when actual history is too annoying to take
previously on
They lose the league championship game. They never have a lead, a terrible strikezone and Zito in and out of trouble all night, flashing seams and giving up a triple even though Munson has warned him about that shit about six hundred times. They lose mundanely, by two runs, just a stupid squib hit over second in the late innings with two down and runners on, and Munson hit a ninth-inning, game-winning homerun, five hundred and fifty feet down the line, just six inches foul.
It’s anticlimactic, really, like the routine grounder to short that followed the moonshot, or at least that’s the least painful way to process their shattering disappointment. Beane gives the dozen guys that stick around Martinelli’s and any food they want to order in after the game, and they sit around his office in folding chairs and on the old equipment, jeans and undershirts with bare feet and drying hair, reliving the season.
Munson catches Beane pouring something out of a flask under the desk and handing the cup to Zito, and immediately elbows in and demands a share, made reckless by his high school graduation, three days away and pretty much irrevocable at this point. Beane glares but obliges, his eyes narrowed down surreptitiously. Zito grins at Munson and taps their cups together, looking pretty happy, all things considered.
The three of them go to the diner afterwards and loiter over a single plate of fries and water spiked with vodka, smudgy glasses and spills of salt and sugar tacky on the table. They get into some stupid argument about the fucking triple Zito gave up, Chavez cracking one-liners from the peanut gallery, bobbing his head. Afterwards, near midnight, they go to the park.
All roads lead to Rome, by way of the park, Munson thinks, and snickers to himself. The second jay they smoke accompanies his second wind, and he’s headlong into a tree-climbing mood, sap on his hands and the dead pull of the muscles in his arms. He’s in search of the feeling you get when you break through and stand on branches, dense green leaves to the waist, punched through the top of the tree. He finds it, looks down at Chavez and Zito’s coin-sized faces pale on the lawn, turned up to see him lit against the sky.
Zito’s passed out in the grass, a little while later, and Chavez is fucked up and tired enough that he forgets to act weird, talking about the draft.
“I mean, there’s a chance is what I’m saying.” Chavez shifts his leg so that it lies along Munson’s from the knee down. Munson doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move. “We go in the top ten-no whammies-it could be the Padres, stranger stuff happens.”
“Local boy makes good.”
“We’re making good regardless. But the thing is, you know, I already know how to play the infield at the Jack Murph ‘cause I’ve been watching people play it badly since I was yea high.”
Munson yawns and uses it to cover a shift of his own, the slightest pressure of Chavez’s hip against his. He’s feeling a little giddy, stoned out on the idea of major league baseball so close he can taste it, and Chavez even closer.
“You have all these ideas,” he says, surprised by another yawn.
“Yes, yes. I’m the brains of the operation.” Chavez rolls his head to the side and grins big at Munson, his eyes scrunched up, making Munson’s chest hurt. “You’re the muscle, Zito’s the pretty face. We’re like mobsters from central casting.”
Munson puts his hand up over his face, rubbing his knuckles into his eyes and letting his weight rest more heavily on Chavez’s side. He’s sick and tired of never knowing what Chavez is getting at; this never used to be a problem.
“No matter what happens, though,” Chavez says, scratching and tugging at Munson’s sleeve. “Munce. Even if the draft goes to hell and none of us even get to stay in California, there’s still the summer and we can’t fuck it up. No matter what happens.”
Nodding, Munson takes his hand down and looks over at Chavez, dark blades of grass bent against his forehead, a line dug in between his eyebrows. One move to get their mouths together, and it’s sometimes unbelievable how simple it would be, the barest exertion aided by gravity and magnetism and chemistry and whatever else they’ve got working for them. Five inches, a half-second, find out if Chavez would give like Munson suspects he might, if he would open without thought and wind an arm around Munson’s neck, small noises from the back of his throat and the hard sweet peppermint taste mixed up with liquor and smoke.
He takes a few measured breaths, wild-eyed to the stars. “We’ve always been real good at summer,” he says with hardly a hitch.
“You know, we have,” Chavez says, sounding content for the first time in what feels like months. “It’s probably our best thing.”
“Baseball’s our best thing, Ricky.”
“Right. I forgot for a second.”
Munson smiles but it doesn’t hold, and he’s blinking fast, carefully sliding away from Chavez. Five inches to seven, to nine, and room to breathe, piece his fractured self-control back together, his hand screwed into the grass, black dirt digging under his nails.
*
Jess pounces on Munson outside chem, lunchtime, and is three pieces of gossip down the list, halfway down the hall, when she finally gets to, “And your friend that stoner kid with the hair? He got arrested last night, I guess you already heard.”
Munson stops. “Who told you that?”
“Like, everybody.” Jess links their arms purposefully. “I could win an election with the number of people who told me.”
“Arrested?”
“I think he stole the coach’s car or something. The details were kinda sketchy.”
Munson shakes his head. “I was with him last night. We slept out at the park.”
Jess punches him in reproof. “Don’t sleep outside. You’ll get pneumonia and then you’ll die and then you won’t get drafted.”
