Extra Innings - 13. Chapter 13

I was in a rush, as usual these days. My baseball bag smacked into my back each time I took a step, and I was breathing hard on my way to the stadium. I lost track of time trying to get through the paper that I had been working on. After talking to Vincente last night, everything seemed a bit more under control in my mind, or I was at least not as worried about trying to figure out what to do. Of course, that meant that I could finally start focusing on my school work again, so I ended up spending most of my Saturday in front of my computer, making revisions to papers and panicking about upcoming deadlines.

On the one hand, I did get a lot done and I wasn’t as worried about my school stuff as I was a few days ago, but on the other hand, I really wanted to get something resolved with Alex and with Bryce. Nothing to really do about Alex right now though, maybe during the Christmas Break he’ll have had some time to think about things and we can have a conversation without getting too mad at each other. But Bryce… I’ve seen him all week and it doesn’t seem like he’s going to talk to me, I think that means I’m going to have to be the one to start the conversation. What a thrill that’s going to be.

But right now, it wasn’t on my mind at all. The only thing I was thinking about was how many extra laps around the stadium I was going to have to run if I was late showing up to practice, and how much I was going to hate doing any of those laps. I was getting tired and my back was getting sore from the repeated impacts against it, and I tried desperately to think of any shortcuts I could take to shorten the time.

I saw a couple of people ahead of me in the direction I was running, so I called out to them.

“Guys, what time is it?”

The one closest to me answered back. “Quarter to five. You in a rush or something?” The guy next to him started laughing, even though it was really obvious I was in a rush.

Jerks. It’s just a question, don’t have to be stupid about answering me.

I kept running and got to the stadium a few minutes later, rushing into the changeroom so that I could slip out of my street clothes and into my uniform. Coach liked to have us practice in full uniform because we were a school team, and we should look like it when we were doing team activities. This was a lot different from Colfax as well, where people usually showed up wearing their street clothes and some cleats, and that’s all they wore for practice. I sort of liked it that we all wore our uniforms. It meant we had to do some more laundry, but we started to gel as a team a lot more easily because we were obviously part of the same team.

More than that, I wasn’t as worried about doing anything related to baseball in my uniform, because I knew the clothes were designed for things like sliding into bases and diving across parts of the field to make plays. I didn’t have to worry as much about ripping my clothes.

I dashed out onto the grounds of the stadium just as Coach and the rest of the staff were coming out of the other dugout. I made it just in time, but anyone could tell that I hadn’t been waiting there for a while like the rest of the guys. Bryce gave me a nod, acknowledging that I’d made it.

When Coach and the assistants reached us, the rest of the team stood up.

“Alright boys, everyone go on a run, two laps around the field.” He took a look at us all and his eyes lingered over me. “Everyone except Williams here, looks like he already went on a marathon. Williams, you stay here a moment.”

Everyone laughed at me and started their run, and I heard a few of them wondering why I was being kept behind. I was curious too, was Coach going to get mad at me?

I stood in front of the staff, waiting for something to happen. All three of the coaches had their arms folded across their chests, staring expressionlessly at me.

Then Coach started laughing. “I take it you were late getting here, Williams? Looks like you already did more than your share of sprinting today.”

“Yes sir.” I replied, still not looking right at the Coach.

“Don’t make a habit of it. Now go catch up to the team, you got the same run as the rest of them.” Coach said.

I sprinted to try and catch up to the rest of the team, as they were already halfway around the field for their first lap. When I caught up to them, a few of the returning players smirked at me, sure that they knew what had happened in the short time I’d been away.

“Having fun there Devin? Sure looked like Coach had a few things to say, hope he didn’t ream you out too badly.” Enrique asked, looking concerned.

Grady laughed and explained to the rest of us new players. “Relax, he’s fine. Coach always acts all tough when someone’s late, but he never gets too mad. Doesn’t have to, everyone here pisses themselves thinking of what he’s going to do, he never has to lift a finger to get his point across. Look at all of you, panicked and checking in on Williams already.”

Grady looked right at me this time. “I bet he didn’t say a word. He crossed his arms and looked pissed, and started laughing his ass off about how sweaty you already were. Right?”

I stared right back at him, my face a mask. I didn’t say a word while we ran, especially since we were finishing our first lap and were close to where the coaches were standing around and watching us. As we neared the third base side foul pole, I broke out into a wide grin.

“Yup. He laughed. Told me not to be late again, that’s why I was able to catch you guys. Course I had to sprint so I’m done with this running.”

The rest of the team relaxed and broke out into snickers about how Coach wasn’t as bad as people thought he’d be. I could tell that if he needed to be, he’d be really tough on us, but it wasn’t really necessary at this time of year. It was November, so there weren’t going to be any games until the spring season started up. Lots of time to get us prepared and to ease us into the system, I suppose.

