The Quarterback's Crush Page 8

  “Let’s find out if he’s talked about a specific girl. Find out if he’s talked about crushes. See if he’s dated anyone.” Riley held up his hands for attention. “Seriously, guys. I can’t say this enough. Until we get confirmation, we can’t move on to phase two.” Jonny held up his hand and Riley pointed to him. “Question?”

  Jonny shook his head. “Not really. I was going to say that I don’t think he’s dated anyone.”

  “He hasn’t,” I said quickly. Riley looked at me, curious. “He told me he’s never kissed anyone.”

  “You’re just telling us this now?” Okay, Riley wasn’t angry, but he was definitely annoyed with me. “Okay, so,” he turned to the Big Gay Board. “No dating history. Steven, Chad, we still have to know about crushes.” Jonny put his hand in the air again. “Yeah?”

  “Um, we don’t have any rules about dating Tommy’s friends, right?” He shrugged. “Like, I could ask out Allie, right?”

  Riley thought about it for a minute. “Yeah. I can’t see any problems with that. You guys?” Everyone shrugged.

  “That’d be awesome,” DeShawn said. “You guys could all hang together. I mean, unless….”

  Jonny sat up straight and almost dropped all his fries on the floor. “Unless?”

  DeShawn looked right at Jonny, then me, and then Riley. “What if Allie likes him? What if he’s gay and she doesn’t know and she likes him?”

  Steven thought for a second. “So what if she likes him? Does that matter?”

  “Okay,” Riley said. “I totally didn’t think about that.”

  I suddenly got a little chill. What if Allie did like him? What if she was his version of Hannah? Worse, what if he felt some sort of loyalty to her that he didn’t have to me?

  THE NEXT morning Riley, Jonny, and I were crossing the parking lot, when Jonny saw Allie. He called out to her and she stopped, one foot on the steps, one on the sidewalk.

  “Hey, Allie. It’s me, Jonny.” He smiled the same smile I saw whenever he wanted to charm a cheerleader.

  She shook her head. “Who?”

  His smiled faded. “Um, Jonny? We met yesterday when I borrowed Tommy’s notes from physics.”

  She shook her head again. “Nope. Sorry. Doesn’t ring a bell.” She started back up the steps and he ran to stand in front of her.

  “Seriously?” He scratched the back of his head. “I borrowed his notes and I asked you two if….” He looked at her and she was grinning at him. “Right. You’re playing me.” He pointed at his chest. “Great with numbers. Other stuff, only slightly above average.”

  She moved to get past him and he turned to walk beside her, following her up the steps. Riley elbowed me and jerked his head in their direction. He clearly wanted to see what was going to happen.

  “I was just wondering,” Jonny said, holding the door open for Allie. She walked inside, and Jonny followed fast, almost closing the door right in Riley’s face. “I was just wondering if you’d like to go out on Saturday? A movie? Or dinner? We could do both if you want. Whatever works best for you.”

  “Why?” Allie yanked her locker open, and Riley and I were standing close enough that we could see a postcard of Einstein taped to the door. There was someone else too, but I didn’t know who it was. (Later on, Allie told me it was some guy named Tesla. I’m pretty sure she was playing with me, though, because that’s a band from when my dad was younger.)

  Jonny looked like he was about to try that smile again, but gave up because it had already failed once. “I happen to think you’re really funny and smart, and I’d like to get to know you better. That’s why.”

  “No, Jonny.” She almost giggled and slammed her locker door shut. “I meant, why would I go out with you?” She turned on her heel and walked to her homeroom.

  Even Riley didn’t laugh at that one, and I actually flinched. Jonny turned around and looked at the two of us. “I might marry that girl.” He took off down the hall after her, almost skipping.

  Riley grabbed my arm and dragged me the opposite direction toward our homeroom. “If being in love makes you two such morons, I think I’ll skip it and just get laid.”

  We made it to homeroom right before the bell rang.

  LUNCH WAS not awkward at all. Nope. Not even when Jonny dragged Riley and me over to Tommy and Allie’s table. Riley arranged it, so I was sitting next to Tommy and Jonny sat down next to Allie. Riley managed to keep up the conversation pretty much by himself for ten minutes, until, finally, Jonny told him to shut up.