“Dude, I definitely don’t think he got arrested.” But he had disappeared, Munson remembers suddenly. They’d woken up covered in dew, pitted footprints through the damp grass leading from the two of them to the sidewalk. Chavez had been shivering and voiceless, tension once again filling the space between them so completely that Munson had barely noticed that Zito wasn’t there.
He kisses Jess quickly, mid-word, and she gets flustered, and he makes his escape, promising that he’ll find her after the last bell. She shouts curses at his back, but he knows she isn’t really mad.
His information builds like a snowball as he cuts across the flood of students, pausing to hear from a soccer player acquaintance that some girl’s dad had been the arresting officer, collaring the baseball team’s manager and confirming that Beane had been nicked too. The parking lot is silent as a desert after the clatter of the halls, lacy trails of smoke circling from the cracked windows of Chavez’s car.
Hazy and sauna-hot in the car, Munson looks back between the seats at Zito, who looks worn out but no worse than usual, and says, “Someone said that Lauren Hayes’s dad arrested you and Billy Beane last night, what the fuck?”
Zito freezes, his mouth a little bit open, but Chavez’s got him beat, asking angrily, “They can’t arrest you, you’re eighteen years old now. Age of fucking consent, man.”
And Zito’s yelling at Chavez and Chavez is sneering and Munson takes a moment to think through that and come to the logical conclusion, feeling dulled and made slow by the heat, his eyes stinging.
“Wait, what?” he asks loudly, hearing a faint echo off the windows. “You did what with our fucking coach?”
Zito flushes, the tips of his ears dark red and his head ducked down, hair across his eyes. Chavez mutters, “Fuck,” and he sounds kinda desperate, clutching at the steering wheel. Munson can’t take his eyes off Zito, who lifts his head with a helpless expression on his face, something savage in the twist of a smile.
Zito says that he’s been sleeping with Beane since before the games started, which was four months ago, which is astonishing. Other than Eric Chavez, Munson doesn’t think Zito’s ever in his life slept with someone more than maybe five times.
Billy Beane, he keeps thinking, keeps saying out loud in disbelief. Billy Beane all mercurial and profane, running them into the ground every afternoon until dark, breaking baseball down into parts small enough to crib on the back of his hand, loyal to a fault and cruel to them only on the surface. Beane’s a living cautionary tale, the disaster that awaits them if God turns his back, and Munson’s stomach flips over uncomfortably, remembering Beane with his eyes completely black, watching Zito pitch through the chainlink.
And Chavez is looking furious, but not in any way surprised and Munson latches on to that rather than any of the other outrages presented to him, snapping, “You knew about this?”
Anything’s better than the kinda impossible vision of Zito going down on Beane.
“We don’t tell each other everything anymore, Munce, remember,” Chavez replies with a snarl. He waves his hand quick to get the smoke out of his eyes, meanly pinches out the cherry of the jay before passing it to Munson.
“It’s wasn’t his to tell.” Zito’s talking to the ceiling, hands laced together anxiously low on his stomach. His whole world is falling apart, Munson thinks, the framework of an elaborate lie dismantled in full public view. “If I wanted you to know, I woulda, you know. Let you know.”
Munson sees Chavez rolling his eyes in the corner of his vision and that’s his first clue that Chavez is maybe not actually gonna lose his mind over this shit. God knows how long he’s known about it.
“What makes him so special,” Munson asks petulantly, knuckling into Chavez’s shoulder just for the feel of it, the glittering black dash of Chavez’s glare through the smoke.
Zito sighs, looks right at him. “Me and him got more in common than you and me, dude.”
That right there is as close as they’ve ever got to telling him, and Munson wants to be thrilled, all conspiracies confirmed, but Zito’s not really the one he’s waiting to hear it from. Chavez is sucking on the inside of his cheek, gaze trained out the window at the solid blue day.
They’re silent for several minutes, circulating the jay, working over the various implications. Munson keeps wanting to say, okay, so you’re out of it now, right? but he doesn’t think that would play very well.
He asks Zito if it’s for real, watching Chavez’s face very carefully when Zito colors and shrugs and half-smiles, telling them that he’s got his reasons, evidently having fallen senselessly in love with Billy fucking Beane of all people. Chavez picks a fight immediately, and he and Zito snipe back and forth for awhile, while Munson smokes the end of the jay thoughtfully, bars of tangible sunlight cutting across his forearms.
Zito’s over Chavez, moved on to his next great love, and Chavez isn’t really the pining type. Pretty soon it could all be over, and that’s the first time Munson has ever allowed himself to think that: soon.
*
Just a little while after that, the night before the last day of school, Munson and Chavez go on a jaywalk around the block to the 7-Eleven, set up on the unfolded couch bed with snacks and whiskeyed Slurpees, and play videogames until Chavez’s mom calls down to them that summer doesn’t start until tomorrow. They turn off all the lights and Munson’s buzzing, sugar-high and alert, incredibly aware of Chavez under the thin sheet.
It’s always too hot in this room, the only one without windows, but Munson has never minded. Sometimes, Chavez squirms in his sleep so much that he wrangles his shirt off one arm, kicks the sheet down to the foot of the bed, long shadowy wedge of his chest and stomach showing.
