Extra Innings - 18. Chapter 17

Classes started right after Martin Luther King Day, and the instructors wasted no time in putting us to work. Most of the instructors made it clear that because we only had fifteen weeks in the Spring semester, we needed to get started right away. My creative non-fiction course assigned two chapters of reading to be done by the end of the week, and the textbook was hundreds of pages long. This wasn’t going to be quite as easy as the other classes I took last semester. Even my two sports related courses were pushing harder than my introductory course in September.

Having my conditioning and aerobics classes right after each other was a horrible idea. While I liked the idea of not having classes at all Tuesdays and Thursdays, I was exhausted after the first day of classes and the three hours of physical activity that the classes entailed. Apparently, these classes were going to be more practical than last semester’s theoretical class in coaching. What really scared me was that I might end up having baseball practice on one of these days where I had my classes.

Friday night after class I got a text from Bryce telling me to show up to the house after dinner. It sounded like it was going to be a social night, and I have to admit I enjoyed the company of the frat guys, now that I knew them a bit better. They were still a bit too loud and a bit too obnoxious at times, but they were getting to know me, and I was getting to know them. This would probably be when we would be learning when the next big frat event would be, and I was looking forward to showing off that I knew everything that I was supposed to know to become a full member.

After grabbing a bite to eat in the dining residence, I went back upstairs to have a quick shower before going to the frat house. I figured Bryce would want some alone time later on, and it would be nice if I smelled good for him. When I got there, a few of the guys were watching the football game on TV, even though Seattle wasn’t playing. They seemed intent on it anyways, and I went upstairs to see if I could find Bryce.

When I knocked on his bedroom door, he yelled that it was unlocked and to come on in, he’d be coming out in a few minutes to join the happenings downstairs anyways. I opened the door and saw Bryce was shirtless and rummaging through his dresser for something to wear. I was quiet and didn’t announce who I was, taking in the contours of his back muscles and smooth, muscled physique. When he turned around, I got a glimpse of his chest and the trail of hair leading into his shorts that I’d come to treasure. He looked surprised that it was me, but didn’t rush to put on a shirt or anything.

Instead, Bryce pulled me closer and embraced me, kissing me on each cheek before giving my ass a squeeze with both hands. I could feel the difference between his hand and the fabric of his shirt kneading my butt. I moaned quietly into his chest and pushed us apart, afraid that someone would spot us.

“Careful Bryce, you know I’m not out yet. You don’t know how people are going to react.”

Bryce stroked my hair and patted me on the ass again.

“You worry too much. This isn’t Colfax, this is a college. Everyone’s going to be fine, you’ll see. But you’re right, we should head down or people are going to wonder about why its taking you so long to get through the upstairs part of the house all by yourself. Someone might come looking for you.”

“Bryce… let me come out in my own time. I’m not as ready as you are, you know that.” I implored him, knowing that he already knew everything about my past with Sean and how it affected my relationships with the rest of the team and my community.

Bryce didn’t respond, but he grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the room. Still holding my hand, he closed up the door and made his way down to the rest of the house, pulling me along with him. I protested and tried to pull my hand away, but he held on tight and held onto me until we got back to the living room where the guys were watching the football game.

As bad luck would have it, we got there right in the middle of a commercial, and Bryce took the opportunity to make an announcement to the assembled frat boys.

“Hey guys. I know you all know that Devin is my new Little Brother while he’s waiting to get through his pledge period, but I thought you’d all want to know that he and I are also dating. We’ve been together for a few weeks now. Nothing changed, but you guys are my brothers and deserve to know what’s going on.”

Most of the guys shrugged and turned back to the TV, but I could see a couple of them muttering to each other. I was furious. I told Bryce I wasn’t ready and the first thing he did was tell everyone. I glared at him and he looked back at me with a gloating look on his face. He leaned in closer and whispered in my ear.

“I told you everything would be fine, you should have trusted me.”

I replied back, barely managing to keep my voice to a whisper.

“We need to talk. That was completely unfair of you to have done that.”

I glared at him and went back upstairs. As I climbed the stairs, I could hear him apologizing to the rest of the group and saying that he was going to talk to me about some stuff, hopefully we’d both be down later and we could plan out the rest of the month for fraternity activities.

I stood there, standing in front of his room door with my arms crossed. I was angry and refused to look him in the eyes when he unlocked the door. I stormed in and sat down in a huff on his chair, pointedly refusing to share the bed with him like we normally would during our longer talks. He closed the door behind him and didn’t wait before he started.

“I don’t see what your problem is Devin, I told you everything would be okay and there you have it! We told all those guys in the fraternity and no one there had a problem with it. Not sure why you’re so bent out of shape, nothing bad happened and nothing bad is going to happen now that you’ve partially come out of the closet.”