  “So,” Jonny said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a folded piece of paper. “I came up with this list of reasons for you to go out on a date with me, Allie.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and reached for a grape from her lunch bag. She motioned with her hand for him to keep going. “Okay, there’s two columns. I’ll start with this one. You should go on a date with me because I’m smart and funny. You should go on a date with me because I’m a gentleman and I’d pay. You should go on a date with me because I promise that we can do whatever you want to do. You should go out with me because I don’t smoke or drink. I don’t do drugs. I go to church with my parents every Sunday, but I still ask questions about doctrine and faith. You should go out with me because I think you’re pretty and I bet you could teach me a lot about music. You should go out with me because I think that you should get to know me before you reject me.” He paused and sucked in a deep breath while Allie kept eating grapes and staring at him with a smile on her face. “So, I wrote down a few other things, but realized they were mostly repetition of the stuff I already mentioned. Now, Allie, would you please go out on a date with me on Saturday night after the game?”

  Her expression changed from amused to serious and she started gathering up all her trash. Jonny’s face got more and more freaked out with every second. He was definitely not used to having a girl turn him down. For a second I wondered if I looked as sad as he did whenever I almost got up the courage to ask Tommy out but failed. Jonny’s shoulders seemed to slump almost to his waist when Allie stood up. “Sure. Why not?”

  “What?” He perked up immediately and was grinning ear to ear. “Seriously?”

  “Sure.” She stood up, and Tommy went around to her side of the table. “I would have gone anyway. I just wanted to see how hard you’d work for it.” She walked away and didn’t look back as she and Tommy walked out of the cafeteria. Tommy did wave as they left, though.

  Jonny looked over at us, with a big, dumb grin on his face. “Dudes, I think I’m in love.”

  Chad grabbed me as we left the cafeteria. “So, good news, bad news kind of thing, dude.” He looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was listening. “Tommy was talking to Rick. He does like someone, but he won’t tell Rick who it is. What he did tell Rick, though, was that this person was out of his league.”

  “Wait,” Riley said. “Did he say ‘she’ was out of his league?”

  “According to Rick, Tommy said ‘they.’”

  Jonny patted my shoulder. “That’s good, right? If it was a girl he would have said ‘she.’ Right? I mean guys always say ‘they’ and not ‘he’ when they don’t want to come out.”

  Chad shot Jonny a look. “How do you know that?”

  Jonny rolled his eyes. “Everyone knows that, Chad. And stop looking at me like I’m about to come out.”

  Riley, who somehow ended up being the calm and reasonable one, said “Okay, guys. This is good news. I’ll add it to the board.” He nodded slowly. “Let’s go ahead with Phase Two of BGL. Time to get this man”—he gestured to me—“a date.”

  HOW I’M STILL TALKING WITHOUT THINKING

  THIS WAS it. The big homecoming game. It was a clear, not really cold, not really warm October day, and the sun was shining. Usually our games were Friday nights, but the other team was too far away to make it after school, so we always played them on a Saturday. We were going up against Lakeview, the high school that we’d beaten only once before. Last year, when I became the
starting quarterback. The tension in the locker room wasn’t quite as bad as I thought it’d be. We were a team, we were one unit. Practice the last week had been sick. It was like we were almost reading one another’s minds.

  By the time we hit the field, we were pumped and ready. I knew it was going to be a good game, because when my feet hit the grass, I looked up and saw my dad. Right in the front row on the fifty-yard line. Sitting there on a Saturday afternoon. I’m not sure what I’d done that made him take the day off. Maybe he knew how much this particular game meant to me. And the reason it meant so much to me was sitting right next to Dad. Tommy was sitting there. Looking incredibly uncomfortable, but he was there, and I could see him talking now and then to Dad. Allie was sitting next to Tommy and Jonny jogged over to talk to her for a second before joining the rest of us on the field. We didn’t have a stadium, but we had lights, for our usual Friday night games, and Coach even let us set seats aside for family members during big games. I didn’t ever take advantage of it, because Dad hardly ever came, so when I did ask, Coach was happy to do it for me. Coach gave Tommy a special seat because Tommy told him how hard I was working.