And tonight, the air dense, clogged with a taste like steam, Chavez isn’t wearing a shirt at all, and he’s no more asleep than Munson is. He folds his hands under his head, elbows winged, and sighs pointedly.
“Yeah,” Munson says, rolling onto his back as the metal frame squeals under him. They’ve slept so many nights on this bed, used to sleep all three of them before they got too tall, and now the hinges are loose, the mattress starting to sag in the middle.
“It would be nice if I could sleep. We’re gonna definitely be up all night tomorrow.”
“No question.”
Chavez sighs again, moving the sheet slightly. Munson’s attention is focused in the corner of his vision, the line of white glowing against Chavez’s skin.
“I swear, each year feels longer and longer.” Chavez rubs absently at his right shoulder, still working the routine of the season out of his muscles. “Hundred and sixty-two games sounds ludicrous. I really think I might die.”
“I won’t let you die, man,” Munson says without having to think about it.
“What good does that do me? You’re not gonna be around.”
“It’s always half-empty with you, isn’t it.”
Chavez kicks him, muffled attack under the sheets. Munson reminisces about rough-housing on Saturday mornings with Chavez, just four, five years ago, wrestling across the fold-out with the springs shrieking and the game controller wires tangling around their ankles. It’s one of the many things he hadn’t anticipated outgrowing.
“Anyway,” Munson says, his muscles twitching like right before he falls asleep. “It’ll be easier because we won’t have to go to school.”
“I do dislike school,” Chavez acknowledges.
“Then I got good news for you, ‘cause you graduate tomorrow.” Munson allows himself a moment of freedom, rolls his shoulder against Chavez as if he’s stretching, shifting position. Chavez’s skin feels abnormally hot, the weather sunk in and absorbed.
They’re quiet for a minute, the tick of the kitchen clock rising from obscurity to fill the room. Munson distracts himself from his crippling fear of the future by trying to match the rhythm of Chavez’s breathing, their chests moving in sync. Munson has spent enough time on the phone with Chavez to be able to read the fall of his breath as easily as his face, and right now Chavez is kinda nervous, thinking too much.
“Munce. What do you really think about Barry and. You know. Whole thing.”
Chavez is talking to the ceiling, stolidly fixated and Munson takes the opportunity to stare at his profile, wondering if he should have expected this sooner, trying to work out what Chavez is hoping to hear from him.
“It’s insane,” he answers carefully. “Pretty creepy. Not to mention, I think Billy’s a drunk.”
“Barry’s a drunk,” Chavez adds under his breath, and Munson nods.
“Yeah. Yeah. That’s the thing. Circumstances aside, they’re actually kinda perfect for each other. They’re fucked up in ways that fit.”
Chavez exhales, and Munson thinks he’s gonna argue that, lay out all the reasons Beane and Zito are fated to implode, but Chavez only looks kinda sad, his mouth moving slightly.
“What. What do you think about it?” he ventures, tapping his fingers silently on the bed. Chavez doesn’t answer for long enough that Munson doubts he will, then says:
“He’s so much happier now.” Chavez’s mouth goes thin and tight, his eyes flickering as he blinks fast. “I feel like it’s been years.”
Munson catches his breath, because Chavez doesn’t really sound that heartbroken, more like bewildered, woken up into a mirror image of the world where everything’s the same except that he throws left and bats right now. He’s trying to figure out how upset he should be.
“I think it’s good,” Munson says. “He’s getting arrested, he’s not gonna get a good draft, he’s got a moderate substance abuse problem that seems to be gaining steam. The kid’s life is a disaster, you know, he should at least have someone to get him off on a regular basis.”
Chavez’s face knots, a strangled noise cut off in his throat. “Dude.”
“Sorry. Sensitive subject, Zito’s sex life. I understand.”
Now Chavez is glaring at him sideways, suspicious again, and Munson grins widely to throw him off track. Chavez blows out a breath and returns his gaze to the ceiling, scratching his stomach under the sheet. His ribs turn hollow in the dim light, lines of shadow like window blinds, laddered up his chest.
This is going to kill him. Munson’s slept a year of nights in this noisy fold-out bed, since he was eight years old, and he’s corrupted every one, a devil image of Chavez on his knees on the tattered sheets, his hand braced on the orange-red plaid arm, wet-black hair pushed out of shape and his long back arched.
Munson rubs at his hip, trying to think about baseball and maybe for the first time in his life, he can’t remember a man on the Padres roster.
“I’m concerned, is all,” Chavez says eventually, not as defensively as he might have. “Because he’s not thinking straight.” Munson snorts, bites back the obvious joke, lets Chavez continue, “Like you say, he’s getting arrested, he’s fucking up like ten times as much as he usually does. Which is terrifying, really. And he expects, what, Billy Beane’s gonna keep him safe? Seriously? I’m not exactly sold on the guy who fucks his students being the upstanding sort.”
“Well. I’m pretty sure it was just the one student.”
“It could only be! Who else is that stupid?”
Munson laughs, but shakes his head. “He’s always had terrible judgment when it comes to this stuff. He’s not stupid, just very gullible.”
“Same difference, Munce.”