Once we finished our run, Coach had us all stretch and do some throwing drills to improve the distance we could throw the ball accurately, having us throw in partners. I ended up throwing with Grady, and was surprised that he was the one who called me over. Maybe it was something that the older guys talked about, that they’d try to mentor and help out the newer players.

Whatever the reason, it was nice to be warming up with someone who was on the team last year and didn’t seem to be all that worried about things right now. Every minute or so Grady would take a few steps back and increase the distance we were throwing, until he was past second base and standing in the outfield. I was starting to reach the limit of how far I could throw, so I started to do a crow hop before each throw to make sure the ball was thrown properly. Coach made it clear he didn’t want us to be lobbing the ball during the warm up, and I was going to have to soon.

Grady stopped backing up and kept throwing back to me. He didn’t seem to be having as much difficulty as I was, but then he did a lot more distance throwing than I did as a pitcher. This was one of the things I envied a bit about positional players. They never threw as much as pitchers, but they learned how to throw much further, and now I was having trouble keeping up.

Coach noticed, and I looked to see I wasn’t the only one having some troubles; a few of the other pitchers were looking like they were straining to throw the ball into the outfield now.

“Pitchers and catchers to the bullpens. You’ve gotten enough done. Everyone else form up new pairs and get ready for drills.” Coach Finnegan called out.

Myself and a dozen other guys, along with Bryce and Miles, headed up to the bullpens and divided off between the home and visitors areas to practice some more pitches and get used to each other. Because I wasn’t one of the expected starting pitchers, I was sent to the visitor’s bullpen with Bryce and the other relief pitchers. I probably wouldn’t see too much of Miles, because he had to get himself accustomed to the pitching styles of the starting pitchers, which he’d be seeing more often than us anyways.

I was surprised at how large the pitching staff was on a college team. Back home in Colfax, we had such a small team that most pitchers ended up playing other positions when needed, so we didn’t really have a dedicated pitching staff. Now here in college there were a dozen pitchers split between the starting rotation and the bullpen. I guess that meant I was going to spend even less time on the field. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that, but as long as I was contributing I guess it was good.

I sized up a few of the other relief pitchers in the bullpen with me. Most of them looked like they’d been working out for longer than I had, so while they weren’t super buff, they definitely had toned muscles. The biggest thing I noticed was that everyone was really tall. I felt short compared to them, even though I was almost six feet tall. They must have used their body size to reduce the distance they had to throw. I bet their strides were a lot bigger than mine, so that would help them as pitchers.

I stood next to one of the pitchers who looked older, while we waited for our turns to work with Bryce. He looked down at me and I could see he kept his blond hair short underneath his team ball cap. I ventured to try and start a conversation when he stood there without saying a word to me.

“I don’t think we’ve properly introduced ourselves, I’m Devin.”

He cut me off with a grunt. “Luke. You’re new, you’ll learn. Don’t try so hard, we’ll all get to know each other, you don’t have to force it so much. Focus on the sport, everything else will come as time goes on.”

“Oh, I thought we could chat while waiting…”

He grunted again, this time sounding annoyed.

“Jeez, did they teach you anything where you came from? This isn’t just time for whoever’s pitching to be working on their stuff. If you’re quiet and pay attention, the coach’s comments are for all of us, so you can learn something instead of trying to suck up to everyone to feel popular. This is a team, not a social club. Take it seriously or take a hike, freshman.”

I moved away from him and tried to focus on what the coach was saying.

“Peyton, you’re gonna kill us if you keep the ball up in the zone like that. Think about where the batter is standing and think about where his reach is going to make it difficult to hit anything. You should know that, so do it.”

Coach continued on. “And Bryce, you know better as well. get it together and focus on where you should be calling your pitches. You’re setting up in all the wrong places, it’s no wonder this looks like amateur hour.”

Bryce shook his head angrily, and crouched back down, changing where he was setting up behind the bullpen plate. Both he and Peyton were crisper in their throws after that, I guess they were feeling embarrassed about being told off in front of everyone.

When it was my turn to get some throws in, I could tell Bryce was getting tired, and he took a minute to walk around and get some feeling back into his body while I set up and fixed the grooves on the mound before I started pitching. It was silly, but I liked having the mound groomed in a certain way before I started throwing, and I always dug and filled in the right spots on the mound until I was ready. Part of that was when I landed, my foot moved the dirt around a lot, and my pivot foot created a divot on the rubber.

Once Bryce settled down into his crouch, I walked back to the mound and started my windup. My left foot slid when it planted into the ground and I slipped, throwing the ball far above Bryce’s head and getting everyone to chuckle at how stupid I looked. I shook the dirt off of myself and climbed back on the hill, making a point of not looking at any of my teammates. The Coach also seemed to be trying not to say anything or give anything away in his looks, and nodded at me to try again.

This time I didn’t trip on anything and was much closer to the mark.

