Chapter 37: Into the Storm

Erin, Alex, and I were sitting in a booth at a twenty-four hour truck stop up on I-75. We had ordered hotcakes, eggs over easy, grits, honey-cured ham, huge amounts of hash browns, orange juice, and coffee. Lots of coffee. There were still a lot of people at Jack Hammer's when we left, but it was late and we felt like acquiring some nutrition. Nothing caps off a night of drinking and dancing quite like a truck stop breakfast.

The girls had their cloaks back on, and they kept them closed around them in an effort at modesty as we sat in the booth.

Erin set down her coffee cup and looked across the table at me.

"Tell me what you're thinking, Sean," she coaxed.

I shrugged. "I'm just a little in shock, I guess."

Alex peered at me over her cup. "Does it change anything?"

I thought about it for a minute. "Probably not," I said. "He's my roommate, he's my friend. I'm just wondering why he couldn't tell me about this first."

Alex shrugged. "Again, does it change anything? I mean, so what if he's gay. Did he ever come on to you?"

"No."

"Your roommate from last year. He's Catholic. He ever try to get you to go to church with him?"

I had to bark a laugh. "The only church Westy is a diligent member of is the Church of Lustful Intent. And, yes, he tried to get me to join that one."

"Okay, bad example," said Alex. "How about your friend Eric."

"What about him?"

"Did he ever try to turn you black?"

"What? That doesn't make any sense," I said.

Alex shrugged again. "Makes about as much sense as thinking knowing Spencer is probably gay is going to change anything. Some people are gay the way other people are black, or Hispanic, or Jewish, or female. Sometimes you're born that way, and that's how you will be until the day you die."

"Yeah, okay," I admitted. "So I guess it doesn't change anything. I just wish he'd told me."

Erin laughed. "Do you tell him about your love life?"

"Well ... no," I said.

"You'd better not," murmured Alex, but she was smiling.

"So why should he tell you about his?"

"Uh..."

"Case closed," said the future lawyer.

Alex dropped Erin off at her dorm. I walked Erin up to the door and gave her a kiss goodnight while Alex waited in the car. Alex then dropped me at my apartment, and I leaned in through the driver's side window to give her a kiss, too. With a wave, she drove off.

I was tired to my bones. It was nearing dawn, and I had to meet with Eddie at noon to go over film of our next opponent, West Florida. It was all part of my employment package for the year, instead of working the concession stands. It was a much better deal for me, though right at that moment I wasn't thinking in those terms. I was thinking more of sleep.

I opened the door to my apartment. The light in the kitchen was on.

"Sean?" Spencer sounded hesitant and depressed, a lot of emotion packed into one word.

"Yeah, it's me," I replied.

Spencer came out of the kitchen, holding a cup of tea. He looked a little scared.

"Can we talk for a minute?" he asked quietly.

I looked longingly toward my bedroom, and then nodded. I slumped down in the recliner and rubbed my eyes. Spencer took the couch. He set his cup of tea down carefully on the TV Guide on the coffee table.

"Look, I'm sorry about tonight," he began. "I should have told you before..."

"Wait," I said. The girls and I had talked about this, and I had been thinking about it since seeing my roommate at the bar. "Before you start, let me say something. Please?"

Spencer shrugged and sat up, his shoulders hunched. I knew he was expecting the worst.

"Okay," I began, "here's where I'm at. First of all, I don't care if you're gay, or you're just experimenting, or you're straight and you were in there on a lark."

I could see him visibly relax. He reached for his teacup, his hands shaking just a little.

"Just for me, what is the story, Spence? I mean, if you really don't want to tell me, that's fine. But I wouldn't mind knowing what's up with my roomie."

He wouldn't meet my gaze. I had the feeling this was a question he had been asking himself quite a bit lately, and to verbalize it to one of his best friends was going to make it real. I was sure it scared him. "I guess ... yeah. I'm gay." He took a deep, shuddering breath.

"Okay," I said nonchalantly.

He looked up at me in surprise. I didn't know what he was expecting, but obviously it wasn't immediate acceptance of the fact.

"You're okay with it? Shit, Boss, I'm not sure I'm okay with it." He took a sip of his hot tea and set the cup back down again.

"You want to talk about it?" I asked quietly.

"I don't know what I would say," he replied.

"Well, when did you first think you might be..."

"Queer? You don't have to mince words with me, Sean. You couldn't call me anything worse than I've called myself."

"I wasn't going to call you any names, Spencer."

He sighed. "Yeah, I know. I'm a little defensive right now. And a little nervous."

