Page 179 of The Locker Room
and gave in to the shivers. He felt pathetic. Somehow it was worse
letting Chris see him like this when they couldn"t touch, when Chris
couldn"t make it better.
“Shhhh….” Chris reached out a hand toward the camera with a
pained grimace. “Shhhh… "kay, Xan. You"re just going to have to listen
to my voice for a little, okay?”
Xan nodded, ashamed and embarrassed, but comforted by Chris"s
voice, because it was the only thing he had. “"K… k… okkk… kay…,”
he chattered, and then he leaned his head on his knees and let Chris"s
usual burble of conversation wash right over him.
“So Cliff and I went out with the team after the game, and we
managed to get some spoons from the waitress, right? And next thing
you know we"re playing spoons in the middle of the bar. Except, it
wasn"t just a shot, it was shot and an appetizer—cheese stick, potato
skin, whatever we were eating. And Cliff and I just totally ordered all of
the greasiest, nastiest shit we could think of. You know, stuff that goes
with Scotch like nitro in a blender, right?”
In spite of the shakes, Xander had to laugh a little, because he knew
where this was going. God, Chris could be a bastard sometimes—that
impish sense of humor could totally go south, with anybodybutXander.
“Right,” he said with a rusty voice. “You totally sabotaged them.”
“Oh. My. God. It wasepic!Cliff and I—well, you remember what
we did in school, right? You should have seen him. He"d like grab one
spoon and then hand it to me under the table before he grabbed the other
spoon, and then I"d do the same for him, and there"s this rookie….”
“Oswald,” Xander supplied. Cocky little—five-foot-eleven—
sonuvabitch who kept trying to prove he had the balls to play with the
big boys on the court. A good player, just needed seasoning.
The Locker Room 155
“Yeah, Oswald. Anyway, between the two of us, we"d totally
