burn for the last game of spring training
beginning
He drops you off at your house, and you drive around for a little while, industrial machinery and boxcars like busted toys clanking down the railroad tracks. You love the highways out here, brand-new and smooth as fresh paint, and from an overpass, the valley is laid out for you and you can see everything.
You think that if you go fast enough, the wind will naturally rub your mind clean, and there’s Haren with his hands inside your T-shirt and your T-shirt pulled over your head, so your hands were tied together with his, your wrists pressing flat to flat. You don’t think this place is meant to hold cities; the land itself seems to reject what’s been built. In your head, you keep a constant loop of Street saying, you’re my best friend, like maybe that memory can take the place of all the others.
You get to the ballpark late, a dumb hope that Haren will already be on the field and you won’t have to talk to him, but he’s right there, half-dressed in his uniform pants and undershirt. He’s on the couch by your locker, which you think is probably not intentional, because it’s the best couch.
Without looking at him, you put your stuff in your locker and take off your shirt and then just stare at the neat row of jerseys, dark green and yellow, missing the home whites. You can feel Haren’s eyes on you. You can feel him breathing slow and tracing your back, long muscle and the trench of your spine. Tension building up in your shoulders, you can feel him getting ready to say something, something crude and mean, something that will cut you down where it matters most.
You whirl, your heart in your mouth, big panicked eyes, biting off, “Would you please-”
But Haren’s not even there. You feel unimaginably stupid, and get dressed quickly, your hands fumbling with your belt. Out on the field it’s bright enough to hurt, and Haren is way out by the warning track, tossing a ball with Zito.
It doesn’t seem possible, but you go the whole game without interacting with him, opposite sides of the dugout, stealing looks at him as you crush your hat between your hands. He’s attached to Zito’s side, just like last year, and you’re a ghost in this light, see-through skin, windowpane eyes. He never looks your way, or maybe he’s just better at it.
You think without much hope that maybe Haren will take pity on you and keep this up, never mention it, forget it ever happened. Like, what’s a random blowjob between friends? It makes no sense to take it too personally, to turn it into an outlined nightmare that will wear away at your insides until you can’t keep yourself together anymore.
Because your luck is just that fucking bad, you’re in the equipment room looking for the neatsfoot oil and Haren comes in, his shoulders taking up the whole space of the doorway. He spots you, and you’re wrist-deep in baseballs, blinking back at him. Long pause.
“Hey.”
You swallow cautiously. “Hi.”
Haren is carrying his spikes, sock-footed on the cold cement, and one of his laces is snapped. He crosses behind you and starts rummaging around in a drawer. You are staring at his back and holding your breath.
“Rich, listen-”
You whip your head to the side, red fuzz bleeding over your eyes. “I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
He looks over at you, white and blue and patchy scruff on his cheeks. “Yeah, I think I figured that out.”
“So don’t. Don’t think it’s, like. It’s just being down here, that’s all.”
Haren makes a cynical little laughing noise. “Oh, is that all?”
You pull your hands free and fiddle with the laces of your glove, remembering the push of Haren’s breath on your stomach and his hands are so fucking big, you can feel them everywhere.
“You were drunk and I was drunk, so.”
“Well, bullshit, but whatever. Give me some fucking credit. That wasn’t your first time.”
You flinch, you hold on to your hard front. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
Haren shrugs. “Nothing.”
You’re quiet, watching each other. You’re noticing the draw of Haren’s cheekbones, the high wings of his eyebrows. Narrow-faced and all that wrecked hair, jagging around his ears, tucked under his shirt collar. The light is very low in here, and Danny Haren pressed you up against the side of the garage and kissed you like a dirty song. You can’t for the life of you forget.
“What are you gonna do?” you ask him, not liking the way your voice gives. He gives you a confused look.
“What do you mean?”
You move your hand indistinctly at the space between you. “Okay, so we did something stupid and now. It’s over, right?”
He lifts his eyebrows. “Yeah?”
You nod, trying to look more assured than you feel. “Yeah,” you reply, thinking idiotically, wham, bam, thank you dan.
He shakes his head, takes a step towards you. His mouth is thin and angry. “See, Richie, and this is where you’ve fucked it up. Because who said it was stupid and what’s keeping you from, from. Fuck. Hanging on like this, like someday you’ll get what you want, but Huston’s never-”
“Don’t.”
