Page 111 of The Locker Room

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You see anyone here you like?”

Xander would have loved to right then. His gut roiled with

bitterness and jealousy, with a black mix of self-hatred and anger with

Chris and putrid, furious disgust for the microscope that had done this to

them. He would have loved to have found a girl and figured out what in

the fuck to do with her, and gone to see Chris smelling of another

person"s sex, just so Chris could share this moment with him the way

they had shared every other goddamned thing for the last ten years. But

he couldn"t. He couldn"t. Because the last thing Chris had said to him

had sounded lost and young and frightened.

“I"ll call you in a little while. Come get me, okay?”

It was the “Come get me” that kept Xander in his seat that night,

that started the pattern of every other third-home-game-of-the-month for

them.

Chris had asked him to do something, had pleaded for him to do

something, and dammit, Xander would do it.

So Xander could probably have slept with any girl there that night,

fueled with anger and the vision of Chris, naked and alone with another

human being, faking his way through heterosexuality in the same way

they"d faked their way through being single for the past ten years. But he

didn"t. Instead, he"d taken a pull on his beer, looked at Sammy, and

shrugged.

“I"m picky too.”

The Locker Room

95

The next third-home-game-of-the-month had been his turn. He"d

sat on almost the same stool with a pocketful of rubbers, and looked at a

little bubbly blond girl with big brown eyes. Almost desperately, he sent

a begging look to Chris. Chris threw back his third drink of the night and

closed his own brown eyes in pain.

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