He looks over at Chavez, finds Chavez looking back. “You knew he was like this, you saw it firsthand,” and his voice dies at the last, just trails away to nothing because he started saying it and his brain kicked in halfway through. Chavez’s eyes whiten, widen, and his throat bounces a few times.
“What-” Chavez starts, already faltering and Munson’s already at his breaking point, he can’t listen to Chavez play dumb and lie to him again.
“Don’t bother,” he says sharply. Chavez sucks in a breath and looks frantic for just a half-second, reining himself in blank and cool. Munson can’t stand that bloodless look on Chavez’s face, he’d prefer psychosis.
“I don’t know what you-”
“Chavvy, fuck.” Munson tests his fist against his hip, pissed off and feeling godawful. “Please, quit it. Okay? Don’t try and. Just don’t.”
There’s a long, long moment of silence when it could really go either way. Chavez could push it and fake one more time, bluster up some anger of his own, and Munson would snap and go into all the detail he could stand, known for years, known everything the two of you got up to, and it would be the worst way, it would ruin them for keeps.
But instead Chavez just lets the tension in his body go in a rush, a whistling breath, and he sags into the mattress, breaks the moment. He doesn’t admit to anything, he doesn’t lie. It’s kind of a wash.
“Don’t be mad at me, Munce,” Chavez says a little while later.
Munson laughs once like a cough. “Mad is not how I’d describe it.”
“Oh. How would, um, how would you describe it?”
Munson shakes his head, pressing his lips together. It’s cripplingly lovestruck with a wide streak of guilt and self-doubt, if he wants to be honest about it, but he says, “I’m slightly annoyed and mostly sleepy.”
“You’re lying.”
“That too.”
“Munce, you know you can tell me. If you want. Even if it’s bad.”
“Yes.” Munson nods, astonished to find his eyes tearing and he blinks them back, appalled at his behavior. “I really appreciate that, Eric.”
Chavez falls uncertainly quiet, though Munson kept his voice as level as possible, picturing the words in his mind as a script to read, a thoughtless exercise. Munson can feel Chavez darting little looks over at him, not really caring because he feels like he’s gonna throw up or cry, his throat burning.
Munson’s beginning to think that this whole farce might actually be worse with Zito out of play; now he’s got no excuse.
He waits until the moment passes, hoping that he’s not trembling like he suspects he might be, a hum just under his skin that Chavez might be close enough to sense. He doesn’t want leave things like this, at least needs to say goodnight without any secret agenda or sarcasm. Never go to sleep angry, his mom taught him, and though he’s more depressed than angry, it probably still holds.
“Chavvy?” he says under his breath, sneaks a glance to find Chavez’s eyes closed, his expression pained. He isn’t asleep, and Munson moves without really thinking it through, placing his fingers against Chavez’s side under the sheet, only intending to draw his attention.
But Chavez’s eyes crack open and arrest Munson’s own, caught and still as a rabbit, and his skin is hot and smooth as Munson’s whole hand presses flat suddenly, curved around Chavez’s ribs. Chavez gasps, shocked, and his mouth stays cocked open, staring at Munson with a look that’s scared more than anything else.
One of them is shaking, Munson notices, and he can’t pinpoint it because his hand is moving on its own, sliding across Chavez’s stomach and Chavez is not breathing so well, muscles tight as hell and shimmering, pressing his head back against the mattress with his neck revealed and Munson can only think, jesus would you look at him.
When Chavez locks his hand on Munson’s wrist, that’s it, it’s got to be, and Munson’s already braced for Chavez to tear his hand off, shove him away, Munson’s holding himself like he’s waiting to get kicked in the chest, but Chavez doesn’t say anything, only drags Munson’s hand down, and down.
Munson breaks a half-conscious promise and says weakly, “Oh god Chavvy,” and Chavez’s lidded eyes flare briefly, tip of his tongue swiping over his lips.
Munson rolls closer, gripping Chavez’s hip where his shorts have been pushed off, and he can feel the impression from the elastic in Chavez’s skin there. He can’t get a handle on any of this, a siege of visuals and touch and the sounds Chavez is making, but he can’t process it as a whole. It’s a month’s worth of daydreams run through a shredder and he’s almost out of his mind he’s so turned on, working his hand into Chavez’s shorts. Chavez, beautiful boy, arches like his body was constructed with only this in mind.
Two minutes ago, Munson thinks they were fighting. He was just another kid in crisis, about to graduate high school and possibly going through a phase, a normal enough turn of events. Two minutes later and he’s made permanently awkward the most enduring friendship of his life, because he’s apparently much, much gayer than he realized.
“Quick,” he spits out like a curse, and he doesn’t care if it’s a non sequitur, because Chavez is actually writhing, pushing up into his hand and Munson can taste the two of them in the air. He leans close to Chavez, brushing their foreheads, and Chavez moans, screwing his eyes shut.
Munson bites the edge of his jaw, rough burn on his lips, and hooks a leg across Chavez’s under the sheet. Chavez isn’t stopping him, lies there shivering and panting with his hands clasped on the back of Munson’s neck, and it makes Munson crazy.
“You, Ricky, I think. You’d let me do anything, huh?” Munson asks, and Chavez grins kinda helplessly, moving like a slow wave.