You’re taken aback by the power in your voice, and Haren is too, he goes still and his face warps. Your hands are shaking, wrenched in fists on your glove. The leather is soft and the broken laces are sliding across your knuckles. You count breaths.
“Whatever, man,” Haren says eventually, and then he’s walking out, rapping you hard upside the head with the broad side of his palm as he goes, and you listen to the hum in your ears and the scrubbed-raw feeling in your chest, your bones poking crookedly at your skin.
You go home alone and drink yourself blind. You're trying to avoid dreaming, but there’s nothing for it, and there’s a wicked highway with the sun in your eyes, huge cranes like crucifixes following you around.
The next day, it rains, for the first time in five months. It doesn’t fuck around. One full day of the windows shivering and your jeans are wet halfway up your shins, running through wide puddles. You go to the movies with Crosby and Melhuse once the game is rained out, see something utterly forgettable. Arcade games jitter spastically under your hands, you play Tetris and you’re better when you play it on your phone. It’s the desert and no one thought to build overhangs, and you hate everything today.
Street calls you that night and he meets up with you and the guys for dinner at a crummy little Mexican place by the highway. You’ve been thinking of plans of escape and the highway signs give you direction. Five hours from Los Angeles and that’s no good because everyone you’ve ever met is from Los Angeles. No point in running away to somewhere familiar.
Street has a smear of salt (actual salt this time, because Street doesn’t fall for the same trick twice and he tested it on the heel of his hand first) on the side of his mouth and you keep watch on that, re-orienting yourself around old habits.
Street is talking very fast about Roger Clemens and says nothing you didn’t already learn from ‘Sportscenter.’ You appreciate the rattle of his voice like pebbles in a coffee can, and Crosby is eating salsa with a fork and flirting with the waitress.
Street covers everything in hot sauce and you absently imagine what his mouth must taste like, fired and sticky-slick with Coke. Your heart stops when Danny Haren walks in, because he’ll come over and smirk at you and say something incontrovertible about the crash you survived two days ago, but you get a better look and it’s just some tall kid in a maroon and gold baseball cap, fitting himself awkwardly into the spaces between his friends.
In the parking lot, the rain has finally stopped, black shining on the wet pavement. You and Street stand face to face, he’s got his hands in his pockets and you’re in soaked shoes, feeling yourself get sick.
“So I’m leaving for Anaheim tomorrow night,” Street says, unwrapping a piece of cinnamon gum and popping it in his mouth.
“Gotta beat South Africa first,” you say, mostly by rote. He laughs.
“Yeah, okay. Think we got that one covered.”
“That’s what you said about Canada.” You’re very tired, shifting to hear your socks squish.
“You’ll be all right without me?”
You pause, a trickle of fear on your spine because what if Street somehow knows, what if Haren told him or Crosby saw something or maybe he just guessed, knowing you inside and out the way he does. What if he can see the fissures in your composure, the fault lines tracking maps in your heart?
But he’s just smiling, charm like his best pitch and you know that Street is your friend, you know this like you know it’s sixty feet and six from the rubber to the plate.
“Of course, man.” You show him a grin and believe that you are getting away with it. Crosby and Melhuse are arguing somewhere behind you, both of them talking on their cell phones.
Street turns his head slightly, squinting into the streetlight. “It’s weird. Not being around.”
You fold your shoulders inward. “Yeah.” It’s weird not having him around.
“I mean, it’s cool. This whole thing. Feels, like. Important.”
“Spring training’s important too,” you remind him, trying to remember the reasons you didn’t play for Canada, officially your shoulder but really just because you knew they’d lose.
“I know,” Street says, wide-eyed and honest. “Jeez, I know. I keep looking for you guys. Keep forgetting their names, like, it’s not right to be pitching with them behind me. I don’t know.”
You don’t know what to say. “You’re doing all right.”
Street sighs. “Yeah.” He looks sad for a moment, then visibly brushes it off and smiles again, shaking his head. Street irons his T-shirts, insane like that, and the creases slice down his upper arms, little peaks of fabric. “Anyway. Have a good week.”
