. Charlie’s hands curl so he doesn’t try to do something silly. Like run his fingers through Reid’s hair.
He looks up when Charlie comes in. “Damn, didn’t know you were already in that phase of the divorce.”
“What phase is that?”
“The ‘I’m gonna look good so I can get some’ phase.” And he laughs when Charlie’s face burns, undoubtedly turning red.
“It looks okay?”
“You know, some of us ain’t millionaire giants. It’s not exactly playing fair if you’re gonna clean up like that.”
“I was probably, uh, overdue for it.” He rubs a hand over his newly softened beard.
“Well, let me take you out.” Reid says it like it’s nothing, like that’s something they do.
Charlie’s face warms again, a slow reaction like the drip of something honeyed from his chest to his stomach.
“You know,” Reid adds, “get you with some of these yoga-pant-wearing San Francisco women. Maybe after today’s game?”
“Oh, um, yeah, sure.” And Charlie goes to brush the hair clippings off his neck along with the clinging feeling of disappointment.
* * *
Because anything new in a clubhouse is worth mentioning, guys at the ballpark comment about his hair.
“You looking right for any particular reason?” Gordon says. He laughs and tells Charlie to quit lying when he says he isn’t.
Stephanie approaches him. Her formerly blue hair is now a light shade of violet. She insists they put pictures of him on the team Instagram, like his being less ragged is somehow notable. “You want me to read you the comments? They’re only mild to moderately thirsty.”
Martinez, mercifully, doesn’t say anything to him about his hair or his throwing, since his arm feels good and his curveball behaves. They talk only about his upcoming start—a road game against Dallas in their unrelentingly hot ballpark—and how Charlie doesn’t do well in heat for someone who grew up in Texas.
The trade deadline is looming. Guys check their phones with a particular kind of nervousness, a few startling like deer whenever someone calls their name. He’s not at risk of being traded. Still, his heart rate leaps when he gets an alert, and he swipes a little frantically to see if Reid’s been traded before realizing it’s just a text from the decorator asking if he needs anything other than heavier curtains. So he sends back a bulleted list.
Their game that night goes well until it doesn’t, their lead unraveling with urgency and sloppiness specific to bad baseball: An errant throw to their first baseman. A base runner stealing off Glasser, who takes that stuff personally, fuming about it in the dugout and in rapid conversation with their starter.
It’s a warm night, almost dreamlike as the drum section rumbles to Reid’s walk-up music. He inherits two base runners, a three-run deficit, but retires the first batter quickly on a shallow fly ball. And Charlie’s hands ease their grip on the railing.
A mistake, it turns out, when Reid throws a curveball. An approximation of one. Charlie’s probably the world expert in curveballs, but you don’t have to be to know they’re supposed to bend. This one doesn’t, staying flat and slow and middle-middle, the kind of pitch any professional player can take yard. The Anaheim batter does, hitting a no-doubt home run into the stands, a three-run shot that kills the Elephants’ dreams of victory for the evening.
Out on the mound, Reid slumps like he’s had his strings cut, folded over and regretful enough that Glasser calls time to jog out and soothe him—or more realistically, give another reliever time to get ready.
Their manager stands at the dugout steps, unmoving, a clear indication that Reid will either have to navigate his own way out of this mess or get replaced. The next batter puts up a fight, a ten-pitch battle that leaves Reid red-faced and incandescent before being taken out. He’s practically growling when he finally gets back to the dugout, grabbing a cup of Gatorade, then disappearing down the tunnel.
From it, a clatter like he kicked something over. A few guys look Charlie’s way.
Glasser glances toward the still-echoing noise. “I could—”
“No,” Charlie says, “I got it.”
Inside, Reid is by his stall, jersey off, undershirt damp with sweat. Charlie retrieves two bottles of water from the kitchen, setting one near Reid’s ankle, then, with some hesitance, placing his palm in the middle of his back.
Reid looks up, startled; Charlie removes his hand.
“It’s been nice being here,” Reid says.
“They say something to you?”
