Long Pass Chronicles 01 - Outing the Quarterback (10 page)

How much to tell his friend? God, he felt so isolated, but he didn’t want to lose Jamal’s friendship.

The big guy came through the door with a bag of chips under his arm and two bottles of root beer. Jamal was the root beer king. He handed one to Will, put the bag on the floor between them, and collapsed on the bed, drinking from his bottle.

Will took a swig. How to start?

Jamal flipped onto his stomach. “So what did you mean when that reporter asked you if you had a girlfriend and you said, ‘It’s complicated’?”

That was one way to start.

“I told you, Tiffany doesn’t do it for me.”

Jamal pointed the bottle at him. “You said ‘all the time.’ She doesn’t do it for you all the time.”

Will sighed. “Yeah. Well, I meant all the time. She never does it for me.”

“Ever?”

“Ever.” He took as big a fucking breath as he could get in his lungs and stared at the root beer label. “The fact is, Jamal, I’m gay.”

Silence.

He looked up. Jamal’s eyes showed too much white, and his mouth was open with the bottle poised in midair.

He sipped a little root beer to cover the silence. “I’m sorry I never told you so you could decide if you still want to be friends.”

“No shit? You’re gay?”

“Yeah.”

“Not bi? Or homo-curious?”

“No. I’ve tried to be both those things. But I’ve finally realized I’m just fucking gay.”

Jamal started to laugh.

What the fuck?
“Is it funny?”

“Hilarious.”

Will frowned. “Want to share?”

“I think it’s funny we’ve been best friends for going on three years and we’ve never told each other the most fundamental things about us.”

“What do you mean ‘we’?”

“I’m bisexual but with a strong leaning toward men.”

Will’s turn to drop his teeth. “No shit?”

“Yep.” Jamal swigged some root beer. “I had a crush on you when I first met you, but I realized we weren’t meant for each other.”

“We’re not?”
Whoa
. He had to catch up.

“You tell me. Have you ever wanted to fuck me?”

Had he? “No, I guess not. I wonder why? You’re about as gorgeous as a guy gets.”

“Thank you, man. But I think we’re too much alike or something. So who convinced you you’re gay and not some variation on a theme?”

Will’s lips turned up on their own.

“Oh shit. He’s got it bad.” Jamal swallowed some soda.

“You met him. Remember the waiter with the scar?”

“No shit?” He fell back on the bed and started to cough.

“Root beer down the wrong hole?”

He snorted root beer out of his nose, then leveled his gaze on Will. “I thought you seemed awfully interested in our waiter.”

“Yeah. Sadly, I think Tiffany noticed it too.”

“Wow. Tiffany. What are you going to do about that, buddy? When you said it’s complicated, you weren’t shitting.”

“Yeah. I don’t quite know. I thought I could make it through this year. But I guess meeting someone male I really want makes it impossible to fake it with a female. Plus it’s not fair to her.” He shook his head. “I wish I had the balls to just come out and let it all hit the fan.”

“That’d be a lot of shit, baby.”

He stared at the bottle. “I know. I’d like to graduate, but if I come out now, I’ll be looking for a place to live, not getting my degree, beating off the press, and I don’t have any reason to believe that Noah even wants me.”

“Noah. That’s the waiter?”

“Yeah. He’s got kind of a high-profile boyfriend.”

“Seriously, man. Higher profile than you?”

“Noah doesn’t know much about me.” That was saying a fuckload.

“He sure is pretty.”

“Yeah. Glad you see that too, despite the scar.”

Jamal grinned. “I like ’em purty.”

“Me too, I guess.”

“Wow. You have got a dilemma, my man.”

They both stared into space and sipped root beer.

Jamal sat up and slid his legs over the side of the bed. He gazed at Will. “I think I’ve got an idea, but it’s deception times three so you’d have to be comfortable with it.”

“Fuck, my whole life is one big lie.”

“And I’d have to trust you like a brother.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah.” He grinned and Will mirrored it. “You like Evangeline, right?”

