Superhero (11 page)

I couldn’t have Jordan like that unless I was willing to go all the way and admit that I was, at the very least, bisexual. I would have to do right by him.

It was like I was juggling a dozen knives—keep Emily happy when I really didn’t want to be with her, keep Jordan happy when he really wanted to be with me, keep coach happy, the team happy, my folks happy by obeying the rules. I was sick to death of it.

C
RYING
is a useless waste of time. I turned on my light and got up. I took a notebook out of my backpack and turned to a fresh page, sat down at my desk in my briefs. I drew a node at the top and curved a line down to the left.
Path A
, the path I’d been on all my life. I jotted a list at the end of the line.

College wrestling, UW Badgers (full scholarship)

High school or college wrestling coach

Married with kids

I looked at the list. It all seemed so obvious, so who I was. And it was a good life, maybe a great one, one I looked forward to, one that would be smooth sailing, one my family would be proud of. I’d be a hero. The thing is, once I got my teeth in something, I never gave up. The papers called me “tenacious.” All I’d ever wanted in life was to have two things, just two—wrestling and Jordan Carson. I was determined to hang on to both no matter what the cost. But I finally got it—if I wrestled, Jordan would not be in that life.

Oh, we’d still be friends. But Jordan would go to school in New York. He’d meet a guy and be dating. Maybe he’d get married at some point—it was legal in New York. Or maybe he’d go through a crazy string of lovers. But he’d be in that life without me. We’d see each other when we came home for holidays, maybe visit each other once in a while. It was hard to see me visiting Jordy at an apartment he shared with his boyfriend, or Jordy coming to stay with me and my wife. We’d grow apart. He’d become a comic book artist, and I’d follow his blog and buy all his comics, and maybe he’d watch my wrestling on some remote channel of ESPN.

That was the cost of the road my life was taking. Even if there was a college wrestling team that would let me compete if I were gay, no one wants a homosexual man coaching young boys, especially not in wrestling.

I went back to the node and drew a line that curved out to the right side of the page. My hand was shaking. I drew a circle at the end of the line, and I stared at it.

I had never thought too hard about what a life without wrestling would look like. I finally jotted some words down.

Degree in English or Creative Writing (no scholarship=student debt)

Write for comics with Jordy—or—teach English

Be with Jordan

I stared at it for a long time. I tried to imagine that other life, the one where Jordy and I lived in New York City and were together. In that life I was not a star wrestler, just a big, beefy Scandinavian-looking dude getting a degree in English, one of millions of guys my age to do so. I really liked inventing stories and writing them. Jordy had brought out a lot of that in me. But I knew it was a much tougher path to success. And in that life, I would hurt my family. I didn’t think they’d turn their backs on me, but it would hurt them. My dad would not be proud of me like he was now, and my mom and Charlie wouldn’t know what to think of me anymore.

The thing that was so weird was that, if I had never met Jordan, I would have been perfectly happy with the life behind door number one. I don’t get my sexuality. Maybe it would take a team of head-shrinks to figure me out. I liked girls okay and not many guys did a thing for me. But Jordan, he pressed all my buttons.

Maybe I was a really picky gay guy? Maybe I was bi. Maybe I was Jordan-sexual. Maybe I just thought Jordan was sexy because I loved him so much. The point is, I probably wouldn’t have even thought about being gay if it weren’t for him. Maybe I never would have been happy in a normal marriage. Maybe I’d have met some guy when I was forty and had a midlife crisis. Or maybe I would have met the girl that made me crazy about breasts and vaginas. I’d never know.

I looked at the lists for a long time. I got on Google and looked at images of NYU. I even looked up NYU’s wrestling team just out of curiosity. They were one of the thirty-two schools that had sent me an offer letter, even though I’d never applied, but I’d barely glanced at it. On their website I saw they were twenty-eighth in their division last year, and their top guy ranked was number seven in individual rankings. Not even close to the Badgers but not terrible.

Not that it really mattered. They wouldn’t want a gay wrestler.