“No, they don’t need to.” Reid gets up, stripping off his undershirt, pausing before unlooping his belt from his pants. He shucks them, and he’s just wearing his long sliding shorts, which cling to his ass and thighs, his tattoo visible at his waistband.
There’s no way to look at him without feeling like a total scuzz, so Charlie concentrates on his own palms instead, examining the pattern of his calluses. The clarity he felt that morning made more complicated by them working together—living together—without a clear delineation between Reid, the guy he jerked off thinking about in the shower that morning, and Giordano, who the team might send away.
“I know we were supposed to go out,” Reid says, as if they had solid plans and not just Reid joking about foisting Charlie onto his hot neighbors, “but I’m not sure if I’m feeling up to it.”
“Let me buy you a steak.” Charlie regrets it as soon as he says it. Because a steak is a last meal, a final big-league hurrah, something eaten before the team buries Reid in Midland or flips him to another club, declaring the experiment of his call-up failed. “I just mean, it’s one bad day. It happens.”
“Not to you.”
“I promise it does. Stuff happens. That’s the way the game is.”
Reid holds up a hand. “Okay, okay, I’m good on platitudes. I gotta make a call.”
He pads off, shower slides clapping against his feet, leaving Charlie to watch the last inning of their losing game on the monitor before changing into clothes he brought—actual jeans, a long-sleeved shirt Christine bought for him, a nicer pair of sneakers than he usually wears. Things he chose specifically because they were going out.
Reid returns, looking more settled, and plops into the chair next to where Charlie is sitting. “Now I can’t cancel with you looking like that.”
And the compliment slides under Charlie’s collar like ice on a hot day. “Um, thanks.”
“Good thing my therapist was up.” He waits, like Charlie will have something to say to that.
“That’s, uh, good. I didn’t know if there were meetings or whatever.”
“No. I mean, there are, and I tried ’em, but I don’t like them.”
“I talk to Todd sometimes. He’s okay.”
“I got some stuff that’s probably beyond the expertise of our mental skills coach. But it’s good you got someone. A lot of guys aren’t cool about therapy.”
Charlie shrugs. “I have pills that are supposed to help with anxiety. They make me groggy, but I take them sometimes.” Maybe he should have brought them out to Marin with the liquor. “It’s not an issue having them around, right?”
“No, unless it’s edibles and you’re not sharing.” Reid smiles as he says it, a smile that’s more in his eyes than around his lips, the reverse of what he aims at the media, like it’s only for Charlie. With it, warmth that has nothing to do with the Oakland night outside.
“I figured that you didn’t, you know.”
“Nah, I’ve learned to be pretty monogamous in my interests. Weed helps sometimes if I’m injured. It’s been a while because they test for it in the minors, the assholes.”
The game must have ended because their teammates clomp back through the tunnel. Reid grabs his towel down from his stall. “I’m gonna go hose off.” He bends down to strip off his shorts.
And Charlie doesn’t watch the slow peel of them down his legs.
“You know what?” Reid’s holding the towel at his waist loosely. His fingers go slack, dropping it, before he catches the cloth.
Charlie swallows, desperately, then manages to raise his eyebrows in question.
“I think I’m gonna hold you to that steak. If you’re still hungry.”
And if Charlie’s answering nod is a little frantic, a little overwhelmed, Reid doesn’t say anything about it.
They walk Avis when they get back to the house, a quick around-the-block walk, then deliver her to her crate. “Bet we could take her in the restaurant with us,” Reid says. “Californians are weird about their dogs.”
“I don’t think they’d let us.”
“They might not let me. They’d probably make an exception for you.”
He jostles Charlie’s shoulder. Up close on the narrow sidewalk, Reid smells like soap and whatever he uses in his hair. He’s wearing another Henley, one that outlines his chest and shoulders.
This has the feeling of a date, especially when they get there and the hostess informs them it’ll be a few minutes before they can get seated. They wait at the bar. Charlie orders a beer and a seltzer with lime without thinking and hands it to Reid, who’s looking around at the other diners, couples in low conversation over flickering electric candles. “I thought we were supposed to get you out and meeting people.”