“Always have,” he answers, high-voiced and sincere, and Munson buries his face in Chavez’s neck, speeding his hand.
He lets it echo for a while in his mind: anything.
Chavez is saying his name, munce, munce, and has twisted his hand in Munson’s hair, the acute angle of his elbow imprinted on Munson’s back. Munson’s pressed so hard against him, harder than he’d treat any girl, and he wonders if that’s the guy thing or just Chavez, who tends to be indestructible in Munson’s perception.
He opens his mouth because he can, licks Chavez’s shoulder experimentally and Chavez says, “Oh, yeah, that,” and so Munson licks him some more.
This is all so incredible. He’s got to revise his whole life plan. Nothing’s gonna take priority over getting Chavez off, getting a chance to see this. Rubbing against Chavez’s hip and mouthing his throat and changing the pitch of his moans with the rhythm of his hand. This is all that matters from now on.
He’s got his forehead against Chavez’s cheek when Chavez half-shouts and grips his hair too tight for a long second, coming on Munson’s hand and the white sheets. Munson immediately latches his hands on Chavez’s hips and drags them flush, one arm snaking around his waist, his other hand on Chavez’s face.
Chavez is dazzled and pliant, rocking obligingly when Munson starts them off, shallow bow of his body off the bed, his arms slung loose around Munson’s neck. He’s still breathing hard, smelling sharp of sex and cherry Slurpee, warm shaky kid coming down, clinging to Munson like a storm anchor.
His knees squeeze Munson’s sides and Munson can’t stop grinding down against him and he’s almost in pain. Chavez has started talking and that makes everything worse, drops of sweat flicking off Munson’s forehead and Chavez is heartless, winding a hand in Munson’s damp hair, telling him roughly, “So much better, man, fucking crazy about you I swear.”
Munson finishes just like that, staring at Chavez’s mouth from inches away, and he cries out so loud Chavez hisses and kisses him deeply to keep him quiet.
It is, unsurprisingly, the very best first kiss Munson has ever received. He pretty much blacks out after that.
He wakes up right away, though, still on top of Chavez, lying between his legs in a position that is suddenly cause for a full-body blush, and the heat of it confuses him badly enough that he rolls off, his head feeling detached from his body, floating on a string.
Chavez makes a disgruntled noise when Munson moves, already half-asleep and blinking stickily. Munson likes him like this, worn out and soft around the edges, his hair smashed into a ziggurat. He reaches out and pats Chavez’s cheek, his heart stuttering a bit.
“Promise me we’ll do it again,” Munson whispers. Chavez smiles hazily, falls asleep in the middle of answering, but Munson pretty sure that was a yes, a final piece clicked into place, and he falls asleep himself soon after, his hand curled in a fist in the hollow under Chavez’s jaw.
He doesn’t know what time it is when Zito wakes them up.
Chavez is already talking fast and irritated, and Munson’s having a dream that somehow weaves his heartbeat together with the rhythm of Chavez’s voice, struggling dimly towards the surface.
“I’ve got to take off for awhile,” Zito says when Chavez lets him, and Munson blinks at him sideways and at an extreme upward angle, Zito wide-eyed and burning with distraction, his hands wrung together.
“You haven’t been here, what do you mean you’re taking off?” Chavez asks, and Zito’s throat ducks several times as he swallows.
“No, man, with Billy. He’s leaving town and I thought I’d, I think I’m gonna go with him.”
Chavez screws his fist harder into Munson’s hip and Munson wonders if Chavez would have done that before Munson jerked him off, a blur of heat as he relives it briefly, and then he processes what Zito said and pushes himself up.
“You’re joking,” he says. Zito darts a look at him, his face drawn in a grimace like when they drove him three hours out of the desert to the hospital with a broken ankle. He shakes his head, looking down.
“No, I, I’m for real. It’s just, it’s like the only thing I can think to do.”
Chavez’s fist is still on Munson, dug into his back now, hidden from Zito, and Munson can feel Chavez tensing as he says, “You could think about fucking not, for a start. You’re running away from home? What are you, eight years old?”
“It’s. Whatever. School’s out, there’s no reason not to.” He rubs at his face, looking ashamed.
“Where are you gonna go?” Chavez asks.
“I don’t know.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“Yeah. Don’t know. Job? Play for an independent team or something.”
Zito is restless, pushing a hand through his hair and ricocheting his eyes around the room. He won’t look at Chavez, Munson realizes, anywhere but, and Munson can feel Chavez just a few inches behind him, skim of heat on his back, and Munson is suddenly dearly regretting his position between the two of them.
“This is fucked up,” he says, because it feels like Zito’s breaking up with both of them, wretchedly and without grace, that sick feeling in Munson’s stomach and the sorrow in Zito’s dark eyes. “It’s our last summer. You’re not supposed to leave before our last summer.”
Zito flinches. “Munce, you know I wouldn’t. It’s not that you guys aren’t just as, I mean, you’re my best friends and I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t have to. He’s. He’s become very important to me.”
