Playing for the Other Team (6 page)

“How’d they take it?”

“Pretty well. They weren’t sure I was serious at first. It didn’t seem like a big deal to them when I told them, so I never hid it, and after a while they realized I meant it.”

“Wow.” I shook my head in disbelief. I couldn’t imagine how that would have gone over with my family.

“You think your parents will be okay with it?” Jasper asked softly.

“It’s just my mom now.” I swallowed the hint of bile in my mouth. “I think so, but I’m not sure.”

“Did your dad pass away?” Jasper had paused again in order to give me his full attention. I wasn’t sure whether I preferred it to the pencil noise.

“Yeah. When I was six. My uncle moved in with us not too long after that, to help raise me, because my dad’s family was convinced my mother wouldn’t be able to raise me right on her own.”

“That sounds like a load of bullshit.” Jasper let the curse word slip a bit too loudly, causing a few heads to turn our way. He slid a little lower in his seat. “Um, no offense.”

“None taken. My uncle was kind of a jackass, honestly. He always insisted on making decisions as the ‘man of the house’ even though it wasn’t his damn house to start with. My mother tried her best against him, but he was pretty domineering.” I looked down at my paper. Without even realizing it, I’d sketched something like a chain-link pattern. “Homophobic too,” I added belatedly.

“You said ‘was’?” Jasper probed carefully.

“Cancer. Same as my dad. He died just before I started high school.”

Jasper nodded, looking thoughtful, as though trying to make sense of what I had told him. “Well, I’m sorry you lost your dad so early,” he said eventually. His tone was still soft, and if we’d been discussing another topic, his voice might have made me shiver. “I’m not sure I could say the same about your uncle, though.”

“Don’t even try. He doesn’t deserve it.” I knew it sounded cold, but I found my words justified by more than enough unpleasant memories.

We didn’t talk a whole lot for the rest of class, but it was a much more comfortable silence. Near the end, when I still hadn’t produced anything but random doodles and scribbles, Jasper laid his pencil aside and pushed his sketchbook toward me. He’d never done that before either, but I didn’t get the sense that he was showing off. It was more like he knew I would want to see what he had created.

It was a nature scene. That by itself surprised me because most of Jasper’s work I’d seen was geared in a completely different direction. But then again, I’d already known that Jasper could sketch just about any damn thing you could think of and probably a hundred thousand you couldn’t. One of his projects of the previous year had consisted entirely of pencil sketches he’d done during his lunches, of people he’d picked randomly from the crowd. They were all spot-on, every single one of them entirely recognizable, and he’d done nearly fifty of them. Miss Fisher had hung them up in the lunch hall, where they’d generated a considerable buzz from people who found themselves skillfully represented in pencil without even realizing it had happened.

Amusingly, most students remembered the sketches, but few knew who the artist had been. The small
JER
in the corner of every sketch had only been a giveaway to those who already knew Jasper and his work.

The piece of paper I was holding had been initialed like that as well. Jasper had drawn a lake, apparently somewhere remote, surrounded by forest, and a man swimming in the lake. I loved the details, the man’s muscled torso, the droplets of water everywhere, the different kinds of trees and ferns and assorted undergrowth. The foreground was littered with pebbles, and I could imagine them hot from the sun, daring anyone wanting to go for a swim to walk across them barefoot.

I wasn’t sure whether the man was supposed to be Jasper or someone else, but the blissful expression on his face made me smile. When I said as much, Jasper gave me his broadest and most meaningful grin yet.

“I’m not gonna tell you what I thought of when I did that part,” he murmured into my ear, pulling away a split second before the bell rung. I remained seated for another minute, trying to shake off the immediate consequences of feeling his hot breath brush the side of my neck.

I mulled it all over after school, on my way home. I understood what Jasper had said about coming out at my own pace. And it made sense that he had decided to offer me no more than a supportive friendship, yet his actions seemed to tell a very different story than his words. I didn’t want to push him, but I also resolved not to give up on Jasper Reyes just yet.

There was another decision I had made after our talk during art class.

I was going to tell someone.

