Page 108 of The Locker Room
“Yeah, you wanna be a real man, go get yourself some pussy! You
can give the media that song and dance about being roommates all you
want, but we all know what that"s code for, and I don"t want no fucking
HIV on my court, you hear what I"m sayin"?”
That night had been the third home game of the month of January,
and Chris and Xander had met eyes, and they had known. They"d
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Amy Lane
discussed it—mostly in caustic terms like, “Maybe if he caught us with a
girl in the locker room, that would make him happy,” or, “I swear, I"m
just going to buy us each a hooker to take home after the game and see if
maybe he"ll leave us alone after that!”
But in the first months of their second season, they"d started to
hear the talk. It wasn"t that they were “rarely” seen with women, it was
that they were “never” seen with women, unless it was an official escort
gig, and those usually came with no strings and no phone calls attached.
Everyone knew that. Hell—some of the guys with wives got other women
to stand in, because the wives weren"t as comfortable with being in the
spotlight as their husbands.
What had seemed “just so obvious” to be hidden in plain sight
suddenly became too obvious to hide, and too awful to contemplate,
when exposed to Coach Wallick"s foul-mouthed intensity. Nobody even
joked about Xander"s “wife” or Chris"s “husband” anymore—and that
had been one of the things they"d laughed most about with the team,
before they"d gotten to know the other players in the beginning.
So they sat there, at their own table, and Chris looked up and saw
a tall, raw-boned girl with a shy smile giving him the eye. She had come
with a friend, but her friend was chatting someone else up, and Chris
had looked at Xander helplessly.
“Maybe they"ll leave us alone,” he whispered, and Xander looked