I realized I was actually considering it, this alternate life in New York. And I was swamped with a sense of terror. The idea of giving up the incredible opportunity wrestling had given me, that I’d worked at for
years
… it was enough to make me want to throw up.

The light of dawn was just starting to spread through my bedroom window when I finally lay down. I had an idea. I scooted over on my bed and rolled onto my side. I closed my eyes and reached my hand out to touch the place in the bed next to me.

No matter what you do with your life during the day, there’s always that moment when you have to wake up with yourself, with yourself and with the person that’s sleeping beside you. That’s the person that you make a home with, discuss life’s big decisions with, share your finances, eat, shop, maybe parent with. That’s the person you share your body with forever, kiss, touch, the one you sit on the couch with and watch movies, the one who gives you a hug when you’ve had a rough day. That’s the person you put up a Christmas tree with and arrive home with for the holidays, the person you watch grow old and who still loves you when you’re not as nice to look at, the one who holds your hand when you’re dying. And none of that had anything to do with wrestling.

I touched the covers and closed my eyes.

Jordan

S
OMEONE
was banging on our front door. I hoped my mom would answer it already. I’d hardly slept the night before for worrying, and I wanted nothing more than to sink back into sweet oblivion and escape reality for a few hours more. The banging finally stopped, only to be taken up, a moment later, on my bedroom door. The door opened.

“Jordy?”

It was Owen. I looked at the clock. “Tell me you’re not waking me up at 7 a.m. on a Sunday.”

He came over and sat on the bed. “Sorry.”

I started to fall back asleep. He rubbed my shoulder. “Hey. My folks are gone ’til tonight. Will you come over?”

“
Now
?”

“Yeah.” He kept rubbing my shoulder. I frowned and squinted up at him.

“I need to talk to you. Please.”

His face was serious, but not in a bad way like the night before. There was an excited calm about him. He looked into my eyes as his thumb rubbed my shoulder. He looked at my mouth. I felt a wave of heat roll over in my gut. I glared at him. “What?”

He smiled a little. “Come on, doofus. Get up and throw on a pair of jeans. You can sleep at my house if you want.”

He stood up, picked up a pair of jeans and tossed them at me. He took a sweatshirt out of the closet and threw it on the bed.

“Somebody’s caught a case of the bossy flu,” I grumbled, but I sat up. There was something about the way he was acting. As determined as I had been to pull away last night, I found my resistance was lacking this morning. Maybe it was in the half of my brain that was still asleep.

I pulled on my clothes. I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth. I looked at myself in the mirror for a minute. I silently told myself to be strong.

We pulled up at Owen’s house ten minutes later.

“Do you want coffee?” he asked me, as we walked into his kitchen.

“If you’ll let me go back to sleep, no. If you have any other plans whatsoever, yes.”

He gave me a funny look and started the coffee maker. I sat down in one of the dinette chairs and looked blearily at the pool out back. I put my head on my arms and maybe fell asleep.

He touched my hand and slid a cup of coffee into it. I raised my head, blinked.

“Hey, my folks aren’t due home ’til late. If you want to go back to sleep I can wait a few hours.” He tucked some hair behind my ear.

His touch felt… different. I looked up at him in surprise and then down at the coffee cup.

“I’m good,” I said stupidly. I drank the coffee. I was confused, and he hadn’t even said anything yet. But suddenly, my heart was beating faster, and I was wide awake.

I took a few sips, and then he took my hand and led me into the living room and over to the sofa. I stood there looking at him, coffee cup in one hand, his hand holding my other.

I looked down at our joined hands. “What are you doing, Owen?”

“Sit down.”

I pulled my hand away and sat. I took another sip, eyeing him warily.

He sat down close to me and looked at his hands in his lap.

“Jordan, last night you made me see how hard this has been on you—us. Me. Emily. I’m sorry, and I want to change it. I hope you’ll give me a chance to change it.”

I couldn’t imagine what he was talking about. “You can’t change it.”

He took my hand again and pulled it into his lap. He held it in both of his. “I’ve already talked to Emily this morning. I told her it was over between us. Jordan, I want….” He swallowed. “I want to be with you.”