Then he hugs you, because Huston Street doesn’t care who can see and he knows the right way to say goodbye. His hands are in fists on your back and you gasp silently into his shoulder, sweet-bright smell of cinnamon filling your head. Warm like yesterday when the sun beat down and the grass shriveled, and you hold onto him, tight senseless grip on his shirt, your nose pressed down against his neck.
He lets you go and hollers see ya at Crosby and Melhuse and it echoes across the parking lot. You watch him walk to his car with his head up, his keys spinning around his thumb. You check the sky for rain but there’s nothing up there. You leave your teammates behind, trusting them to find their own way home, and you ride without thought as to where you’ll end up.
You wake up and the sky has cleared like it’s never even heard of rain, and as you walk into the kitchen, you see a complicated blur ducking under the table, a thump of knees hitting the tile and then “MOTHERFUCKER!”
Bobby Crosby rolls out from under the table, clutching his shoulder and groaning dramatically. You look down at him, entirely confused.
“Cocksucking table, I’ll kill you!” Crosby howls, curling up in a ball.
“Um,” you say, praying for coffee.
Crosby glares at you with one eye, the other scrunched shut. “I was gonna jump out and scare you, but this fucking table,” kicking a chair halfway across a room, “has got fucking struts or some shit and now my shoulder is fucking broken.”
You crouch beside him, peeking under the table and seeing the wooden struts sticking out from the underside, hard square things jagging out.
“I think this is God trying to tell you to stop playing so many jokes,” you inform Crosby. He swears some more at you and checks his fingers for blood. You can imagine the bruise that is forming, deep plum-purple in the shape of a matchbook, stealing his ability to make the throw from the rim of the grass.
You get an apple out of the refrigerator and stand at the sink washing it, staring out the window at the pool deck and the glossy black trashbags leaning one against another, overflowing with bottles and paper plates. Your hands go numb under the flood of the water and Crosby is still making pained noises behind you, trying to get you to pay attention to him.
You find yourself daydreaming of South Africa beating the U.S. today, a six-billion-to-one shot the last time you checked Vegas, and Street showing up tomorrow in the clubhouse with thin red scratches on his arms and a burn of humiliation on his face.
“Rich,” Crosby says, having finally given up on trying to wring sympathy from you. You turn and he’s still holding his shoulder, his forearm cutting like a sash across his chest.
“What the fuck are you doing to that apple, man?”
You look down and your hands are ashy-blue, white half-moon nails digging into the water-softened skin of the apple, tearing it to pieces. You turn off the water and don’t bother to answer, throwing the apple away and going back upstairs, crawling back into bed and wishing that you’d never left.
When Crosby comes to tell you it’s time to go to the park, you answer that you’re sick, keeping the covers pulled over your head. He considers that, almost audibly.
“Sick or crazy?” he wants to know.
You bite the pillow as hard as you can. “Sick,” you say.
“Because you’ve been looking kinda crazy recently.”
Scream silently into the pillow and keep your voice even. “Just tell them, Bobby, okay?”
“Sure.” He pauses again. “You woulda been really scared if I’d come at you from under the table.”
“Yeah.”
You hear the door close and you are choking on cotton, down where your stomach feels like a clenched fist and you can’t make the pictures behind your eyes stop, cluttered like a rearview mirror.
You manage to sleep for most of the day, waking up with the surface of your skin iced with sweat from being under the blankets in the full light of day. You are sick, that wasn’t a lie. You have a fever or schizophrenia or mono or something like that. You wouldn’t have fucked around with Danny Haren in your right mind-of that you’re certain.
You get up at dusk, wandering around the house without turning the lights on. There’s stale bread for toast and Reese’s peanut butter that is so sweet it hurts your teeth. You’ve got ‘O Canada’ stuck in your head and you don’t want to find out how the South Africa game went, but college basketball is the only thing on and eventually the score scrolls by at the bottom of the screen. Street is on a plane to California and you are thinking about how everything is expanding.
Zito texts you, ‘come 2 the bar with us, punk,’ but sick is sick and rule number one is no going to a bar. You lie on the couch and think about how your team sucks and being gay sucks and living in Phoenix, with the coarse air and the black-and-white signs that tell the future, sucks most of all.
It’s pure night and you go to take the trash out, figuring that you might as well be helpfully insane. And Haren is sitting on your porch, his knees folded up and his hands tucked under his arms.