And Munson wishes he could turn and gauge Chavez’s reaction to that, but all he’s got to go on is the pressure of Chavez’s fist, inching higher. Munson asks about the draft just because he needs to throw as many obstacles in Zito’s way as possible, thinking that it will kill Chavez to lose Zito at this critical a juncture, and even if Chavez survives, maybe Munson’s not so sure he will. But Zito doesn’t care about the draft, unthinkably, dismisses like something he gave up on years ago.
Munson leans back against Chavez, winded a little bit. Zito’s been within arm’s reach for so long, a living witness to all the good parts of Munson’s life and the only person in the world who knows that when Munson was fourteen, he stole his dad’s car and hit a raccoon up in the hill roads. Zito’s seen Munson’s bawling, horrified and completely revealed in the white blast of the headlights, and Zito’s the one who hugged him until he stopped crying, his cold fingers on Munson’s face.
“This is crazy,” Chavez says, his chest vibrating against Munson’s back, and Munson nods wearily. “You’ve got to see that this is totally insane, right?”
Zito nods, glancing at Chavez quick, then back to his hands. “I’ve got to, Ricky. You have to remember what this is like.”
Chavez pulls in a sharp breath, says defensively, “We were just kids,” and Munson shuts his eyes, concentrating on the swell of Chavez’s chest, his taut arm against Munson’s back.
“And it’s different now, I know. But I wouldn’t be okay if he left without me. It’s not something I can get over twice.”
Chavez’s whole body flinches, and Munson draws a little ways away to look back him, stricken mouth and furious eyes, and Chavez grabs his wrist as if to keep Munson from getting too far away from him. Chavez stares at Zito for a long moment, his chin tilted and his throat working, fingers pressing hard on Munson’s pulse.
Munson’s starting to think that he’s been wrong about a whole lot of things, and disastrously short-sighted, focused only on graduation and the draft and one last salt-infested summer, but they’re not really kids anymore. This stuff is gonna stick, a foundation of years being set down just like the first time he saw Zito, the first time Chavez and Zito saw each other.
“You can go only as long as you promise to come back,” Chavez says after a minute, and Munson lets his body fold carefully against Chavez’s, exhaling.
Zito nods at once, swiping at his eyes with his hand, and says, “Of course, of course I’m coming back. Come on.” He looks like he’s about to cry, he’s saying again, c’mon, c’mon, and Chavez grabs him and hugs him tight, awkward around the shoulders.
Munson fits his hand against Zito’s neck, so it’s almost like he’s guiding Zito as he turns his head slightly and kisses Chavez on the corner of the mouth, and it doesn’t hurt Munson to see that again, though he really thought it might.
Zito leaves his watch with them, strapping it around Munson’s wrist solemnly, insurance that he’ll return, and hugs them both separately, rib-cracking with his hands locked on his forearms, and Munson can’t see a trace of the kid they spotted through the leaves, his skinny arms and wary eyes. Zito’s all grown up and leaving them with a grin, saying softly at the doorway, “Be good.”
After awhile, Munson lies back down, the moment suddenly fractured and unnatural. The idea that a third of a his life has been stripped away, torn out without warning, latches onto something in him so that he knows that’ll be how he thinks of it forever. Enough to be debilitating but not enough to kill him.
It’s deathly quiet for long enough to make Munson wonder desperately if he’s about to lose another third. Chavez stays sitting, staring at the doorway, the line of his shoulder rigid and his shoulder blade in high relief.
Munson’s still trying to think of a way to salvage something out of this night, willing to bargain, we don’t have to make out anymore if you stay friends with me, we don’t have to stay friends if you just make out with me some more, and he can’t for the life of him figure out where he’s trying to go with any of it.
“You knew, right?” Chavez says, making Munson jump.
“About you and him?” Chavez nods slightly. “I did know that, yes.”
“Did. Did he tell you.”
“No, Chavvy, no of course he didn’t.” Munson squeezes his hands into fists to keep them off all the spare clean skin of Chavez’s back, taking the opportunity to stare like he usually won’t allow himself, but Chavez isn’t looking back at him. “I’m not blind. You. You’re not very good at keeping secrets from me.”
“No,” Chavez says softly in agreement. “I figured you knew at least a little.”
“Yeah?” Munson’s skeptical, though he knows Chavez will continue to insist on a lie long after he’s been caught out. “You shoulda given it up.”
“I didn’t know how much you knew, man.”
“Almost everything, I think,” Munson says. “It didn’t. It never changed anything for me.”
Chavez glances back, metallic slash of his eyes catching Munson’s, his mouth hidden by his shoulder but he still looks scared. “You’re saying you were just waiting for him to be done with me? Now you can move in?”
Munson shakes his head automatically, because that’s clearly the smarter response, but he’s derailed because Chavez’s fine dark eyes are narrowed and there’s a sharp scent in the air that Munson recognizes immediately as sex even though it’s denser than what he’s used to. His hip is close enough that he can feel the heat gathering at the base of Chavez’s spine, and he thinks about how Chavez had shaped their bodies together, licked the inside of his mouth, spurred under him.
Chavez is still looking at him, and Munson knows he must look struck dumb, so he pulls himself together, palms flat on the sheet.
“I thought you were still in love with him, I couldn’t do anything,” Munson says. “It was too late already.”
