31. Jordan

THIRTY-ONE

The worst partabout this week is that I don't know what the fuck to do. Should I be trying to call Blaise? Or would that be harassment? He made it pretty clear when he walked away that he wasn't happy with me, so I assumed the ball was in his court to make the next move… but maybe I should give him some kind of sign I want to make up?

If he even wants to make up.

Fuck, what if he wants to end things? What if what he said about making his decision after I've made mine meant that he was looking for a reason to break up?

My teammates are sick to death of hearing me ask these questions. Their answers, every time, have been to call him or text him. That he was already upset before our fight, that he said things he didn't mean. That he'd found out I'd been keeping secrets from him. As Boyle put it, "You were both douchenozzles, but he's the one going through a hard time right now, while your life is beer and beaches. You gotta be the one to step up."

Blaise's friends have all refused to give me any information, though they weren't assholes about it. I got the feeling they want us to sort things out, so maybe Blaise hasn't told them it's definitely over. That's gotta be a good sign, right?

Calla and Xera, who were kind of shared friends, both told me I needed to work out what I wanted before asking Blaise to change his life for me. And fuck, that's hard. I don't know what I want.

None of these questions have easy answers, and I still don't know what to do on Thursday morning. I blew off class because my brain is too full of things that are more important than education, but staring at the ceiling of my dorm room isn't helping me work out the answers to my problems.

My phone rings, and my heart leaps the way it has every time in the past few days, but it's not Blaise, just Mila. I ignore it like I have been for three days and return to my contemplation of the ceiling. Somewhere in the cracked plaster, there has to be a clue about what my next steps are.

Mila calls again, and again I ignore it, but when she calls for a third time, I huff and swipe to answer.

"Wha—"

"Do not ever ignore my calls like that again, Jordan Stephen Marks, do you understand me? Or I swear to god, I'll make you regret it until your dying damn day."

Yikes. She's in a mood.

"Sorry," I mumble. "But… I'm sufferiiiiiing." The word draws out on a sigh. There are only a few people I'd whine like this to, and my big sis is one of them. Even if she's not always all that sympathetic.

"Yeah, whatever, I know. Where are you?"

"Uh… in class?"

"Try again."

Fuck, she knows me too well. She's always been able to pick it when I lie.

"I'm moping in my dorm," I admit.

"Perfect. Come down and meet me."

Sitting up so fast, my head spins, I say, "What?"

Her longsuffering sigh is a thing of art. "Jordy. Come downstairs. And meet me. Now."

"You're here?" I swing my legs off the bed and look around for shoes, then realize I'm only in boxers still. Switching the phone to speaker mode, I toss it on the bed and grab my jeans.

"Yes, I'm here. I flew in to see you, so the goddamn least you can do is come downstairs and meet me." She ends the call before I can reply.

I've never gotten dressed so fast in my life, and my fly is still undone as I race down the stairs and out the door. At first, I can't see her, but then a couple of girls move out of the way, and there she is, talking to a guy I don't know.

"Mila!" I call, and she turns, her face lighting up in a smile. I reach her in record time, and I swear, I didn't know I needed a hug from my sister this much.

She gives me one last squeeze, then lets me go and declares, "You stink."

"Hey!" My injured tone is real. "I have problems, Mila. I need help with how to talk to Blaise, not insults."

"Roommate problems?" the guy she was talking to—who I'd forgotten about—interjects. "Because I'm an expert on that."

I blink at him. "Uhhhh… no."

He shrugs. "Too bad. I'm Jay."

"Jordan." I glance between them. "Do you two know each other?" I thought he was just a random guy who stopped to flirt with her, but maybe?—

"Nope," Mila says cheerfully. "Jay was telling me about the protest that's happening this weekend." She waves a flyer I didn't even notice she was holding. Maybe I'm losing touch with reality.

"Oh. Well, it's not roommate trouble, but it is guy trouble." Yes, I've reached the level of disaster where I tell a complete stranger about my woes. Right after my sister told him that I stink.

