Page 97 of The Locker Room
strayed off of the path too far, and since there was poison oak (which
Chris had discovered in their first year, much to his intense discomfort
and loud complaint) they tried to stay on the trail.
But winter or summer, it was worth it. In spite of the fact that the
hillside was becoming increasingly populated with large, multimillion-
dollar houses (apparently zoning laws stopped at ten, which relieved the
both of them) there was the illusion on their little trail that they were
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completely alone. More than once, they had stopped and kissed, softly,
passionately, in the same way they had kissed as virginal teenagers when
they"d worked their afterschool McJob. Sometimes they skipped the run
and simply walked, holding hands and talking of anything at all.
The press had been inside their house, had silently pitied the “stoic,
severe” Xander, had laughed indulgently at the “cheerful, sociable”
Chris, and had left, never seeing the lie right in front of their faces. That
didn"t mean that their home didn"t feel invaded, labeled, imprisoned
under the weight of the expectations of thousands of people who loved
their team as much as they did. But the two of them couldn"t even hate
the fans who placed the burden on their shoulders. They were, after all,
only using the game in the same way Xander had, to escape a life that
was sometimes too difficult to bear.
But the press had never followed them on their run. There were no
pictures of the two of them on their unpaved path, giving each other shit,
racing each other for fun, or stopping and kissing passionately behind the
thick stand of oak trees toward the center of the path. There were no
pictures of the golden Labrador retrievers, Max and Mercury, chasing
balls and sticks and pheasants through the underbrush and trying to trip
them and kill them as they roared back. These things were theirs. This
place was real. It was the unspoken reason between the two of them that