Chavez makes a sound like a laugh, turning his face away. “Jesus, you never told me-” but he cuts himself at once, because obviously he’s got no ground to stand on there.
Flare of hope, just enough to make it okay when Munson traces his fingertips along the waist of Chavez’s shorts, too lightly for him to feel it, asking as carefully as possible, “You’re not still in love with him?”
Chavez leans forward over his knees, head in his hands. His back is moving like a tide, like he’s laughing. Munson wants to pet down the shallow curve of his spine, thinking that he might want Chavez more than anything right now, this might be his one wish.
“I am,” Chavez says without straightening, and Munson takes it like a fastball in the chest, gasping quietly, but then Chavez continues, “That’s never been the problem. I just. I was in love with you first. It’s kinda, kinda always been you.”
Chavez sighs, pushes upwards, his hand through his hair. Munson is too stunned to react, the shock hitting him deep enough to be absorbed completely into his body before reaching the surface, frozen in place as Chavez turns and looks down at him.
“Did you know that part of it, Munce?”
No, Munson thinks, and it’s like his blood’s been slowed, like the world is coming to a stop around him. His eyes hurt, they’re so wide, and he keeps thinking in little jerks, no, no, never knew that part.
“I. Oh,” he manages, and he hopes his face reads something of the mess inside, some fraction of the light exploding. He won’t move and he can’t speak, because he’s gonna find some way to wreck this, he just knows it, and Chavez smiles at him like he understands, puts his hand on Munson’s face.
“Blink twice if you love me back, man,” he says with a little smirk that’s so familiar, grown up from the nervous smile of his youth, and Munson sits up swift and catches Chavez in a kiss with his mouth still moving, a whistle of breath and Chavez falling back, taking Munson with him. Munson grins against Chavez’s lips and slides his hands down. Chavez has one arm slung around Munson’s neck, one leg around his waist.
“This works too,” Chavez allows, short of breath and so happy he’s shaking with it, and Munson wants to hold up his hands so that Chavez can see he’s just as bad, he’s coming apart with it. He’s got this crazy idea that if he presses hard enough against Chavez, gets close enough, neither one of them will be able to move or tremble or fuck this up at all, and life will be downhill from there.
*
The night before the draft, Eric Chavez decides that he doesn’t care anymore, he’s already got everything he needs.
This is not at all true, of course, and to his credit, Chavez is at least aware of that, but he still likes the sound of it. It seems like the proper way to feel.
Munson’s asleep in the backseat of the car, the windows open to the heat of the night, and they’re north a ways, in an empty strip of parking lot along a beach. Chavez is finishing a beer and considering the moment philosophically, a tendency he picked up from Zito always being stoned.
Only one lifetime wish granted per decade, Chavez thinks, eyeing Munson through the window, sticky reef of hair on his forehead, salt and sand on his chest and arms. He’s worried that he’s pushing his luck, raw kid all ego and talent cut down to size because he wasn’t content with what he had.
Drunk when he was fourteen, Chavez started wondering about Munson’s hands and mouth and before he knew what was happening, he was bringing himself off in the bathroom with the lights off and the diffuse sunlight through the warped glass soaking over him.
Munson was a no-hope dream, though, like wasting shooting stars and birthday candles to wish for the ability to fly. There wasn’t any harm in it because nothing could ever come of it, but Chavez didn’t reckon on four years passing and his heart remaining steadfast.
His beer gone, Chavez chucks the bottle over the sand, into the shallows of the ocean, and then feels bad for littering. Zito would yell at him, for sure, but Zito’s gone and no longer a factor in things.
Chavez does not trust streaks of luck, because he can’t control them, no matter what his talismans and rituals. He’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, seriously doubtful that his life is going to fall into place this easily, a high draft (top ten, someone said, but Chavez doesn’t listen to that) for both of them and Munson holding his hand in the hallway that night as they slip up into the attic to celebrate. It’s too happy an ending.
Munson is fascinated right now, wants to try his hands on every part of Chavez’s body, and sometimes he mutters to himself, “Wow, am I gay. Jesus,” before he sets his mouth down in the hollow of Chavez’s hip and sucks a bruise there.
He wants to do everything, asks Chavez unself-consciously to teach him, and Chavez suspects that Munson’s goal is, in fact, to become demonstrably better in bed than Chavez himself, but Chavez is generally on board with that.
Chavez doesn’t really expect any of this to last, but then, nothing is going to be the same in three months, so he should probably get used to that feeling. He has gone entirely into the moment, the only real option before him, and he and Munson fuck around three or four times a day. They don’t talk much about what might happen tomorrow, nor about the fact that it’s kinda weird to be sleeping with your oldest childhood friend.
At any rate, the stuff Chavez likes best is something like this, Munson naked to the waist and asleep with a hickey rising on his collarbone, because Chavez used to watch Zito sleeping and wonder why it made him want to cry, and now he gets it.
Maybe the draft goes to hell tomorrow and they’ll have to live through the weight of the summer defeated and humiliated, and Chavez won’t be okay with that, really, but he’ll keep up appearances if it gets him Munson for a few more months. He’s cut his vision of the future off as if he’s got a terminal disease, rarely even thinks in future tense.
