Extra Innings - 12. Chapter 12

I woke up in the morning feeling sore. It was before classes had started, so I was surprised when Vincente was still in bed. I checked the time and it was seven in the morning. I woke him up and headed to the shower to get myself ready for my own classes. I had English in the morning with Bryce today, I wasn’t looking forward to seeing him so soon, and didn’t want him to think that I was going to let last night slide. He owed me a conversation, one that we desperately needed to have.

English wasn’t for another few hours, so I took my time showering and getting dressed. The hot water rushing down my back felt good, and I don’t think anyone noticed that I was limping slightly. Maybe I wasn’t. I didn’t feel like I was. When I was washing myself, I looked over both my shoulders to make sure that no one was watching, and then quickly washed over my rosebud to see if there was anything different about it. It seemed to be okay, which was a relief to me.

Once I finished showering I got dried and changed, not really paying much attention to the chaos of the shower area and all the people with morning classes rushing to try and find a towel or a hair dryer they could use. I smiled to myself, thinking that normally I was doing the same thing, just a couple hours later than they did. I waved as I saw Vincente pass me by, heading to the showers. He looked frantic about having overslept, he must really enjoy that first course he took in the morning. That or he was failing it and needed to show up to fix things.

I didn’t have to worry too much about getting into the breakfast rush either, so I tried to enjoy the walk down to the dining hall to get whatever today’s breakfast was going to be. Today the best thing on the menu looked like the oatmeal, so I grabbed a tray and a bowl, along with a bran muffin and a glass of orange juice. I knew how important it was for me to maintain my healthy diet, since that was going to help me gain muscle mass and cement my position on the team.

I ate my breakfast and returned to my now-empty dorm. I didn’t get much of an indication about how Vincente was doing, and that worried me because the last time he’d seen me he freaked out about me being queer. I knew that I’d have to talk to him about that sooner than later, since we were both back in town and having to share the space again, even if we didn’t see each other all that much. Maybe tonight after practice I’d be able to find some time to see him and get it addressed.

I changed into some looser fitting jeans that didn’t constrict my movement much, packed a change of clothes for my fitness class and grabbed the books I’d need for English and my other courses.

I swung my backpack on and headed back out towards Maxey Hall for my English class. When I got there, Bryce and the baseball guys were all sitting together, and I saw Vincente already writing something for class on the other side of the room. I didn’t want to sit with any of them today, so I took an empty seat at the front of the class and took some notes on different kinds of ways to start a narrative or fiction piece, and then took out the essay that I’d been working on during the Thanskgiving break. I didn’t know the girl that I was sitting next to, but we were told to swap essays and see what we could pick out from the other person’s writing that was wrong or problematic.

Looking at the girl’s writing, the first thing I did was check to see about her name. Amelia. Good, now I had something I could call her instead of saying “you there”. Amelia’s writing was flawless. I was looking for sentence structure problems or grammar issues, and it looked like she’d been writing for years and was a professional, based on what she’d written on this essay.

Even the content of the writing seemed to be flawless. Her argumentation was pointed and followed a predictable sequence, all of it being fully supplemented and supported by proof, which she supplied in her footnotes and bibliography. When it came time to swap back and discuss what we’d found with the other’s essay, I decided to go first.

“Amelia, your writing is already so strong, there’s almost nothing I can comment on that is a problem. Your grammar and sentence structure are fantastic, and the structure of your arguments is really easy to follow, it’s almost like you’re following a formula with your argument structure.

I thought that my critique would please her, but she seemed quite distraught about my views towards her argument structure. I didn’t get it, so I asked what was wrong.

“Predictable? You said I’m predictable? That’s awful, I can’t believe that I’ve been creating something that’s so pedestrian that it can be considered predictable. I’m never going to get that A now that you’ve pointed that out. The professor must wonder why I’m even bothering.” Amelia ranted at me.

I didn’t know what to say, so I held out the essay and watched her snatch it back from me. She grabbed her stuff and left without a word to me about my own essay, which she left on the table. I picked it up, the whole essay was covered in red marks and things that she’d circled, crossed out or otherwise changed, with her changes being made in super tiny script along the margins.

I read over the remarks, or as much of them as I was able to read, and then at the end of the period I asked my professor for help deciphering the rest of the commentary. She noted that Amelia should have done it herself, but did help figure out what everything said and re-wrote it at the bottom of my essay so I could study the notes and prepare for the final draft, to be written before the end of term exam in a few weeks.

