Page 251 of The Locker Room
ache that his throat had become. Chris really was golden.
He turned around to go talk to his team.
The locker room was… joyous. Loose. Everyone was focused but
cheerful. There was no squabbling except the good-natured kind, and a
lot of checking to make sure the uniforms looked just right. Xander
called his starters around him about five minutes before the coach came
in to talk to them, and hoped that, maybe, he could put his faith in the
people he"d served.
“Um, guys? Can I talk to you here?” He looked at them—Aames,
Burkins, Pollack and the completely healed Oswald, and felt a surge of
affection for the team that he"d never really felt when Chris was at his
side. Well, good. It was nice to be part of something larger than himself.
He just had to make sure they wanted himforhimself, and now was time
to test that.
“Guys, you all know Edwards is on the sidelines, right?”
“Yeah—man, he"s looking….” Aames trailed off, his light-
chocolate, round face grimacing. He"d been going for the classic
“looking good,” but what he looked, and they could all see it, was
“retired.” He was never going to play ball again—and there wasn"t a
person there who wouldn"t feel that loss like an amputated limb. “Man,
we"re sorry. But, you know, he"s Chris. If anyone can have fun after the
game, it"s him, right?”
Xander smiled. “I hope so.” And now for the full-body blush.
“Um… look, some of you know, and most of you have guessed, but…
um… you guys know that we"re… um—” Fuck. How did you come out
to a room full of jocks? “Married.” His voice—sort of a low-pitched one,
mostly, actually squeaked.
“I thought they just voted and said you couldn"t do that,” Pollack
said, a little numbly. (Unlike his name might imply, Pollack was, in fact,
a black man, who wore his hair in a retro seventies afro. He was seven