I yelled back at him.

“There wasn’t a ‘we’ about it, Bryce. You decided to out me. After I specifically told you that I wasn’t ready. You put me in a position that I was afraid of, and all so you could try and prove a point to me. I don’t feel safe being out. You’ve made me feel unsafe.”

“So what are you going to do, Devin? Are you going to hide forever? The world is changing, but you’re so afraid that everywhere is going to be like the tiny little place you came from that you’re too afraid to grow out of. You need to come out. You have so much going for you that you’re even going to college, what about everyone else in all the other little small towns across America? Don’t they deserve to have a role model they can look up to? If you won’t come out, then nothing’s going to change and the next generation of kids is going to be just as fucked as you were.”

I stood up, pointing at him.

“That’s not your decision to make Bryce. It’s mine, you took away my decision because you thought you knew what was best for me. Even though you knew that I wasn’t feeling safe, and even after you knew my past, you decided that you knew best for me. You don’t. You think everywhere is like here and like Seattle? It’s not! You don’t have a damn clue what it’s like having to wonder when the haters are going to come for you, and now I’m going to be spending my time looking over my shoulder to see if I’m safe, because you took away my ability to decide for myself when to come out.”

“I hope you’re happy. I really hope that this was what you wanted Bryce. Because there’s no turning back now, you’ve made it clear that we’re going to be an out of the closet couple, no matter what that might mean for our reputations. You may not care what other people think about you, but I don’t have the luxury of being able to ignore the people whispering behind my back. One day, one of those people whispering is going to attack me, and it’ll be like last year happening all over again.”

I stood up to leave, and Bryce also stood up, trying to keep me from leaving and pulling me back towards him.

“Devin, don’t go. Don’t leave angry like this. You’re being ridiculous and paranoid. You saw that people voted to legalize marriage here in Washington. People are more forward-thinking than you think. The world isn’t out to get you, but it is going to pass you by if you keep living in fear of everything.”

“You don’t know that Bryce. You don’t know anything about what it’s like to live in small town America. You sit there from Seattle and tell me it gets better, but it’s not getting better. You want me to be this big gay role model? I can’t do that until I know I’m not going to be killed for my trouble.”

I pulled out of his grasp and unlocked the door.

“I’m gone. I need to clear my head and get away from this bullshit. This was seriously not cool, you should be fucking ashamed of yourself. I never thought I’d be outed by a fellow gay guy or teammate, but you found a way to do it and somehow make it sound like it’s my fault for being in the closet. What a gong show.”

I slammed the door behind me and left the house. I could hear some of the brothers calling out to me, wondering where I was going and why I was leaving so soon. I didn’t reply. I didn’t even look back as I ran out the door, heading as far away from the frat house as I could and as far from Bryce as I could. A few minutes of aimlessly wandering through the campus, I found myself over by the gym. I couldn’t figure out why I’d gone in this direction, but it was somewhere I was usually found, so it made sense to end up there.

I stopped to catch my breath outside the building when I heard a couple of people talking behind me. I turned to see who they were, and I realized I recognized them. They were the guys watching me run around the stadium the last time I had to wait for Bryce to finish changing after practice. The two guys looked a lot larger now that they were right up in my face, and I realized that there wasn’t anyone else around in the area.

I started backing away toward the gym; it was late, but there should still be a few people there and it’d be better to be around people right now. The two guys kept following me, speeding up to catch up to me. I didn’t want to start running away from them, but I couldn’t figure out why they were following me, and turned to ask them what their deal was.

The taller one, a tanned guy with bulging muscles and a Mariners hoodie, spoke up.

“Well, well, looks like we found one of the prissy college faggots all by himself. I wonder where his butt buddy is. Probably still in the gym getting dicked like a little bitch.”

The other guy was shorter than me, but had tattoos across most of his bare arms and neck spoke up at this point. I should have realized before, they were too old to look like students on campus, but I figured they might have been instructors or someone, so I never paid any attention to them. Looks like they’d been paying attention to me, though.

“Sounds like a good time… good time for us to kick his ass, don’t you think? I wonder if this one can fight back, or if he’ll scream for help like all the little queers do.”

I lashed out at the taller one. Arms swinging, legs planted and body torqueing to throw all my leverage into the punches. They weren’t expecting that. They back away, regroup but not letting me find an obvious way to escape. The smaller one circles, I’m not focused on him. Gotta deal with one so I can get to the gym. A quick glance, it looks empty. Maybe not safe anyways, but better than nothing.