“I love her. She’s one of my all-time favorite females.”

“She’s a pretty sexy, gorgeous, smart lady, right.”

“All of the above and more. What are you thinking about?”

“Why don’t you break up with Tiffany and start dating Evangeline? I know she’s not the ‘perfect girlfriend’ for the SCU quarterback that Tiffany is, but nobody would question that you’d fallen in love with her, so I think it could work.”

“Jamal, are you nuts? I wouldn’t do that to Evangeline. Shit, she’s gotta be pursued by half the guys in California.”

“Yeah, she is, and that’s the problem.”

“What do you mean?”

He flashed the teeth. “She doesn’t like guys—she’s gay.”

Will felt his jaw drop again. “No shit?”

“No shit. You could be her pretend boyfriend. She doesn’t want to come out while she’s in school because some of her scholarships are from church groups, plus she doesn’t have a steady girlfriend. So this subterfuge, if she agrees to it, could help her a lot too.”

“Wow.” His brain could explode.

“Yep.”

“So both you and Evangeline are other than heterosexual?” He laughed.

“Yep. Runs in the family. Ty is gay.”

“Holy shit.”

“None of the usual stories the haters like to use to explain same-sex relationships work in our case. We’ve got a strong family unit, great father figure, loving mother, good nutrition in the womb. On top of that, we’re black! The last community on earth to accept homosexuals. But here we are, man, gay as jelly beans.”

“That’s wild. Do your parents know?”

“Hell, yeah. They support us in everything. None of us is really out yet, so Mom hasn’t started marching in gay rights parades.” He chuckled.

“Is Stephanie really your girlfriend?”

“A little more than Tiffany’s yours, I’m guessing. Steph and I have sex. She gets her money’s worth. I treat her great and never cheat with another girl. But I’ve got a couple guys I bring home from time to time. Like I said, the pretty ones.” He drained his soda. “I’m not sure what I’ll do in the NFL. Probably just keep dating girls. I don’t mind it too much. If I was full-on gay, I’d come out, but as it is, I might as well not cause a fuss.”

Only Jamal could think of his stand for gay rights as a fuss. Will’s brain skipped ahead. “Do you think Evangeline will do it?”

“All we can do is ask.” Jamal got up from the bed and left the room. Will heard him call “Hey, Ev, can you come up here?”

She said something Will couldn’t hear.

Jamal yelled, “Just come up. Don’t give me a hard time. I’ll make it worth your while.”

Butterfly attack.
What if she wouldn’t do it? Shit. What if she would?

Jamal walked back in and sat on the bed again. “She’s coming.”

Will puffed his cheeks and blew.

Jamal cocked his head. “You nervous?”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know. She’s my sister.”

Evangeline walked in, stopped, and looked from Jamal to Will and back. “So, what’s up?”

Jamal pointed toward the other end of the bed. “Sit.”

She looked confused or maybe a little peeved, but she sat. Jamal got up and closed the door.

Evangeline leaned back on her elbows. Her cutoffs hugged her thighs. Man, she deserved a straight guy to admire those long legs. Will grinned. Or a gay girl. She stared at her brother. “Okay, give me the pitch.”

“What pitch?”

“Whatever you two have cooked up that involves me in some way I’m probably going to hate.” She sat up and propped her elbows on her knees. “Shoot.”

Jamal glanced at Will, then back at Ev. “How’d you like to be Will’s girlfriend?”

She stared at him like he was crazy. “Okay, I’m waiting for the punch line.”

“That’s it. Will’s gay and he needs a pretend girlfriend. You’re gay and you need to keep guys from hitting on you. Who’s going to think they can get you away from Mr. Perfect here? It’s a win-win. Whaddya say?”

Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. “Go back to that part about Will being gay.”

Will nodded. “Yeah. I am.”

“Don’t you date the captain of the SCU cheerleading squad? Who, last time I checked, was a girl!”

“I hoped I was bisexual.”

“But you’re not.”

He shook his head.

“So you want to make me a fag hag?”

