Page 267 of The Locker Room
night I couldn"t go through with it. I met up with Chris at the locker
room of Arco, and… we just agreed to quit it. It was worse than being
outed. It was worse than anything. We kissed, you know, to seal the
bargain….” Xander trailed off, and Chris took up the thread.
“And the coach walked in on us, and I was transferred the next
day.”
232 Amy Lane
The interview went to commercial, but nobody in the room tried to
fast-forward through it. The attention of everyone in the room was
focused on the television screen, and Xander thought that if Chris could
run, the two of them would be running along their jogging path, running
with the wind in their face and their shame at their backs, running until
the horrible weight of this confession felt like the sand under their feet.
“That must have been awful,” Andi said, and Chris clenched
Xander"s hand until his fingers turned white.
“Mom—”
“No, Chris. I"m serious. Neither of you boys are like that. I can"t
even imagine how hard that must have been.”
Chris looked sideways at him, and Xander wondered if his face
was as white and blotchy as Chris"s was.
“It really sucked,” he confessed quietly. “I think it was even worse
than living apart.”
“It was like living apart in the same house,” Xander confirmed.
“Those days—” He shuddered. “Horrible goddamned feeling.”
Penny fast-forwarded through the next few commercials, and
Xander was sure it was because she wanted something other than the
silence to fill the room. But the next questions weren"t any more
comfortable. Chris"s DUI, how hard it was to live apart when they"d
been all but married since they"d graduated from high school, the
specifics of the accident and Chris"s recovery—hard questions.
