He kept his crush on the foreman secret after that. Stopped watching the hands work shirtless as they fed the horses, changed the hay, cleaned the stalls. Kept his mouth shut and waited, and waited, and waited for his eyes to start wandering to the girls and their bouncy ponytails at school, to focus on curves and skirt hems instead of happy trails and tight asses and bulges. It never happened. He stared at the inside of his locker when everyone changed, memorizing the same square inches of battered metal and balled-up socks. Maybe he could fake it, he thought. Or force himself to like girls.
In high school, sophomore year, he’d dated Lisa. She broke up with him when he wouldn’t go all the way in her back seat on the fourth date. Senior year, Marietta got him into a bedroom at a house party, when he was a few beers past common sense, and got his pants down and her mouth on him before he found that sense again. She was trying to get her own pants off when he pushed her back gently, told her no, and then held her when she cried. She was one of the desperate girls his senior year, looking at grades that weren’t good enough for a scholarship and no money in the bank to afford college tuition. Her only hope out of that town was to hitch her wagon to a boy on his way up, and who better than the top tight end in the state with a full-ride scholarship in the big city? “I’m sorry,” he’d told her in that dark room. “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
He couldn’t force it. And he didn’t want to try.
But he couldn’t go out and find a boyfriend, either. He could count the number of out pro NFL players on one hand, and the number of out football players currently at the Division I-A level in college was zero. Coming out, at his level? The guys who had worked their way up dreamed of that NFL contract, hungered for it so deeply it gnawed at their bones, filled their veins with poisonous hope. An entire team of dreamers, each one fixated on a shared goal: winning. Championships. Scouts. One team, one purpose.
Who the hell was he to break that focus? Strike out from the team, be himself? The selfishness of that thought made his stomach turn inside out, made his lungs stop and his heart stutter. There were all kinds of platitudes, pretty talk on posters about being yourself and embracing who you were, but when a hundred other guys depended on you, being yourself wasn’t an option. He was part of a team, part of a machine, and he was helping every one of those guys achieve their dreams, scrape stars from the sky as they reached for futures hidden behind the moon. All their lives, they’d been told if they worked hard enough, they could get there. But they couldn’t do it on their own—none of them could.
He’d be damned if he was going to be the one who shattered everyone’s dreams because he was different. Different didn’t work on the team.
What happened to teams when guys tried to come out? When it went ten kinds of sideways and everything collapsed? When everything was different, suddenly, and what was out of the closet couldn’t get wrestled back in?
His life wasn’t awful. He had his friends—hell, he had best friends. His teammates. He had his dad. They had each other, after Mama. He had the team, and Coach Young. He had a scholarship and a plan for the future. He wasn’t quite sure his future was filled with the same brightly lit NFL dreams as his teammates’. Maybe, once all his friends were set in their star-studded futures, when they were living in the worlds they drew on their bedroom ceilings every night, he could raise his eyes and take a look at the things he’d stiff-armed away.
Later. In the future. Not now. Not here. Not when he was on the verge of being named the starting tight end, when the rumors were he’d been a serious consideration for the Heisman Trophy last year—and if he had the same kind of season this year, he would be a shoo-in and an obvious first-round draft pick if he tossed his name into the great NFL draft hat.
He’d worked too hard to get here. Too many people were relying on him. Too many dreams were laid across his shoulders. He’d had to bulk up to carry them all, gain forty pounds last year alone. There was no room for his own dreams, his tender hopes. He kept his mouth shut, like he’d learned when he was five.
He breathed out, quick exhales like he was at practice, primed and ready for the snap. Watched water drop into the sink. Heard the splash hit the porcelain. He could do this. He could spend the day with Justin, wandering Paris, exploring and sightseeing—just the two of them in the city of love. He could ignore his crush. Bully it away like he’d always done. Focus.
When he closed his eyes, even to blink, he saw Justin’s face. Heard his voice, the sharp lilt of his words. Felt the force of Justin’s smile smack him in his gut, felt his lungs squeeze as he tried to breathe through the way his skin felt too small and his bones too large. Like he was going to float off the earth every time Justin looked at him with that light in his eyes.
It was probably just the sun. It probably wasn’t what he wanted it to be.
And it didn’t matter if it was. He couldn’t do anything about this.
And… Justin hadn’t given any sign, any hint at all that he was anything other than straight. He was cooler than Wes, that was for sure. More connected to the world, more hip, more into things that were en vogue. Wes still shaved with Brut, something he’d picked up from his dad, who’d gotten it from his dad. He drove a twenty-five-year-old farm truck. He hadn’t ever been to a concert in his life, much less ballet. Culture seemed to roll off him like water on a duck’s back, passing him by without so much as a wave. He listened to the folk and Western music he’d grown up with on the ranch, and there wasn’t a radio station at the university that played anything he was familiar with. Justin’s phone belted out top 40s alongside classical masterpieces, soundtracks to ballets next to R&B legends. Wes felt all elbows and awkwardness in front of Justin, like he was constantly on the verge of tripping over himself, revealing his hick nature, his country.
Even if Justin was into guys, why would he ever be interested in Wes?
He wouldn’t be. He’d want someone fun and bold and hip, someone who knew about dance and pop culture and the world. The world beyond football and ranching. Someone who could talk about something more interesting than what ducks liked to eat. That pocket full of condoms stabbed at the inside of Wes’s eyeballs, rose up like a nightmare to remind him that Justin would tire of him, and soon. He’d be back on the prowl, sliding from Paris bar to Paris bar, or maybe wandering the clubs down on the Riviera or in Monaco, or chatting up a beautiful blond at a winery in the French countryside. Wes wouldn’t have Justin’s attention for long.
But he had today.
He hadn’t been this excited and sick to his stomach at the same time since the scout from the university had come to watch him play back at his old West Texas high school. His phone buzzed in his back pocket, right before Justin shouted through the closed bathroom door, “I just texted you the map.”
He wiped his face and pulled his shirt from his waistband, then squeezed himself out of the bathroom. Justin was perched on the end of his bed, tapping at his phone screen.
“Okay, if we start in Montmartre, we can go to the Sacré-Coeur, and then to Saint-Ouen for the market on rue des Rosiers. They say Chez Louisette is where to eat while we’re there.”
Wes’s stomach cramped. He’d scarfed down two crepes after their morning run, but he was still hungry. Without the meal plan from the university and extra protein shakes throughout the day, he wasn’t getting the ten-thousand-plus calories he needed. But he couldn’t afford more than what he was buying. “How much is the restaurant?”