Jamal leaned forward. “Hmm. Can lesbians be fag hags?”

“Well, shit, Jamal, I’m just trying to get through two more years of grad school under the radar. This plan does not accomplish that.”

“Will you tell me how you’re going to hide your sexual identity when you never accept a date and never have a boyfriend?”

She shrugged. “I could tell people my parents are religious.”

Jamal blew a razzberry. “That’s gonna come back to bite you in the butt.”

“And your plan won’t?” She crossed her arms across a very nice chest. “Really.”

Will smiled at her. “At the end of the year, you can break up with me. Then, when and if I come out, everybody will know why you left me.”

She grinned at him. “This is crazy.”

Jamal leaned over and bumped her shoulder. “Hey, you can have all the benefits of having a rich, handsome, famous boyfriend without having to fuck him.”

“There is that.” She laughed, and it was a musical sound. Her dark eyes speared Will. “And who’s going to be getting fucked while I’m pretending to be the girl of the hour?”

Jamal flopped back on the bed. “Will’s in love with a waiter.”

Will blurted out, “He’s an artist.”
Shut your mouth, asshole
. “I don’t actually know him very well and I’m not in love, but I would love that fucking you’re talking about.”

Evangeline shook her head. “Will Ashford, all-American boy, is gay. Wow.” She smiled. “So if we’re going to do this thing, how do we start?”

Score.
Will grinned. “First I have to break up with Tiffany.”

Jamal widened his eyes. “That will not be fun, my man.”

“Truth. And the next step, as with any new relationship—you have to meet my parents.”

“Also not fun.”

A bong sounded in Will’s pocket.
E-mail.
A bar of music played in Jamal’s pocket.
Odd
.

Jamal shrugged. “Maybe something from the coach.”

Will pulled out his phone as Jamal did the same. He stared at the screen.
Double fucking shit.

Evangeline looked from one to the other. They must have both had weird expressions. “What’s going on?”

Jamal tossed the phone on the bed. Probably because he didn’t want to throw it at the wall. “Hascomb.”

Will looked up at Ev. “There’s a guy at school who does this really popular YouTube channel that a lot of people watch. It’s all gossip and shit. He wants me and Jamal to come on the channel tomorrow after practice.”

“Is that a problem?” She kept bouncing her gaze between them.

“No.”

Jamal snorted. “But now I see how it could be.”

W
ILL
CRAWLED
out of the Ferrari and grabbed his gym bag, which reminded him of Noah’s backpack still burning a hole in his car. The guy had to need it. It was full of painting supplies and shit. Damn, why hadn’t he gotten Noah’s number?

Okay, focus.
Every practice before the first preseason game was important.

Wham!
A body hit him at full speed, and he stumbled. Catching himself put him face-to-face with a spitting cheerleader. “What the fuck do you mean ‘It’s complicated’? What precisely is complicated about our relationship?” Her hands planted on her hips. “Don’t I do everything you want?”

God. He’d hoped to avoid this until after practice. Or maybe after this life. “I’ve got practice, but we need to talk.”

“Talk? Talk about what?” She crossed her arms across the big SCU on her chest.

“I think we should see other people.”
Stop staring at your shoes, idiot
. He glanced up and got a full glare.

“I don’t want to ‘see other people.’ We’re seniors, for crap sake. This is our year and we’re the power couple of the school. What else do you want?”

He could have answered that question for about a year. “It’s just not working for me.” Could he think of one more cliché?

“I suppose you’re going to say it’s not me, it’s you.”

If she only knew how much. “You’re great, Tiff. Half the guys in the school want you.”

“You bet your ass they do. And the other half are gay.”

Too close for comfort. “You’ll find someone who can really appreciate you and make the lucky guy the king of the school.”

Tears welled in her eyes. “But I really like you.”

Well, shit
. “I think I’m going through an early life crisis, Tiff. Nothing makes sense to me right now. I don’t know what I want.”

“Well, if you don’t know what you want, maybe you want me.” She slapped a hand on a tear that ran down her cheek.