My mother would have been the obvious choice, but what I had told Jasper was true. I was not entirely sure how she would react. We had withdrawn from each other during the years my uncle had reigned supreme over our family, and while we’d worked hard over the past four years to grow closer again, it wasn’t enough to erase my doubts.

Mostly for that reason, the one person who ranked higher on my trust list was my sister. Sabrina and I bickered and fought like most siblings. But when dealing with my uncle, we’d always had each other’s back. We had helped each other through a few really dark days, and when things got real, we could still rely on that bond, no matter how many fights we’d had recently.

So with my heart in my throat and my hands clenched in a death grip behind my back, I stepped into her doorway that evening.

“Hey, Brina?”

“What’s up, Bry?” She sounded distracted, peering into a little mirror on her desk. Her hair was the same color as mine, a freakish gray. We had both gone through long phases of hating our hair before becoming resigned to our family’s genetic abnormality. Like me, she kept it short, in a pixie cut. One of her eyes had been covered in makeup while the other was bare, and apparently she was trying to evaluate its effect. It still looked weird to me—not the makeup, but the fact that my sister was wearing any. She was only two years my junior, but if I had my way, she would still be playing in the mud, wearing fluffy teddy bear pajamas to bed, and begging me to build her a blanket fort whenever she needed to feel safe.

I missed those days. I missed them a lot. But then again, grown-up Sabrina wasn’t turning out so bad either. I was proud of her—and I damn well should be, because I’d done a hell of a lot more to help raise her than Uncle Adam had ever bothered to. Now she had confidence and sass, was great at school, and had made it onto Tannenbrook’s dance team for the second year running.

All of that went through my head in a flash when I saw her standing there with her half-painted face. And I knew it would be okay. It had to be.

“I’m gay.”

It certainly got her attention. She froze. Then she spun to face me, dropping the little brush she’d been holding in the process.

“Crap!” She hastily picked it up, inspected her white carpet for—I assumed—color stains, and eventually straightened up again. Her eyes locked with mine. I waited. Her gaze strayed down, then back up, scrutinizing me as though that would somehow tell her something.

“I’m serious,” I added, just in case it was needed. It came out a little shakier than I had planned.

“Wow.” Once more, she looked into my eyes. Her own were wide. “You really are, aren’t you? You’re not kidding.”

I shook my head. Someone’s invisible grip seemed to be squeezing my throat shut, and the longer I waited, the worse it got. For a moment longer, she stared at me, but then she appeared to realize she’d have to react somehow.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

There was so much concern, sympathy, love in her voice, and nothing but. I’d held it together pretty well up until then, but that simple question did me in. Even as I nodded, I could feel my eyes filling with tears.

A second later she had crossed the room and was hugging me hard. I clung to her, utterly thankful, shedding tears without even knowing why. A profound, palpable sense of relief flooded me at the same time.

After several minutes of holding me tightly, she let go.

“Oh, man, Bry,” she said as she walked over to her door and closed it even though Mom wasn’t due home for another hour. Then she took me by the hand and pulled me to her bed, and we both sat down. I couldn’t help but smile when I noticed we were sitting exactly the way we always had when we talked, cross-legged, facing each other.

“So.” She ran her fingers through her hair, adjusting the style. “Holy crap. Okay. You like guys.”

Her eyes were teary, and at the same time she was laughing a little and obviously struggling with the shock of it, and I laughed too, because it was a damn sight better than crying again.

“Yes. I like guys. Weird, huh?”

“Yes! Yes it is!” She threw a pillow at me, playfully but hard. “You jerk. Why didn’t I know this until now?”

“Because, dumb as it sounds, I only just figured it out myself.”

“Oh.” Her indignation vanished. She frowned, looked me up and down again, and shook her head. “That’s so…weird.” She got a little quieter. “I just mean, I thought I’d be able to tell that sort of thing. I’m around you all the time. But it never even crossed my mind.”

“Hey, mine either,” I pointed out. “But things make more sense now. You know I was never a huge fan of the whole ‘dating girls’ thing.”