To be fair, I might not have showered properly after practice yesterday. It was more of a quick rinse.

He shrugs. "My troublesome roommate's a guy. Is yours a jocky gamer stoner whose elitist fuck family is hell-bent on destroying the world we live in?"

I don't even know how to answer that. "Um. No."

"Too bad. We could have exchanged tips. Good luck anyway." He walks off, stopping not far away to offer someone else a flyer.

"What was that?" I ask my sister.

"Just because you've been lucky with your roommates doesn't mean we all are," she chides, still watching Jay. "But I think his problems might run a little deeper than incompatibility."

"That's great, but can we focus on me?" I hesitate. "And maybe a little bit on why you're here?"

Mila tosses her hair, exactly the same as mine except long, and gives me an incredulous look. "Are you kidding me? You call me all upset and saying you've fucked things up and don't know what to do, then ignore all my texts and calls for three days? What the fuck did you think I'd do, take up making friendship bracelets? You're damn lucky I didn't call the cops and ask them to do a wellness check or something."

"Calling my RA would probably be easier. And faster," I point out.

"Jordy!"

I shut my mouth. She sounds so mad, I don't think this is the time to remind her I prefer to be called Jordan now.

"Where can we talk?"

My mind blanks. My dorm room is twenty feet away, but aside from not showering properly yesterday, I also haven't been taking care of my stuff. I don't want to give her another reason to yell. Plus, my roommate will be finishing his morning classes soon, and sometimes he comes back after.

"What about under that tree?" I suggest. "It's a nice day."

"That bad, huh? Fine. Let's enjoy the fresh air. Since you're alive and relatively coherent, my flight back is at four. I could only get today off from work."

I wince. Maybe it's time for me to stop with the self-pity, since it's made my sister disrupt her life. "I'm sorry," I say sincerely. "Thanks for coming, but you really didn't have to."

Her face softens as we settle onto the grass under a shady tree. "I know. But this is what big sisters are for. So… tell me everything from the beginning. I could barely understand you the other day."

She interrupts me only once, when I mention the scout. "Yeah, about that… again, congratulations. Jamie's been super conflicted about whether he can be excited about that or if he needs to be worried about you. But we both thought that wasn't what you wanted?"

"I don't know!" I practically wail, getting the attention of a group of girls walking past. I muster a halfhearted smile and wave, but they still look at me weird.

"I can see we have a lot of work to do here," Mila mutters. "Continue, and we'll come back to this."

I get through the rest, cringing when I tell her what Blaise said, then I give her big puppy dog eyes. "Help me. What do I do?"

If her expression is anything to go by, I've given her indigestion. "For starters, you need to shower. Then you need to call Blaise. Dumbass."

"But—"

"No. None of this gets sorted out if the two of you don't talk about it. Yes, that's going to be a painful conversation. Yes, your feelings might get a little bruised… or his. But you sulking in your dorm room and him doing whatever the fuck he's doing isn't going to give you closure."

"I don't want closure." That means breaking up and letting go. "I just want things the way they were."

"Where you were keeping secrets from him, he resented your attempts to ‘fix' his life, and your relationship was a secret?"

Ouch. Words really hurt.

"Okay… not like that, exactly."

She sighs. "Jordy?—"

"Jordan."

"Jordan, I love you. Honestly and sincerely, if I could choose a different brother, I wouldn't. You and me, we were a team, always. But right now, you suck."

"Definitely feeling the love," I mutter.

"No. Listen to me. What Blaise said during your fight was shitty and inexcusable. Honestly, if you tell me right now that he talks to you like that all the time, then not only will I apologize to you and advise you to dump him, I'll also go find him and tell him exactly what I think of him."

"He doesn't," I assure her. "He never has before."