  I smiled and waved at Tommy and my dad. They both waved back. Tommy didn’t look so awkward once he saw that I was actually going to acknowledge him when other people were around. Right behind Tommy were his chess buddies. Rick, and Robert, and Mouse all held up a sign that said, “Chess Club supports Football!” Kinda ridiculous, but really nice. I looked around to see Chad and Steven give the guys a thumbs-up.

  We started a few of our practice throws, warming up arms and shoulders and knees and all that. I was tossing the ball to DeShawn when there was some kind of yelling up in the stands. I looked up to see this guy I’d never seen before reach out and grab Tommy’s arm. He was old. Like my dad’s age old and he had the same walk as Tommy and I knew who it was before he even got to where he was going. Tommy’s dad. My dad was standing up, staring at the two of them, his hands in the air, like Mr. Peterson was going to hit him or Tommy or both. Allie looked down at her lap.

  “No. This is not acceptable!” I could hear Tommy’s dad all the way from the field. “You have your second ACTs next weekend. Your last scores were completely unacceptable!”

  “I’m sure,” my dad interrupted, “that a two-hour game won’t be too much of a problem.”

  “Excuse me,” Mr. Peterson snapped at my dad, his voice getting louder. “Does this concern you? It does not. This is my son, and I don’t need interference.”

  Now everyone was staring. I could feel Riley jog up and stand next to me. “What the hell, dude?”

  “Beats me.” I took a few steps closer to see if I could figure out what was happening.

  “Let’s go, Thomas.” Mr. Peterson grabbed Tommy’s arm and pulled him to a standing position.

  “Dad, I want to see the game and support Dylan.” He leaned in toward his dad, but I couldn’t hear what he said after that.

  “This is ridiculous,” Tommy’s dad snapped and almost pushed Tommy up the stairs.

  And then I snapped too. I don’t really have any explanation for why I did what I did. I can only say I was really pissed. Which is why I took the football in my hand and launched it at Tommy’s dad. And I hit him. In the back. With a football. Yeah, like I said, not sure what the hell I was thinking. Of course, that doesn’t compare to what happened after it hit him.

  “What the hell?” Tommy’s dad dropped his arm and turned to look at the field.

  Riley was standing next to me and I knew, even without looking at anything but Tommy and his dad, that every single player on the field was looking at me.

  “Dylan!” It could have been my dad, or it could have been Coach McCarty. Or both.

  “Sorry,” I said, and I bet I didn’t look sorry at all. “Slipped.”

  “What the hell is your problem!” Tommy’s dad took a step toward the end of the bleachers and waved his finger at me.

  “Don’t yell at my son.” My dad kept his voice quiet and intense. He always stood up for me, so I wasn’t surprised, but I was always surprised at how scary his voice sounded when he was so quiet.

  “Your son clearly has some problems.”

  Till my dying day, I will swear that it was the finger-wagging that pushed me over the edge I already had one foot over. “My problem?” I shouted back at Mr. Peterson. “What is your problem, dude? You’re yelling at the smartest kid in the whole freaking school.” I dropped my helmet on the field and stepped toward him. If I’d stopped there, I might have been able to figure out how to cover it up, but I didn’t stop there. “Tommy is smart and funny and kind, and he wanted to come here today to support me. He came here today because I begged him to, because I wanted him to see the game, and I wanted him to see I’m actually good at something, because I’m in love with him.” I couldn’t hear anyone behind me, even though the whole team was on the field. I figured they were collectively holding their breath. “Yeah, that’s right,” I said as Tommy, his dad, and my dad all stared at me. “That’s right. I’m in love with you, Tommy. And I don’t care who knows it, and I don’t care how awkward it makes everything at school come Monday morning. I don’t care whether it means that your dad or my dad thinks that I’m a jerk or a queer or whatever the hell other word they want to use. I just—” And that’s when the reality of what I’d said hit me, and I started to stutter a bit. “—I just… I just want to date you. And go to the prom with you. And hold your hand and watch a romantic movie with you. And kiss you. I really, really want to kiss you.”