You close your eyes and promise yourself that when you look again, he’ll be gone. You don’t know why you think that will work.
“Dude,” Haren says.
You make your shoulders go stiff and take the trash down to the curb, jamming it deep in the bin. You rest your hands on the hard blue plastic and there are stars heavy on your shoulders, a black hole in your mind.
You walk back up the path and stop in front of him. “What?”
He looks like he wants to stand but can’t quite figure out if that’s the right thing. “You can’t miss games, Rich.”
You roll your eyes, because it’s just spring training. It’s not like the World Baseball Classic or something. “Sure I can. I wasn’t pitching. I. I’m sick.”
“You are not. You’re just, like. Guy who avoids everything.”
Glaring at him, you notice uncharitably the way his hair sticks to his forehead, black spiderweb hanks knotted around his ears. “I’m allowed to get sick, goddamn it.”
Haren’s face is tilted upwards and your shadow, backlit by the streetlights, is fallen atop him, cold gray on half his face and the other half all blue-eyed and the trace of his jaw.
“What’s going on with you? Why are you taking it so hard?” He jerks his head to the side. “You don’t want to do it again, fine, we won’t. But, like, you’re barely even acknowledging. And since when do you miss games?”
You used to miss games all the time. You used to fake stomachaches and leave baseball practice an hour early so that you could meet your friends on the high school’s clay tennis courts and play street hockey until the parking lot lights came on. You were never really meant for this.
“Look, I just needed a day, okay,” you say, feeling ill-fit into your skin, a scratch at the base of your spine and somehow you are watching Haren’s mouth like it’s got secrets to tell.
“It’s been three days,” he reminds you.
“Not because of you. You’re, you’re not the only thing that’s happening to me right now.”
It’s possible that that’s a lie. It’s possible that Haren kissing you against the garage had set into motion a fall of dominos, he knocked you over and you took everyone down with you. Haren is a bad kind of catalyst, he sends up thick smoke and your eyes are burning.
Haren stands, rising up out of your shadow, the curve of your shoulder on his chest, the throw-back of his body on the front door. “So he left, then?”
You breathe out and the moon is full or at least near-to, peeking out from behind the chimney like hide-and-go-seek.
“Only for a week.”
“Week’s a long time.”
“It’s really not, Dan.”
You glance at him and he’s scowling at you, fists in his pockets. “I don’t get why you’re so fucking gone on him when you got no shot.”
You shake your head, you think, everyone’s got a shot, and anyway, Haren doesn’t know what he’s talking about. There is something in Huston Street, notches like the teeth of a key, a match for the uneven ridges inside that you keep so carefully guarded. You’ve never pulled for underdogs and you don’t believe that being ten runs down in the bottom of the ninth is surmountable. You have no faith in the improbable, but you have faith in this, that someday Street will light you up and put his hands in your pockets and snap your pieces into place.
“Did you come over here for, like, a reason?” you ask, wanting to be mad at him but mainly just exhausted.
He exhales and his shoulders fall. He pushes a hand through his hair and answers, “I thought maybe. Since he’s not around anymore. You might wanna still . . .”
He trails off and you have to laugh, feeling your eyes slice cold and sharp.
“I don’t get why you’re so fucking gone on me when you got no shot,” you say cruelly.
Haren’s face is slack with shock for a moment, quick paper-cut anger, and then he is taking handfuls of your shirt and pulling you in. You should have known he would take it as a challenge, because that bleeds out of him as red as anything, and you’re afraid he’s gonna hit you, not fair because he’s about twice your size and he knows you won’t back down.
You fist your hands on his hips and slam your head into his shoulder and he honest-to-god growls, shoves you up against the porch’s wooden beam, and then kisses you with splinters in your back and your teeth cracking painfully into his.
You panic, rake your head to the side with a gasp and Haren bites your ear and opens his hands on your chest and your lungs contract. Your eyes are shut tight enough to sting and your heart is moving so swiftly.
“Danny, fuck,” you say, and he is blocking out all the light. You are in front of your house where the whole world can see you, and you know that this is what you’ve been given, and even if you don’t want it, that doesn’t mean it isn’t yours. It was a mistake the first time and nothing has changed, but you always have to be shown twice. You tip your head up and you are astonished to find yourself kissing him back. You’re at a loss.