“Devin.” Coach said. “You’re leaning too far back, so your centre of gravity isn’t over your legs for easier transfer of weight. It’s reducing your throwing speed. Try again, but go through your wind up slowly.”

I started my wind up, and just as I was lifting my left leg, I heard Coach call out, “Stop there, freeze in place.”

I tried to freeze right away, but it was an awkward position to have one leg in the air while my other foot was pressed against a rubber mat on the mound. I could feel myself losing balance when Coach came over and placed his arms on my chest and back.

“See? You’re leaning back too far, that’s why you’re losing balance because it’s putting your centre of gravity out of alignment. Lean forward just a bit instead.”

Coach pushed my shoulders forward so I was leaning slightly over my left leg, which was hovering in the air. I could feel my balance improving, and hadn’t even realized that I was so badly out of alignment.

“Better, now finish your throw.”

I planted my foot and threw, and while it felt awkward, it didn’t seem to make me throw any worse. I actually felt a bit more comfortable and was more easily able to get back into a ready position after following through with the throw.

After a few more minutes of throwing and having my mechanics checked out by the coach, I stood back in line and waited for the last person to throw. By the time we were all finished, the practice was finishing up so we joined the rest of the team in heading to the showers to clean up and head back to our dorms for the evening. I felt someone coming up beside me, and turned to see who it was. Bryce was jogging in his catcher’s gear to catch up to me, so I slowed down to see what he wanted.

“Devin, come by the House after practice.” He said.

I was intrigued, but concerned he just wanted to hook up. I was trying to get past thinking about him and Alex and all the stuff that was going on, and I knew that doing anything with him was going to mess with my head a bit more.

“What do you want, Bryce? I’m not some booty call for you.” I replied.

“Just come over. You’ll see when you get there.”

He walked off to the locker room and I slowed up to put some space between us. Part of me wanted to blow him off and show him that I wasn’t going to come simply because he called me, but another part thought about how this would be a good time to talk, and I could push the issue forward once we were alone. It’s not like I had to stay long if things weren’t going the way I wanted them to go. Besides, I had nothing else to do.

I showered and waited outside while Bryce had a conversation of some kind with Coach. It was starting to get chilly, and I wished I had brought something warmer to wear than the shorts I put on. I put my bag down and jogged in a short circle to warm myself up. I heard a few people laughing and looked over to see a few guys pointing at me.

I shrugged at them while I continued jogging. It looked silly, but at least it was keeping me warm. Bryce finally emerged from the stadium and I jogged over to him.

“Alright, you ready to go now? You said you wanted me to come over, so let’s get going.” I said.

We walked back to the house in silence. I didn’t know what to say to him. What should I say when we got to his room? He’d probably want to fuck, but I need to figure out what we are and he did say we were going to have that chat. Maybe he means we can do that now, and I could start figuring out what we were.

When we arrived at the frat house, Bryce left me to go into the kitchen. I nodded my hellos at a few of the guys I recognized and waited for Bryce to come back so we could head up to his room. Bryce claimed me with a beer in each hand and his baseball bag on his shoulders. He headed back towards the stairs leading up to his room and I followed behind, trying to control my breathing.

I wasn’t surprised to see that the upper floor where Bryce lived was pretty quiet. Everyone was probably downstairs or studying somewhere, or something like that. Either way, it gave us some privacy, and I wasn’t surprised when Bryce locked the door behind us. That could be a good or bad thing too; it didn’t tell me what he wanted from me tonight, just that he wanted it to be private, whatever it was.

Bryce sat on his bed and gestured for me to sit on the chair at his desk. I turned it around so I could face him and looked for him to take some kind of lead on what tonight was supposed to be about. Instead, he looked back at me and didn’t say anything, increasing the tension in the room. I looked away, unable to keep staring at him without someone breaking the tension.

“What did you want Bryce?” I said. “You said you’d tell me what was going on once I got here, so let’s get to it. What’s going on that you wanted me here in private?”

“Actually Devin, this is about you. You said you needed to talk, and now we have some time to do so. More to the point, we’ve had a few days to think about things, so we can have a conversation that doesn’t devolve into pointless name-calling. You wanted to talk, so let’s talk about this thing you say you need to talk about.”

How surprising. He only wanted to talk. About us no less. This should be interesting.

“Fine. What are we Bryce? You knew I was with someone and you still had sex with me. You’re having sex with me now that the other guy is gone and I’m hurting. What do you want from me? Am I here because I’m an easy guy for you to hook up with, or what is it you actually want from me? If all you want is to fuck and chuck me, then tell me now so I don’t waste any of my time and start only thinking of you as a teammate.”

“Don’t flatter yourself Devin. I could find other people really easily and without having to worry about another freak out if I only wanted sex. Nice though, thinking that’s the only reason I want you around. Try again?”