"If it's any help, you don't have to be defensive with me. Or nervous. Hell, Spence, we've known each other a long time. You're one of my best friends. Bi, gay, straight, they're just tags. They're nameplates for somebody else. That's not how I think of you. It's not how I will think of you. You're Spencer. That's all. That's enough."

"Easy to say now," he muttered.

"When did you first think you might be gay?" I asked again.

He shrugged, not looking up. "Maybe I've always known," he said quietly. "I don't think it really entered into my conscious brain until last year."

"What happened last year?" I prompted.

He gave a short bark of humorless laughter. "Cynthia happened."

"Cynthia?"

"You remember her. Little Japanese girl I went out with last year?"

"Sure," I said. "I thought she was cute."

"So did I, actually. Then, one night we were at a place in town, disco night at a hotel. She was in a mood, feeling wild. We got a little drunk, and she picked up another guy. Took us both up to our hotel room." He looked chagrined, even gazing down at his forgotten cup of tea. "I discovered I liked being with the guy more than I liked being with her that night. That pissed her off, believe me. But it kicked off a period of discovery for me."

"That's when you broke up with her?"

"Right after that, yeah. I stumbled around and found a couple of places I could ... hang out at. Tried to figure out what the hell I really was." He snorted. "I found out, all right."

"Okay," I said. "No big deal. Anybody special?"

"Nah," he said. He finally noticed his cooling tea. He picked up his cup and took a sip. He made a face and put it back down. "Cold," he said. "Anyway, I fell in with a group, we kind of pal around together. A few guys, a couple of girls. We kind of mix it up."

"Friends with benefits."

"Yeah. No pressure, we can bring along pals and nobody hits on them, just a bunch of friends going out for good times."

"I understand."

Finally, he glanced up at me. "I know you do. Alex and Erin."

"You know about them?" I really wasn't surprised, even though I tried to keep my confusing relationships with them to myself as much as I could.

Spencer smiled for the first time. "Yeah. Even on a campus as big as UF, the gay community is like an extended family. We all know what's going on."

"That's a little frightening," I said.

He looked at me with his head cocked. "You're right to be a little scared. You're in deeper than you think."

"How so?"

"You've got a great girl at home you're trying to keep," he said. "But she's got some competition neither Kayla nor you know about, right here."

"Alex and Erin."

"Alex is really into Erin, Sean."

"Yeah, I know."

"But what you don't know is Erin is more into you than she is into Alex."

"Oh, man," I groaned. "I don't need that complication."

"She's not in love with you like Kayla is, dude. She likes Alex but she likes you better. She's always been more into boys than girls."

"How do you know this shit, Spencer?"

He laughed again, sounding a little more at ease. "Like I said, it's like a big, extended, dysfunctional family."

I got up and stretched. "It's too much to think about," I said. "I need to get some sleep."

Spencer got up, too. He picked up his teacup. Without looking at me, he said, "Thanks, Sean."

I held out my hand. He looked up, saw me standing there, and he reached out and grasped my proffered hand.

"One thing," I said, smiling. "If I'm playing up from you, you're not checking out my ass, are you?"

He laughed, a friendly and relaxed sound after the tension he had put himself under. "You wish," he said.

Before letting go of his hand, I said, "Seriously though, Spencer. This conversation goes no further, as far as I'm concerned. I won't say anything to anybody. If you come out, I'm beside you all the way. Until then, this is just between us."

He pulled me in and gave me a hug. "That's why you're the Boss," he said, his voice rough.

"Goddammit, will you cut that out?" I said.

He was grinning as he let me go. His eyes were shining. "Not a chance," he said.

Those were big words, but I still found myself tending to avoid my roommate over the next week. After practice, I found several excuses not to go back to our apartment, opting instead to study at the library, or meet friends by Lake Alice, or hang out over at Alex's.

We were playing a home game the next weekend against West Florida. Lightspeed had picked up a lot of the nuances of our movements over the two weeks of practice, and having Spencer as a mentor really helped him out. We were able to cut the tethers, and he followed instructions from the field generals. Bryan, Jesse, Eddie, and I had begun talking about how we could exploit Harlan's incredible speed, and we designed some plays off throw-ins and free kicks that could take advantage of the quickness we had acquired up front. We took the best of them to Pick, and he began to incorporate some of them into our practices to see how they worked. It was tougher to see when we were doing intra-squad scrimmages, though, since everybody on both sides pretty much knew what to expect. The real test would be against a quality opponent.