A bad choice. Pain explodes from my back as I reel from the surprise impact. I can’t tell if it was a punch or a kick, but I stagger forward and now they’re both rushing me. I grab a fist meant for my head, my right arm shooting forward to elbow him. I feel something crunch and give way. The taller one staggers back, a hand pressed to a nose I know is bleeding and may be broken.

I kick back wildly, but there’s nothing there. I don’t feel any hands on me anymore, the smaller one’s gone back to the front to see his friend. I don’t think, running far away, wherever I think I can get to that’s safe. No one is around. Where is everyone? Shouldn’t there be more people on campus right now? Not that it’d help, these guys meant business. Their footfalls hot on my heels and still there’s no one to help me.

Unlucky. I tripped on something, probably a pebble and now I’ve stumbled, fallen. They’re with me now, the taller one bleeding freely. At least I got him. He pulls a knife.

“You little faggot! Hope you’re ready to die.”

The blade slices through the air, I can’t escape it, but I can roll.

It passes through effortlessly, almost through air. Stars and pain explode into my vision and I can’t hear myself, but I know I’m screaming. Louder than when Sean violated me. Louder than my nightmares. I can’t see, but I hear footsteps. Some getting quieter, and someone else shouting, his voice getting closer.

“Jesus, Devin. Everything happens to you. It’s gonna be alright.”

Vincente. This wasn’t who I wanted to have find me and save me. But he was here, yelling at people to call an ambulance and applying pressure. My arm hurt. I didn’t want to look over, but I could feel something wet and slick pooling under the arm, and Vincente’s hands were pressing down hard around where the pumping was strongest. It was too weird, having someone squeeze my arm and know that it was helping me, not hurting me.

“This… is going to hurt my baseball career, isn’t it?” I asked no one in particular.

Vincente answered anyways.

“Shhh, don’t worry about that. You’re gonna be alright, help is coming.”

I don’t know how long Vincente stayed there, talking and soothing and squeezing. At some point someone gave him a towel to wrap around my arm. When the paramedics came, he insisted that he come with me, that he knew who I was and wanted to be sure I was okay.

I heard the paramedics talking to each other as they took over, but I wasn’t really focusing on what they were saying. It was hard to focus through the pain and shock. Someone stabbed me. I knew that much. Someone stabbed me. Because they thought I was a faggot. Bryce thought everything was okay being out, and look what that got me. I was heading back to the hospital again, and this time it was his fault and he wasn’t even here to help me through it.

When we got to the hospital, the paramedics loaded me up onto a gurney and wheeled me through to the examination room. I could walk perfectly fine, but when I protested they said it was for my good and strapped me down. One held the towel to my arm and the other started wheeling me through the foot traffic. I lost track of Vincente.

Doctors and nurses started asking me questions, trying to figure out what happened. While I was focused on their questions, someone unwrapped the towel from my arm and someone started analyzing the wound. I hissed when someone poked it and tried to gauge the depth of the injury, but any movement I made with my left arm hurt, so I tried not to move it.

“You’re lucky, young man. The wound is deep, but it missed the major blood vessels and muscles. You’re a bit of a bleeder though, so we’re going to have to stitch you up. Is there anyone we should call to let them know about this?”

I was only half paying attention, but I told them my Dad’s number could be found in my phone, but that I wouldn’t be expecting him to show up since he lived in Colfax. After unlocking the phone, the doctors put me into surgery. The last thing I saw was the gas mask coming down over my face. As my final thoughts before going out for surgery passed my mind, all I could think was you said I’d be safe.

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I was surprised when I woke up and Vincente was in my room. He was napping in the chair, looking like he’d been there for a while. I checked the clock and saw it was morning. Not how I wanted to wake up on Saturday, but at least I was mostly okay. I looked at my left arm for the first time since the attack. My forearm was covered in stitches, and I got nauseous thinking about how those stitches came to be there. I groaned and turned away, not expecting the noise to wake up Vincente.

He woke with a start and walked over to me. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, his facial expression was unreadable.

“Dude. Remember what I said the first day of class? I told you to meet other people, not have them treat you like a piece of meat. Scared the hell out of everyone.”

I don’t remember there being a lot of people at the attack, so maybe he only meant himself. Still, it was nice of him to say.

“Oh yea, the docs came out and gave me most of your stuff. Your Dad called a whole bunch of times, you should probably call him back. I didn’t want to answer and have to explain what happened. That’s your job, not mine.”

I wasn’t totally thrilled, but I got it.

“You could have at least told him I was okay…” I started.

He cut me off. “Didn’t know yo. They took you in for surgery, didn’t know anything about your situation. You don’t see so different though. Not dying anyways from the way you’re groaning.”