She laughed, sniffed, and reached for a tissue, then handed me one as well. “Yeah, that seemed always such a chore for you. I thought you were just too shy or nervous to ask, but…”

“Turns out it was genuine non-interest,” I finished.

“When did you figure it out?”

“Prom.” I reached out and touched her arm to make sure she listened. “You’re only the second person I’ve told.”

“I won’t blab. You know I won’t.”

Sabrina didn’t even seem to realize that the entire left side of her face was now streaked with dark blue and black. Her tissue had taken on the same colors, but she kept wiping it across her skin haphazardly.

“So Mom knows?” she eventually demanded clarification.

“No. I haven’t told her yet. She’ll be next, though. I just need to find a good moment.” Thinking about it made my gut churn.

“She’ll be fine,” Sabrina assured me, and for some reason, when she said it, I actually believed it. “So who else knows, if not Mom?”

I felt my face heat up while I still considered a white lie. For some reason, thinking about Jasper made me feel vulnerable. I couldn’t keep Sabrina from catching on when I remained silent, however.

“You got a crush or something?” She grinned.

“Well, yes. That’s how I figured it out.”

“In the middle of your prom.”

“Exactly.”

“So who is it?”

My face was so hot I was starting to sweat. My voice came out a whisper. “Would you mind very much if I told you later?”

“Fine. As long as you do tell me.” She seemed ready to drop the topic, but then her eyes lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Oh my
God!
Bry, this means we can totally talk about cute guys now! I wonder if we like the same type. Hold on, I’m going to make a list.”

I did not have the heart to refuse her. So then, even though it made me want to shoot myself through the kneecap, we spent the next hour discussing my newly discovered taste in men.

I slept well that night, deep and dreamlessly. The load on my chest seemed to have lightened a little. Sabrina’s acceptance meant more to me than I had first realized, and it gave me confidence. I could do this, I realized. I could, and I
would.

Chapter Five

Did Someone Say Phone Sex?

“I told my sister,” I informed Jasper the next day in class. It burst out of me before I’d even sat down.

He looked up at me, eyes widening. “And?”

“It went well.” I dropped heavily into my chair. “She was really cool with it. And then she wanted to talk about boys all evening.”

Jasper smirked. “Sounds familiar.”

Right. He had a sister too. I stared at the empty table in front of me, realized I was once again completely uninspired to do any art, and decided not to care. Talking to Jasper was all I wanted to do anyway.

“I’m going to tell my mom tonight.” I swallowed. I had made the decision only hours before, and while I knew it had to happen, I was still freaked out. My mom might cry. She might be disappointed. She might blame herself. Or me. Or God. All of these seemed like pretty realistic scenarios, and the more I thought about it, the more certain I was that one or more of them would come true.

“Good luck,” Jasper said.

“I’m
so
scared.”

“Yeah. I don’t blame you. But I think you’ll be okay.” He briefly touched my arm, leaving the skin there warm and tingling. “She loves you. She’ll get there.”

Feeling less than convinced, I nodded. My ears picked up the sound of tearing paper. Jasper grabbed his pencil, wrote something, and pressed the slip of paper into my hand.

“Call me if you need to.”

I shot him a weak smile. “What if I just
want
to?”

“I suppose that might be tolerable. But no phone sex.”

I inhaled, choked on my laughter, and promptly had a coughing fit. That got Jasper to chuckle, and we fed off each other, giggling like two sixth-grade girls about something that hadn’t really been all that funny. Those bright, beautiful eyes of his triggered another breathless flutter of my heart every time they met my own, and between that and seeing him laugh so freely, I was lost.

When I finally managed to pull myself together enough to catch my breath, I noticed that we were drawing stares. No wonder, really. Our table had been the quietest in the room all semester. We must have looked like we had suddenly lost our minds.

My lungs eventually stopped burning. The chance of my pulse slowing back down to normal rate was just about zero, however, with Jasper smiling like he was, looking so beautifully mischievous. I no longer felt like laughing.

Phone sex
. Jasper’s voice, murmuring words into my ear much like he had done the previous day right before leaving the room. Suggestive words, sensual words that would send my pulse skyrocketing even higher.