That goes on for awhile. His knees are clocking into yours, because he’s got to sort of slouch to be on your level. His fingers wind in your shirt, his hair getting in your eyes and making them water. You search for the taste of cinnamon gum, but Haren is Altoids and the bitter aftertaste of chewed-up aspirin, his tongue in your mouth and slivers of wood and paint itching down your back.
Haren pulls away and you’re punch-drunk, stupid with it, half-hard already and trying to catch your breath as he takes you inside, upstairs, flat on the bed and you are watching him take off his shirt by the light of the moon and the blue glow of your computer screen. He looks paler like this, like maybe he’s the one who’s sick.
He grins at you and crawls on top, short work of your jeans and your shirt is drawn most of the way off, torn on his wristwatch and it’s so strange. It’s not your fault that you’re gay and not your fault that Haren is, whatever the fuck he is, not your fault that Street is almost certainly not, not your fault that Canada lost in the first round, because you couldn’t leave your team.
Haren kisses you until you don’t care that your leg is hooked over his shoulder. You feel your heel skidding on his back and you are bent almost double, long stretch in your stomach and shoulders and you reach back for the edge of the bed, something to hold onto as Haren mumbles incoherently into your neck. He goes slow at first, though you’re unsure if that’s intentional. He has to remind you to breathe.
You let it happen. You take part, hiking your hips and digging your teeth into Haren’s arm. You are stone-cold sober and afire, you are throwing off sparks. Haren fucks you, strong from a month of spring training, roughed up and careful not to rest his weight on your bad shoulder, though he licks the healed surgical scar over and over again, until you are certain that it will not be there come morning.
He falls asleep right after, and you are left jittery as hell, raw on the inside. You can’t think straight, all messed up with scratches on your chest and a helpless, overwhelming desire to drive west, let the sun rise in your rearview mirror and white-out the back windshield.
You get up on shaking legs and put your boxers back on because fuck if you’ll wake up naked next to Dan Haren again, and you get your phone and lean next to the window, crazy heartbeat and it takes you three tries to find Street’s number in your contacts.
He picks up just before it goes to voicemail, staticked and muffled, “’lo?”
You close your eyes, picturing him shirtless and wrapped up in hotel blankets. “Hi.”
“Mm. ‘s late, Richie.”
“Sorry. Just. How’s Anaheim?”
“It’s okay. You drunk?” You can hear him half-smiling, making something ache inside you.
“No. Just awake, that’s all.” You stare out at the shuttered neighborhood, gnarled desert brush and cacti instead of flowers. Impossible kind of place, Phoenix in the spring. “You guys feeling pretty good about Japan?”
“Sure.” He yawns, his jaw popping audibly. “Fear nothing, you know.”
You cover your face with your hand, teeth strict on the lines of your fortune. You can’t keep going like this, it’s gonna kill you. Huston Street owes you something; your peace of mind and the steadiness of your hands depend on him. He has to understand that he can’t leave you anymore.
“Listen, when you get back, we gotta talk.”
Street is quiet for a moment, then asks, a little more awake, “’Bout what?”
“Oh. Nothing. Just got some stuff to tell you.”
He rustles and you imagine him scratching his stomach, rolling his head on the pillow. “’Kay. Whatever you need, man.”
You curse him, you press your fingertips into the hollow of your eye and there’s no doubt in your mind that you will get this wrong, you will ruin it, never ever be okay with that.
“I’ll see you next week, Huston.”
“Yeah, Richie, get some sleep.” He hums rustily and then disconnects, and you wait for the dial tone for way too long before remembering that there’s no such thing on cell phones.
You slowly close your phone, look over and Danny Haren is watching you from the bed, his mouth bruised and his eyes flooded. You make a bad smile and climb back in. It’s dead silent and you feel Haren turning towards you, wait for him to say something but no luck. You lock your gaze on the ceiling and fall asleep with his hand on your stomach, nothing else between you.
THE END
Notes: Reports are that Harden went to all the Canada games. Which means he was at the game I was at, joy! But, um, ignore that for the purposes here.
Did I write and rewrite this in order to use more pictures? Yeah. Did I still manage not to find a way to work in the porn store/laundry sign and the spooky water towers? Alas, yes.
Observe them for yourself, if you dare