“Fine. Give me my phone and some privacy then will ya?”

Vincente throw me my phone and left the room so I could call. Of course the hospital let him know. Of course he called all these different times, I bet he hadn’t even gone to sleep or work yet. I dialed the house number and waited for him to pick up. I didn’t have to wait long before he started yelling through the phone.

“Devin! What happened, are you okay? Why are you in the hospital?”

“Dad, Dad! Calm down, you’re yelling at me.” I replied, trying to keep control of the conversation.

“A couple of guys followed me home from the frat house. They were looking for someone to fight and I was alone. One of them stabbed me after I punched him in the nose. I don’t know why they did it. One did call me a faggot, but I don’t know if that’s why they attacked me.”

I could hear Dad trying to find something to say, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t know anything else.

“It’s fine Dad. It’s fine. I’m fine. I’m a bleeder, that’s all. Go to sleep or work or something. I’ve got someone here to help get me back to campus and everything else.”

“You’re supposed to be safe there. You tell the police everything, you understand me?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, “I will. Go on, I want to get some more rest.”

He hung up, though I could tell he was still upset. There wasn’t anything either of us could do right now, but he was right that I’d have to tell the police what happened. I figured I wouldn’t be let out of the hospital until I did, considering I got stabbed on campus. Hopefully they would be here soon and it’d be all over.

A few minutes later, Vincente came back into the room, following him were two adults who obviously weren’t doctors. They must be police. The taller, older woman led off and introduced them.

“I’m Sergeant Peters, this is my partner, Detective Stevens.” She gestured to the smaller brunette with her. “I understand you were the victim of an attack last night. Your friend Vincente already told us what he saw, but we want to hear from you. Can you explain everything that happened?”

I nodded, having thought about exactly what was going to be said.

“Earlier tonight I’d been at the Phi Delta Theta frat house. I’m a member there, and I was visiting the upperclassmen who live there, to plan an event. I also got into an argument with my boyfriend. He outed me to the fraternity and I left. At some point after running off I saw two guys following me.”

Both investigators nodded and wrote things down on their note pads, nodding when they were ready for me to continue.

“I recognized them. They had watched me when I was waiting for my boyfriend to come out of the stadium showers on campus. I finished up a bit before him and jogged in circles to stay warm. I didn’t think anything of it that they were watching me, but they must have stayed and watched me leave.”

“Why were you waiting outside the stadium?” Sergeant Peters asked.

“Bryce and I both play on the school baseball team. We’d had practice that evening. It made sense to wait for him instead of going home alone.”

More writing and nodding.

“They taunted me, calling me a faggot and hinting they were going to attack me, and that I wasn’t the first. When I punched the bigger one, he pulled a knife and stabbed me. That’s when Vincente found me.”

“Okay, thank you. Can you describe what they look like?” This time it was the shorter detective asking the question.

“I know that the taller one was wearing a Mariner’s sweater, and it’s probably got some of his blood on it now. He was tanned and really muscular. The other one was shorter than me, and had tattoos all over his neck and arms. I couldn’t tell anything else about him. They both looked too old to be college kids though.”

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Williams. We’ll let you recover. You should know that we’ll be investigating the attack, but we’re not sure how long it will take for anything more to happen. Try to be aware of what’s happening around you for the next little while. We’ll be in touch if there’s anything more we need from you.”

Without waiting for a goodbye or any clarification, the two detectives left and suddenly I was alone with Vincente for the first time in a while. We stared at each other awkwardly, not sure what to say or what else to do.

“Thank you. You probably saved my life last night.” I said quietly, not sure how to start talking about it.

“That’s what friends do, right?” He replied equally quietly.

A silence descended on the room until the doctors showed up with my discharge papers. I was told to take it easy. They didn’t foresee any problems with infection or anything else, but I was given a prescription of antibiotics to take, to be safe.

The hospital wasn’t too far from campus, so we walked it back. I tried to keep my left arm as still as possible, and Vincente walked on my left side so no one would accidentally jostle it. I didn’t say much on the way back, I was thinking about all the things that’d happened over the last day. This was what I was saying to Bryce. He didn’t know what it was like to be afraid. He didn’t have to be in Seattle, not the way we did in the rural parts of the state. Even with a college, the city and county still had a rural sensibility. He needed to understand that.

Vincente left me in our room once we got there, saying he had some stuff to do around campus. I’m sure part of that was to get away, he’d been with me for hours now and needed some time of his own to decompress over all this, and part of it was so I could get some rest.

I was feeling tired from the walk, so I laid down on my right side and curled up under the covers. Taking care to protect my arm, I drifted off to sleep, hoping that the end of my weekend would be better.