I tried to look for Vincente so we could talk on the way to our sports class, but as usual he was gone and I couldn’t find him. Because it was near the end of term, we were supposed to meet with the partners we created our original workout list with and discuss with them how we’d been doing on following those outlines, and then to go weigh in and see if we had gotten much stronger or more flexible over the term.

I was pleased to hear from Teresa that her stamina has improved a lot and that she didn’t have nearly as many problems with her swimming as she did earlier in the term. I could tell just by looking that she’d increased muscle tone and when we stepped up to different fitness machines to test her out, she had increased the amount of weight she was lifting at every machine in the gym. She seemed pleased with her progress and with me for giving her that plan to work with.

When it was my turn to check things out, I already knew that the plan that was given to me hadn’t worked because Coach had me switch to something else entirely. I had talked to the instructor about this and she said that was fine, and to explain it to Teresa today.

“Teresa, thanks for giving me all the stuff that you did at the beginning of term, but like you, I’m on one of the school teams and Coach Finnegan put me on the same workout schedule as the rest of the team. I’m sorry, I wasn’t able to do the sets you’d created for me. I hope you understand it wasn’t personal.”

Teresa shook her head softly, and I was afraid that I’d hurt her feelings over something that I couldn’t control.

“He always did strike me as a bit of a hard-ass. I’m not surprised by that, even if I’m a bit disappointed that I did all that work for nothing. Did the professor say anything about it?”

“Oh yeah” I replied. “You’re not in trouble, and it won’t count against your mark, it’s not your fault that he did that after all.”

She laughed. “Then we got no problem. Sorry he took over like that.”

I laughed and we went back to checking my total weights that I was able to lift at each of the machines. We were able to finish early, so we were given permission to go running on the treadmills, since they were no longer being used by anyone in class. As we were running, I was listening to the rest of the class trying to figure things out, and I was surprised at how complicated everyone made each other’s workouts.

I was lucky that Teresa and I both had some knowledge of how our respective sports worked and what muscles were going to be necessary to work on, so we didn’t overcomplicate things for each other.

My attention kept wandering to Vincente, Bryce and Alex. Things were so complicated and it was hard to figure out what I was supposed to do. I couldn’t concentrate as well as before, and I was starting to catch myself thinking about plans for fixing those relationships instead of doing my school work.

At practice that night, I wasn’t able to get any of my pitches under control and Coach even pulled me aside to ask what my deal was. I couldn’t explain any of it to him, so I told him I was having some problems at home.

“Fix them, Williams. You’re in college now, you’re an adult, so act like one. Your family doesn’t live here, but you do. Time to live up to your own mistakes and decisions instead of passing them off. Now get out of here.” Coach Finnegan said.

I left the field and went to shower up. No one was there, and I got myself cleaned up in silence. When I returned to my dorm, there was no Vincente, so I tried to work on my papers. I had barely opened up my laptop before my mind started wandering back to the boys on my mind.

I shook my head and tried to get back to writing, but I couldn’t think of anything to write down. Instead, thoughts floated through my mind about what I’d be doing to try and make Alex forgive me. Or how to get Bryce to have a real conversation with me, or how to make Vincente acknowledge that I was even still in the same campus as he was. I couldn’t believe how little time Vincente was spending around me, even though we had classes together and were roommates. There had to be something I could do to get through to him.

But not tonight. I stifled a yawn and quickly changed into something more comfortable to sleep in, before collapsing onto my bed and pulling myself under the covers. I was so tired that I didn’t think of anything anymore, and quickly drifted off to sleep.

The next few days were a haze to me, with my classes, homework and baseball practices blurring together. I didn’t see much of Vincente, and I couldn’t get my mind off of Bryce and Alex. Thankfully, Bryce wasn’t trying to do anything further with me, but he wasn’t giving me any space to talk to him either. It felt like he was setting me adrift right now, and I hated that things were falling apart with him as well.

Friday night after class I was sitting in my room alone, trying to work on my paper. I couldn’t figure out the words I wanted to use to edit my paper and have it ready for the end of term. We had been working on these different styles of essays for the last few months, and while I could feel that I was close on the grammar, I couldn’t change the sentence structure and my word choices without it feeling awkward to me.

I heard the door open and turned to see Vincente coming in. He threw his school bag onto his bed, and I was surprised that he was being so rough with his stuff. I didn’t see him with a laptop, but I assumed he had one to write all of his papers with. I stood up and looked at him, stopping him from laying with his bag.