The Big Dipper climbs the sky and Zito always pointed that out, since they were kids, so Chavez gets to wondering where he is right now, which is something else that he tends to do at this time of night.
Zito didn’t come back after a week, like everyone said he would, and every time they hear from him, he’s further away. He sends postcards packed end to end with his tiny cramped handwriting, the address boxed off and the postmarks stamped right on top of the words. He’s called a few times, but he and Beane don’t really have enough money to be talking long distance for hours.
It’s weird to think about. Zito sitting on a motel bed somewhere (postmarks for Bakersfield, Carson City, Boulder, gift shop stamps of local landmarks), cross-legged watching TV with Beane reading the newspaper at his side, both of them underdressed and just awake. Zito wandering grocery stores in strange towns looking for the cereal aisle. The two of them standing on the shore of the Great Salt Lake watching their red toy plane skim too low, catch water and cartwheel into a splash. Beane learning how Zito rode in a car almost invariably with his knee drawn up and resting on the dashboard, just as Chavez and Munson had years ago.
Munson says that it makes a twisted kind of sense to him, because the odds against all three of them turning out queer were steep enough that one of them finding true love with a man sixteen years his senior was probably more likely.
Chavez disagrees, but he’s mostly arguing semantics, because he doesn’t feel like he turned out queer so much as kinda lazy, falling in love within a three yard radius of himself. Zito’s just plain gay and doesn’t particularly care who knows it, but Chavez has only wanted to sleep with two men in his life, and both of them he’s known since before his voice changed. If at some point Munson decides he’s had enough of Chavez (something Chavez can visualize with pinpoint detail), and if Zito never comes back, Chavez doesn’t think he’ll be into guys anymore. He’s never gonna have friends like these again in his life, never gonna feel like he shares blood with someone else.
A couple of days ago, deeply drunk, Chavez had explained to Munson that he kinda wanted Beane to break Zito’s heart so that Zito would come home, because Zito being gone was kinda breaking Chavez’s heart.
Munson, spectacular young man that he is, took it the way Chavez intended, and agreed that the world was indeed a dimmer place. Then he’d unbuttoned Chavez’s jeans and skimmed down his body and mostly disproved that, which only confused Chavez further.
Chavez reaches in through the open window and brushes some sand off Munson’s shoulder for no particular reason. He’s waited four years and he gets three months, but it’ll do. People live off idealized versions of the past all the time, and Munson will still be his best friend even if they play in different leagues, on different coasts. He’ll never be completely cut off, even if he never has this again.
He never thought he’d have a chance. Especially after lying ineptly to Munson for two years and taking advantage of Zito’s suspect moral code at the expense of his heart, that he should be rewarded for his behavior. He knows for sure he’s never done anything to deserve Munson telling him that he’s never loved anyone more.
But Munson does say that kinda stuff, and he makes out with Chavez for hours in front of the television on a Saturday afternoon, checks on Chavez across crowded rooms and doesn’t let him hit the floor when he passes out at the end of the night. He’s better than Chavez ever hoped, and Chavez has spent most of his adolescence hoping.
“Hey, um. What. Hmm.”
Chavez looks down and Munson is squinting at him, bemused. Chavez is pretty sure that Munson has been in the middle of a black-out since about midnight, and the thick glaze on his eyes seems to confirm it.
Snaking his arm in the window, Chavez presses his hand flat on Munson’s bare chest, his skin hot as sunned metal. “You’re all right.”
“Yeah.” Munson scoots up and pushes his head at Chavez’s side, sorta nuzzles against him. Still drunk, then. “Hello. I just woke up.”
Chavez extracts his arm from the window and tells Munson to scoot over, getting back in the car. Munson immediately crawls on top of him, stops for a moment in the shrunk-back light, his hands on Chavez’s shoulders and his knees to either side of Chavez’s hips.
Munson holds Chavez with his whole body, and what Chavez wants to say is: You are worth the rest of my life.
But his breath is gone, smothered against Munson’s shoulder, the rough side of his neck, and before he can pull himself back together, Munson’s asking: “Didn’t we. Wasn’t there something important?”
Thumbs locked on the curves of bone just under Munson’s shorts, hissing in air and pushing up into him, Chavez shakes his head. “Not till tomorrow. Today. Later.”
“What was it again?” Munson’s barely paying attention, starting to move on Chavez slow and hard, making Chavez’s thoughts shatter, abruptly forgetting that there’s such a thing as baseball.
He wraps his arms around Munson’s waist, scratch of sand on his skin, and grins up at him, Munson who smells like the ocean right now and does everything perfectly.
“Don’t worry about it, man,” Chavez tells him, his voice breaking like when he was thirteen and all he could think about was his best friend. “Leave it to me, okay?”
Munson ducks his head down and misses Chavez’s mouth in the dark, the sting of teeth on the edge of his jaw like a match burn. There will be a mark there in the morning, and Chavez will press his fingers against it while he’s waiting to be drafted, bring back enough of this moment to get him through that one.
“Ricky, shit,” Munson mumbles, messy starlit grin on his face. “You know what you do to me?”
Chavez smiles, licks Munson’s throat and doesn’t answer.
THE END