"Okay, so—and I want to preface this by saying that when you talk to him, if he doesn't apologize for what he said, my advice to dump him still stands—but the guy was having a bad day, week, month. Right? And then he finds out that his boyfriend's been keeping secrets from him that kinda have an impact on his future, and that nearly everyone else already knew those secrets. So he's wondering if people think he's a gold digger or whatever, and then bam, here's the extra whammy of ‘you know those future plans we talked about? I might change them in a way that will also impact your life.' He had a lot to think about and no time to process."

"Fine. I get it. I need to talk to Blaise, find out where he stands, at least. But what if he wants me to decide now about the pros? I'm not ready to make that decision, Mila. I…" I suck in a deep breath. "I thought I'd decided years ago, but now that it's a real possibility, I think maybe I was…" My gaze slides away from hers. "Maybe I was scared that if I wanted it, if I went for it, I wouldn't make it, and then I'd have to deal with being a failure." I shudder. "I don't like who that makes me."

"What do you mean?"

I look at my hands in my lap. "Uncle Matt ran away when things got hard, and here I am, afraid to even try the hard things."

Mila's silent for a second, and my stomach churns. Does she hate me now? She hasn't spoken to Uncle Matt since she was fifteen. I glance up to find tears in her eyes.

"Oh, Jordy," she whispers. "You're nothing like Uncle Matt."

"But—"

"When he left, it took him years to decide to even contact us again. Uncle Luke kept tabs on him, and he went right back to the life he'd been living before Mom and Dad died. He walked out on his husband and two dependent children—what he did affected three other people. You decided between two possible careers, the outcome of which—at the time, anyway—affected only you. And it's not like you gave up baseball. You've still been training and working just as hard as you would have been if you'd been aiming for the pros, you just chose different future goals. That's not a bad thing. You planning a career in a different field, knowing how hard professional sports are to break into, is smart. It's also not a bad thing if you change your mind now."

"I'd still want to finish my degree," I tell her, but my mind is distracted, processing what she said.

"Good. I think that's a smart call, too, and I know the dads will agree with me." She gives my knee a squeeze. "If you decide to give the pros a shot, your future career in events management will still be there when you're done. The thing is, though, you don't have to decide now. You're not even eligible for the draft for another year, and you just said you wouldn't want to go for it until the year after."

My mood, which was lifting, thuds back to the depths of hell. "That doesn't solve the problem with Blaise. What do I tell him?"

She leans back against the tree, lips pursed thoughtfully. "Remind me… the plan was always for you two to fly under the radar while you were playing ball, because it would only be until you graduate and neither of you wanted the attention, right?"

I nod. "Right."

"And if you do decide to go pro, would you want to be an out player? Or not?"

I think about it. "I'd want to be out," I say slowly. "Whatever gender my partner is, I wouldn't want to keep them secret under that kind of scrutiny and for what could be a long time." How could I? What if we wanted to live together or get married?

Mila shrugs. "Problem solved."

"No, it's not." I glare at her in exasperation. "First, I don't know if I want to go pro, and you just finished telling me I don't have to decide yet. And second, what if Blaise decides he doesn't want to live the life of an athlete's partner?"

The pitying look she gives me makes me feel like we're still little kids. "You're trying to answer all the questions right now, when some of them can wait. Talk to Blaise. Tell him you're not sure what you want to do, but you have a year before you need to give it serious consideration. This time next year, if you decide baseball is what you want, you can come out your senior year. Do it before baseball season starts, so by the time you're actually on the field, it's old news. People will have almost a whole year to get used to it before the draft." She grins. "You're not the first bisexual ball player, you know."

Fuck. She's right.

"And," she continues, "in another year, Blaise will be starting that internship, right? So if he's not around that much, the media might not pay that much attention to him. But this also gives him time to think about what he wants. You guys haven't been together that long, and the pros have only been in the mix for literal days, Jordy. You both need to consider your options and how much you're willing to sacrifice, and you have a whole year to do that before decisions need to be made."

My sister is a goddamn genius.

"But none of that can happen if you don't talk to him. So definitely call or go over." She wrinkles her nose. "But shower first."