“We need to talk. You’ve been ignoring me since before Thanksgiving, Vincente.”

He crossed his arms and looked over at me.

“Ain’t nothing to talk about, you are what you are.” He said. “Don’t mean I gotta like it, but you’re still my roomie and you don’t seem like you’re tryna jump me. Maybe you’re still okay. At least you weren’t the one taking it, could give you some credit for being the one giving it to that jock guy. You’re all teammates, right? Shit, I wonder if your team knows you’ve been giving it to him.”

“Nobody knows. You’re not even supposed to know. How did you find out anyways? Were you the one that ran away from the locker room before Thanksgiving break?”

I walked over to my own bed and sat down, giving Vincente a chance to sit down as well.

“Yup dude, that was me. Surprised you didn’t hear me before that. Or actually, no, I’m not all that surprised. I probably coulda knocked you guys over before you noticed I was there.”

I groaned. “Great. Nice to know we’re so easy to catch. You gonna tell anyone?”

“Naw man. Don’t have to. What’s the point, you guys are gonna broadcast it to the world anyways at this rate. If you keep up like that we’re all going to figure it out by checking to see who’s limping the next day.” He laughed.

“So how come you’ve been ignoring me for the last two weeks? That hasn’t been cool man.”

“Dude. Devin. You’re the first queer I’ve met. You gotta ask me? This is weird for me, I was taught you’d be trying to fuck me or something any chance you got. You didn’t do that though so I got confused.”

I couldn’t think of anything to do in reaction to that, so I laughed. Hard. Pretty soon I couldn’t stop laughing and I could see Vincente was glaring at me, which only made me laugh harder. Soon enough he started to laugh as well, and we were both laughing at the lunacy of everything that’d been going on, or rather what’s not going on, between us for the last couple weeks.

“Aw man, I guess it is pretty funny. You had all that time when I didn’t know, when you could do something and you didn’t. Probably means it’s not happening now that I got my eye on you, eh Devin?”

“Yeah, you’re fine dude. No need to worry about me. Think you figured out why as well.” I said, laughing about him catching me.

Vincente stood up and wrapped me in a tight hug.

“Alright, so now that we’ve got all the queer shit out of the way.” He said, as I flinched at the word choice. “Oh right, sorry man. So anyway, what’s up? You been kicking around here like someone died for the last week, what’s going on?”

“Not sure you wanna talk about it with me actually Vincente, you won’t like the subject material, and I’m convinced that there’s nothing I can do about it anyways.”

He groaned. Must have been something he had to deal with before because he didn’t sound thrilled with my excuses.

“How about you tell me, and then I’ll decide if I regret asking. Devin dude, you gotta relax a whole lot more. you’re gonna hurt yourself something awful at this point.” He said.

I sighed and decided he wasn’t going to let this go.

“Fine, have it your way. I got dumped by my boyfriend back home because I told him that I cheated on him with the guy you saw me with. That wasn’t the first time I’d done anything with him, and the guy back home predictably got upset about it. Now the guy I was with isn’t talking to me because I got pissed at him for what’s going on, and I can’t figure out how to fix anything that’s happened.”

Vincente whistled low and fell backwards onto his bed.

“You were right, I do regret you telling me about this. Man, you fucked up real good didn’t you.”

“I already know that, thanks.” I replied, not bothering to hide my frustration.

“Hey man, don’t get on my case, I’m not the one that fucked up.” Placing special emphasis on the fucked part of the sentence to remind me of what was going on.

“Alright, it’s a sore point still okay? What do I do, or what would you do?”

He laughed, though not unkindly. “Dude. Nothing you can do. Things have already gone to hell with your other boy, and you got one here that seems into you. Or you were into him anyways. Gotta move on and make the best of it aned see if you can find a way to fix it some other time in your life.”

“That’s it?” I asked incredulously. “Give up and move on? What good would that do me?”

“It won’t do you any good Devin, but there’s nothing you can do. No matter what you think, you can’t go back in time and fix the mistakes you made, and you can’t change that part of your past. The only guy who can decide to forgive you and fix your problem is this boy of yours. Nothing you do is going to help, and it’s probably gonna make things worse instead.”

He was right, I think. I knew Alex pretty well. Me trying to go back and talk to him was going to make him put up more barriers. He needed time to process things and think about them, analyze the situation a bit more before he could come up with a conclusion for what to do. I knew my being around or trying to interfere wouldn’t help his thought process. All it would likely do is remind him of the bad stuff I’ve done and make him less likely to forgive me.