I wasn’t able to process what he was saying. It was like he was speaking in Klingon or something. I stared at him.

“I don’t want to lose you, Jordan. We’ll be together, everything you want.”

I sputtered. “Have you been infected by an alien brain virus?” I thought about it. “Wait, have I?”

“Jordy—”

“You can’t just have sex with me to keep me around. You’re not gay! That’s like me trying to have sex with Emily.”

He laughed and pulled my hand in tighter so it was against his chest. “I promise you, it’s not. I’m not as straight as everyone thinks I am. I think about that night we were together all the time.
All the time
, Jordy.”

His eyes were hot with something I’d never seen in them before. But I had a hard time allowing myself to believe it. Because I’d been there all, oh, three-hundred-and-some fricking days since that night, and he’d never acted like he wanted me. I shook my head.

“God, Jordy! The only thing that’s kept my hands off you for the past year has been knowing,
knowing
, that if we were together I’d have to give up wrestling. You don’t know what it was like for me when you came out. People acted like it was a cardinal sin that I had a friend who was gay, but everyone,
everyone
, made it absolutely clear that I’d better not be gay myself or my career was over. I had to stay with Emily, and I had to stay away from you.”

What he was saying sank into me slowly. He’d
wanted
to do it again?

Of course, I guess I’d always known that if Owen had been gay, the wrestling would have been difficult to impossible. But he wasn’t gay so that was a moot point. Unless it wasn’t.

He was rubbing my hand with his thumb. He raised it to his mouth and kissed my palm. The feel of his lips was like a zap of heat straight to my dick, but I snatched my hand away and scrambled backward on the couch.

“Owen, stop it. You just said it yourself—you can’t give up wrestling, so what’s the point?”

He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it, put it down on the coffee table with a slam of his palm. “Yes. I can.”

I looked at it. A wrestling career and marriage were on one side. On the other side was an English degree—and me. My heart started to pound. I felt scared, really scared, at the magnitude of what that sheet of paper represented. I’d sat in those bleachers watching Owen become a star for the past six years. I knew he lived and breathed it. It was way bigger than me, maybe bigger than both of us.

“That’s not fair to you,” I whispered.

He scooted toward me until our knees were touching. He took my face in his hands and made me look at him.

“Listen,” he said. His eyes were rock steady on mine. “I. Love. You. Thinking about you with someone else… it makes me certifiable. I… I wanted to kill that guy last night. And then you told me you were moving to New York…. I’ve thought about a life without you, Jordy, and I don’t care how many damn championships there are in it, I don’t want that life.”

“But—”

“
I don’t want that life
.”

I was shaking. Somewhere deep in my lizard brain hope was waking up and unfurling and sniffing at the air tentatively. But I was also terrified. I didn’t know if this was the best of all possible outcomes or the worst. Possibly it was both.

“I want to be with you, you and me, together, as a couple,” he said, using his absolutely committed-Owen-Nelson voice. “Because that’s for the rest of our lives. And that’s more important to me than anything else. I can live without wrestling.”

“Oh, God,” I whispered. “But it’s your gift. You’ve worked so hard for it.”

“I have worked hard for it. But you, Jordy….” He pulled my hand to his chest, as if willing me to hear him. “
You
are my gift.”

I was in a complete brain freeze. I wanted to believe him, but I wasn’t sure I should. What kind of person would I be if I let Owen give up his dreams? Even if he did want me like he said he did, and I was still totally on the fence about that one, at some point he’d hate me for taking away his big shot. Wouldn’t he?

“Say yes, Jordan,” he said, shifting closer.

“No,” I said.

Owen smiled. “Close enough.” And then he kissed me.

His lips were soft on mine, gentle. I told myself I should pull away, really I did, but it probably would have required a team of wild horses and a shot of Thorazine
. Owen Nelson was kissing me
.

All the things he’d said were rattling around in my brain, and I knew the discussion was far from over. But as he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me against his chest, all warm and safe and stronger than a mighty locomotive, and as he teased my lips with slow, sucking kisses, everything faded away except for one bright shining thing: he wanted me.