I was surprised. If he didn’t only want me for the sex, then what was going on?

Bryce must have realized I wasn’t going to say anything, so he continued on.

“Think about it. Remember how things were the very first day we met? You think I was that excited for every potential baseball player? I can promise you, I wasn’t. Ask the guys if you don’t believe me, but I was excited for you because you seemed interesting. Now that I have had a chance to get to know you, you’re still interesting, even if you’re completely nuts.”

“Then why has it always been about the sex? That’s all that happens when you get me alone. Not my fault I figured that’s what you wanted tonight.”

Bryce scoffed. “It’s not like you went out of your way to say no or stop it. Even when you were with Alex, you were still pretty damn into it, so if you’re going to blame me, you better be ready to take some of that on yourself too.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but Bryce was still pressing his point.

“You kept coming back Devin. You had a boyfriend, and you kept coming back and never once said we should stop. What was supposed to think, except that you were interested? I wanted you to be interested in me, so I didn’t change what I was doing.”

I answered slowly, trying to process what he meant.

“You mean… what do you mean? You want to what, date me or something? Make some sense Bryce, just this once.”

“I’m into you. Not just for the sex but for you, even though you’re so lost in yourself and wallowing in the destroyed aftermath of your thing with a guy hours away from here to realize it. Sometimes it’s cute that you’re so stuck in yourself that you don’t realize how people actually think of you, you’re too busy imagining worst case scenarios and being scared of coming out properly that its blinding you.”

“You and this Alex guy are in two different places, and you can’t be with him right now. You need to date people who are here, who are into you now and who you can actually see on an everyday basis. Did you really think things would work out when you left for school?”

He was saying things that I had already thought about, but I didn’t want to deal with. I get it, it wasn’t going to work if Alex and I could only see each other during vacations, and I get that I hadn’t been texting him as much as I should have. It still hurt to have Bryce talking about these things and bringing them up so easily.

“Alright, alright! I get it Bryce. Jeez, you’re rough sometimes. So what then, you want something serious? Pretty damn early to be asking, you haven’t even considered whether I’m okay or not over Alex.”

Bryce actually smirked at me.

“Of course you’re alright. You’ve already been thinking about this for a while now. It didn’t come as a huge surprise to you that this was going to happen, and I think for a while now you’ve been conceding in your mind that it would happen. You wouldn’t have slept with me those times if you thought there was something to save with your Back Home Boy.”

“Arrogant doesn’t suit you Bryce. Makes you look like an ass.”

He grinned back at me, chuckling about something.

“That’s what you like best about me Devin. I’m arrogant and utterly certain about myself, because you’re not and Alex was too quiet to be the leader. You love the fact that I’m totally at ease with myself and totally in control. Makes it easier for you to have someone else run the shots, which I bet is why you had Alex around too. He kept you grounded and you shot your head into the clouds to worry about everything. Now I can do it, and I’m better at it.”

I had to admit to myself that I did think about Bryce, and I did think about how things would work between us if we were more than just teammates and guys who hooked up every once in a while. He was here. He was interested. We got along, and we saw each other all the time. It made sense… but I was still reluctant. He was so open about it. Bryce was out, which would mean I’d have to be out. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for that, not after what happened at home when people thought and then found out I was into guys.

“...There’d have to be some ground rules.”

“Ground rules? This is dating, not a contract Devin.”

“Quiet. It has to be quiet. I know you’re as out as you can possibly be without dry-humping everyone on the team, but that’s not my style and I’d prefer not becoming the showcase couple for Gay America, incorporated. Second, this isn’t about the sex, I want this to be real. I had something real with Alex. We were more than just two people shooting loads on each other. That’s not what I want, and if it’s what you want, then go talk to those guys you say you can find. Understand?”

“That’s it? Fine, that’s workable. You worry too much. You’ll see. This will be great.”

Bryce got up and walked over to the chair I was sitting on and pulled me up, kissing me fully on the lips and swishing his tongue along the inside of my lips. I pushed Bryce away, angry at how forward he was being.

“I thought I just said we weren’t going to be all about sex all the time and to go slow? Seriously man, not a good start.”

Bryce grasped my left hand and pulled me to his bed.

“Alright. Fine. Just cuddling and light stuff tonight. Come on, let’s go to bed, you gotta get up early to get your school stuff for tomorrow’s classes anyways.”

Bryce stripped down and waited for me to get ready for bed before turning the lights out. I took off my clothes except for my boxers, and crawled in under the covers of his twin bed. I felt Bryce curl up behind me and wrap his arms around me, curling in close to make sure we both had enough room on the bed.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about this. It was uncomfortable and different. I couldn’t decide if this is what I really wanted, but for now this was where we were now. He isn’t Sean. He isn’t Alex. He’s different, and I’ll have to get used to that. I struggled to find a comfortable position to sleep, and didn’t get to sleep until late that night.