  I stopped talking and waited for him to say something. Instead he stared at me for about five seconds and then turned around and ran away. Allie ran right after him. It took a minute, but Mr. Peterson stormed after his son and my dad sank back in his seat, white as a ghost.

  I realized that everyone in the bleachers, all the players on both teams and, well, everyone there heard me and, later on, Jonny told me my entire face turned red.

  Riley clapped me hard on the back. “Dude. Bad way to score points by, you know, hitting his dad with a football. But major kudos on the most dramatic declaration of love and coming out ever! And now the whole second phase of BGL is complete. Just seal the deal, dude.”

  I am an ass.

  HERE’S THE reason we slaughtered Lakeview. Well, two reasons. First, since everyone was watching Tommy’s dad scream at him, no one saw me actually aim the ball at him. Well, Riley, but he was saying he didn’t see anything, so Coach McCarty couldn’t bench me. Here’s the other reason. Remember how, like five minutes ago, I was saying how much of a team we were? We were lined up across from Lakeview and Chad was about to hike the ball when the Lakeview center looked over Chad’s head right at me.

  “You like your hands on a man’s ass, faggot?”

  I stood up and stared at him but stayed silent.

  DeShawn stayed exactly where he was, and his voice, which was already the deepest voice on the team, dropped an octave (vocabulary word from last month). “What’d you just say?”

  “Why? Is the whole team queer?” I could see almost the whole Lakeview team laugh.

  “Shut up, Cody.” This was a new voice. Someone on the Lakeview team. Their offensive guard.

  Cody, the asshole, turned to his own teammate. “Shut up, Zach.” He turned back to me. “Ever played smear the queer?”

  “C’mon, man,” Chad said to me. “Don’t let him get to you.”

  I leaned back down, squatting behind Chad, careful not to touch him. “He won’t.”

  “Damn right he won’t.” This was DeShawn again.

  See, here’s the thing. I’m a pretty big guy. A hair over six foot and just shy of two hundred pounds. DeShawn is bigger than me. I sure as hell wouldn’t want him mad at me, but he wasn’t, so I didn’t think about it. I saw him and Jonny exchange looks.

  I called it out and Chad hiked me the ball. DeShawn and Jonny ignored the play we had planned out and both went after Cody. The two of them barreled
right into him, and Cody yelped in pain. I’m not going to lie. I smiled for about two seconds while I looked for an open receiver and saw Riley heading down the field. I tossed him the ball and watched my teammates take down the guys from Lakefield. The only Lakeview player who didn’t get flattened was Zach.

  We won the game 21 to 7.

  THE REST of the guys went over to Riley’s and wanted to celebrate, but I begged off. Jonny asked me if Tommy and I wanted to double date with him and Allie, but I couldn’t be around anyone. I hadn’t technically asked him out on a date. Just told him I wanted to date him. Plus, there was no way I could ever repay the team for standing up to the guys from Lakeview for me like they did, and there was sure as hell no way I could sit around and celebrate after making such a huge jerk of myself, so I went home and climbed out of my bedroom window. The porch roof was right outside my bedroom and I liked to come out and look at the stars. Riley and I used to come out and read Sports Illustrated and drink sodas and my mom would yell that she’d flatten us if we even thought about jumping off, which only made us want to jump. So we’d climb out to the edge and dangle our feet over the side and laugh like the idiots we were when we were kids. And, I guess, one of us still is. Me, that is, not Riley.

  I was sitting with my back against the wall looking at the lights in the house across the street when I heard a knock on my door. My dad came in without waiting for an answer, pulled my desk chair over to the window, sat down, and rested his arms on the windowsill.

  “Great game.” He sounded sad. Maybe more tired than sad, but I was pretty sure there was still some sadness there.

  “Thanks.”

  He paused, and I shifted so I could look at him. “So. Gay, huh?”

  “Yeah.” I wanted to feel upbeat and excited about him knowing, but I felt like crap at what happened and the way it happened. I should have told my dad at home. Where it was quiet and he could have poured himself a glass of wine or had a beer and asked me all the questions he wanted without having to deal with his only son coming out in front of everyone. “I’m sorry.”