Page 164 of The Locker Room
your mind. Ever since he transferred Edwards, you"ve been looking like
someone slept with your girlfriend and shot your dog!”
Xander managed a small quip, and when Malloy laughed, he felt
like he"d won some sort of battle, because he was not usually the funny
one.
“Yeah, well, if someone had shot my dog, then I"d bereallyupset.”
LATER that evening, as he watched his team lose, he was not laughing,
even a little bit.
The Locker Room 141
He"d started the night with such high hopes.
The families lining up with their kids to have their little mini
basketballs signed were delightful, as always (although Xander kept
hearing Chris making jokes about fondling baby balls, because Chris
could get away with that without it sounding creepy) and Xander had
gotten to talk to a fan who managed to not make him feel like shit about
kicking a rock and getting injured during the season.
“Sounds like something I"d do when I was fighting with my wife,”
the guy said with a grimace. He was a comfortable-looking man with a
graying beard and bright blue eyes. His daughter—a sturdy, redheaded
dumpling of a precocious four-year-old—had the same eyes, and since
she was sitting on her daddy"s shoulders, they were gazing up at Xander
with a guileless charm.
“Your eyes are pretty, like mine. My brother"s eyes are the worser
color. They"re brown.”
Xander looked at her brother, a tall boy with sandy hair full of
cowlicks, and a grave smile. “I like brown eyes,” he said quietly,
thinking of Chris. The little boy gave Xander his ball to sign, holding it
in one spiderlike hand. He smiled with a mouth full of gaps in his
growing teeth, those brown eyes sparkling, and Xander got hit with a
longing so strong the pen shook in his hand as he signed the ball.