An opportunity came early in the first half of our game against West Florida. The referee whistled a blocking foul against our opponents, and we quickly set up with Frenchy and Lightspeed side by side. Lightspeed feinted at the ball and took off downfield as Frenchy, following on his heels, took the kick and dropped a picture-perfect pass over Lightspeed's head, leading him by a few meters. Harlan picked up the ball in stride, and within about three-tenths of a second he was across the midfield line and into attack mode. He juked a very good defender, making him look flatfooted, and angled in toward the goal. He took one step too many, however, and he got cut off from in front by the stopper, and from the side by a midfielder, boxing him back out toward the sidelines. He tried to knock the ball against the shin guard of the stopper and out of bounds, but the Argonauts defender was too quick. He leapt out of the way, and the ball squirted out of bounds for a West Florida throw-in.

As we reset, he looked over toward me and shrugged. "Next time," he said.

I nodded. "Keep working it," I encouraged him.

"Will do, Boss."

A few minutes later, we used an old junior rec team trick against the Argonauts. We had a throw-in on our side of the field, near the midfield stripe. I picked up the ball and gave a quick hand signal to Harlan. He trotted up near me, as if he was going to take the toss, and one of the West Florida midfielders came up to defend. As I cocked my hands back over my head, Harlan took off down the sidelines, leaving his defender in the dust, and I heaved the ball down the sidelines ahead of him. I had to throw it hard to lead him, but it worked. Lightspeed picked up the ball before another defender could get to him, and he carried it all the way down toward the corner. He managed to buy himself enough space to loft a crossing pass. Bryan was in position in front of the net, inside the box, and he jumped up to head the ball. Instead of trying for a goal, he wisely guided the ball to his left, where Jeremy was set up. Jeremy took the ball on his knee, popped the ball up, and side-kicked it into the net with a powerful snap for our go-ahead goal. The entire series took about fifteen seconds from throw-in to goal, and it gave the coaches over on the West Florida sidelines quite a lot to think about.

As we trotted back to reset for the kickoff, Harlan held out his hand. I slapped it lightly.

"Nice cross," I said. "Good assist."

"Nice throw," he countered.

I slapped Jeremy on the back and congratulated him on a highlight film goal. He smiled.

"Thanks," he said. "It was nicely set up for me."

"You can thank Bryan for being generous," I said.

"Oh, I will," he said. "And, Boss? Thanks."

"For what?" I asked, but he just smiled.

At the end of the game, after going through the greeting line and congratulating the Argonauts on a good effort, we gathered up our stuff and walked toward the doors to our locker room. Bryan and Dan had stopped to be interviewed by a sports reporter from the Alligator, the unofficial campus newspaper. I was walking by myself, watching my feet as I was thinking about how we could have improved on our 2-0 win. I felt somebody come up beside me and drape his arm across my shoulder. I glanced up to see Spencer at my side.

He smiled. "I took your advice and checked you out while you were playing up," he said softly. "You know, you might have a nice ass if you weren't so damned skinny."

It caught me by surprise, and I couldn't help myself. I laughed out loud. I laughed so hard I couldn't walk. I had to stop, lean over, and support myself by my elbows on my knees. Spencer was on the ground, infected by my laughter, clutching his stomach, and we gathered a small crowd of teammates who began smiling and chuckling from watching us.

"Hey, Boss, what's so funny?" asked Sugar.

I was gasping by then. I waved at him as I tried to catch my breath, tears streaming down my face.

"Private joke," I managed at last.

Finally, I was able to compose myself enough to put out my hand and haul Spencer to his feet.

"You are a real piece of work, my friend," I said.

"We make a helluva team," he replied.

We do indeed, I said to myself. What tension there had been between us was shattered and crumbled into dust, scattered to the four corners by our laughter at ourselves.

A couple of weeks later, we were scheduled to travel to North Carolina State for a weekend game. On Tuesday, Coach called a team meeting before our scheduled practice. It was nasty out, rainy and very windy. A tropical storm had formed off the Bahamas and moved toward the Florida coast, and it was moving north and staying just offshore. We were getting a lot of backlash weather off it inland, heavy rains and strong winds.

"Fellas, this storm is turnin' into a hurrycane, sure as shit. It looks like it's gonna miss Florida, but eventually it's gonna make landfall. Prolly South Carolina, maybe North Carolina. Either way, we ain't takin' a bus up into that thing." He favored us with a tight smile. "Looks like you boys got yourselves another bye week."

And it turned out the decision was a good one. The tropical storm turned into Hurricane Diana by midweek. It continued to skip up the coast, threatening but never quite completing a cross onto the mainland.