46. Davis

Davis was listening to an audiobook and perusing Jeremy’s spice cabinet when he felt the footsteps behind him. He turned around, and his jaw nearly fell to the floor. “Jeremy, I know you’ve made jokes about baseball pants, but did you have to order them in that size?”

“Do you not like them?” Jeremy preened, shifting his weight from one hip to the other. The pants were so tight that Davis could almost see the definition of all four muscles of his quadriceps. He had spent time studying prefixes and whatever the other one was called— the ending of words— in high school, hoping that it would give him an advantage on the SAT. It had not worked, but the word came back to him, unbidden, as he studied the curve of Jeremy’s thigh.

Damn, he was a lucky man.

“No, I like them,” Davis said, groping around on the counter to find the seltzer he had forgotten about. Jeremy’s eyelashes fluttered. As rough as he could be, the man was always desperate for praise. “You’re relieving a lot of fantasies I had in high school when I watched my best friend on the baseball team.”

“You were into your best friend?”

“No!” Davis felt his cheeks flush. “He was in love with one of our other friends, but those boys from visiting schools? Well…” Davis finished his seltzer and crushed the can, some remnant of his closeted high school self. “I could pretend that there was a guy on the other school’s team that was like me.” He looked away. “That’s stupid.”

Jeremy crossed the room and slipped his palm to Davis’s cheek. “It’s not stupid, baby.” A light kiss. “We all dreamed. You just had different ones.”

Davis drove them down to Denver, only stopping to pick up Foster and Flo. Foster spent most of the time in the back seat texting someone while Flo maintained a one-woman monologue about the market pressures of the craft beer industry. Jeremy, as was usual, made sarcastic jabs at Foster and empathetic comments to Flo. Davis, also as usual, stayed quiet, focused on adjusting the music so everyone would be able to have a conversation. Parking was easy, courtesy of Emmy, who had pre-purchased parking for everyone, which Jeremy had explained was the way she covered for her own anxiety. The whole group gathered at the gate, and Davis took a moment to take it all in. He had a group of friends. He was queer. He had a group of friends who knew he was queer and didn’t care. A flash, just the briefest instant of that old, terrifying thought— I want a drink — then it was gone.

Because Jeremy was poking him in the thigh and asking him where the tickets were, and Davis found himself embraced in the hug of a large, blond man.

“Ryan is still learning how to behave in public,” Jeremy said, rolling his eyes as Davis extricated himself. “Maybe one day he’ll be housebroken.” Jeremy shot Ryan a look, like this was a conversation that he had with him a dozen times. “Down, boy.”

Ryan rolled his eyes behind thick glasses. “Only she can tell me that.” Emmy grinned and pulled a baseball cap down on her head, looking tentatively excited, just as Davis did the first time he had gone to a gay bar, not sure if he would belong or be accepted.

Now that they had admitted that they were something to each other and Jeremy’s friends knew him as Jeremy’s boyfriend, there was a new, unfamiliar need for Davis to show Jeremy things he liked. What was terrifying, though, was Davis’s constant worry that what he liked sucked.

His gram had always turned on the radio to listen to Pittsburgh sports teams, and something about the way that Greg Brown called the games was comforting, a family member whose voice was always in the kitchen. Baseball made sense to Davis in the same way that nature did. It was in his bones. Hockey moved too fast, football a touch too violent, but baseball was perfect for a quiet kid who struggled with reading and was prone to spending long periods of time by himself. It helped, too, that Davis was decent at the sport, giving him a way to make friends in a community he was comfortable in. Davis spent most of his time in classes, with his head down, hoping a teacher didn’t call on him or counting paragraphs until the one he would be reading aloud, practicing to himself so he didn’t mispronounce a word.

So when Dec and Flo had asked about a baseball game, brought the idea up to the entire group, Davis felt a familiar sense of belonging, a chance to show this group of Jeremy’s friends that he wasn’t stupid, that he was competent. The group found their seats without much struggle, with Jeremy telling Foster that no, he didn’t want ice cream in a tiny helmet at eleven a.m. and Foster getting the ice cream anyway. Davis settled in and took in the familiar sensation of a baseball game. Nothing would beat the first time he and Gram went to Three Rivers, a trip for just the two of them, the Pirates so bad that they could afford decent tickets, popcorn, and an IC Lite for Gram.

Davis looked up at the wispy clouds drifting over the Colorado sky and hoped that Gram could see him now. Surrounded by friends with a soda, a hot dog, and a platter of nachos with extra jalapenos. He smiled and took a bite of his hot dog, being careful not to splatter ketchup on his Clemente jersey, one of the reminders of home he had packed up in a truck for his cross-country move.

“What are you thinkin’ about?” Jeremy asked, curls being ruffled in the slight breeze.

“My gram.” Davis smiled. “She loved baseball. She died when I was sixteen, and every time I turn on a game, I think about her.”

“I think about my mom every time I’m in an art museum,” Jeremy said, his voice dropping to a softer register. “We carry their memories on, eh?” He reached over and slid his palm onto Davis’s thigh. Instinctively, and with immediate regret, Davis pulled his leg away and looked behind him.

“Baby,” Jeremy whispered, casually moving his left hand to the soda between them. “It’s okay here.”

“Are you sure?” Davis felt a rush of sweat, like the first time he knew he was going to kiss a man, a classmate in evolutionary biology who had asked Davis to study at his apartment. The blinds were down, their textbooks open, and Davis had looked up from highlighting Thomas Hunt Morgan’s name and seen Tim looking back at him and knew. Emotions had warred in his body, excitement and fear, and Tim had smiled and leaned over and taken the highlighter from Davis’s hand. Similar battles were occurring in his stomach now. His trust in Jeremy wrangled with the familiarity of keeping that space between him and Jeremy in the forest.

“Nathaniel,” Jeremy said in a low voice, causing goose bumps to spring up along Davis’s neck, bringing him back to the present moment. “I was dragged to the Pride game last year with Dec. Denver is an accepting place.”

“Dec is…?” Davis let the question hang in the air as he watched Dec’s tattooed fingers brush along the back of Phoebe’s neck.

“Yeah. So is Phoebe. So is Lina.” Jeremy nodded at the woman with an undercut who was trying to wave down the cotton candy seller.

“Oh,” Davis said. He felt stupid, to not realize this about Jeremy’s friends. He looked down the row at Lina, who noticed him looking and smiled, her eyebrow piercing winking in the sun of the midday game. Yeah, he probably could have guessed that Lina was queer, even though Davis’s gaydar (queerdar?) probably wasn’t calculated correctly, having been developed in Anthracite Springs and Morgantown, West Virginia, instead of New York or San Fran. He looked at Dec and Phoebe, the way their bodies were drawn together like a pair of magnets, and felt some type of connection. Phoebe whispered something to Declan, popping a small gummy candy into her mouth, and Dec rolled his eyes but smiled, wrapping his hand around her forearm and squeezing. Dec looked up and made eye contact, and Davis felt embarrassed, felt like he was caught looking at a private moment. But Dec simply smiled and gave him a small head nod, the same one that he had given Davis the night of Foster’s party. Retroactively, Davis realized what that head nod had meant.

Davis had thought it was a standard head nod, the kind that straight men gave each other instead of communicating with words. But now Davis realized that Dec’s head nod was a form of solidarity, a way of saying I see you and We’re part of the same team. And while Davis would never wear colors that weren’t black and gold, he did feel like he was on the same team as Dec, wearing a black shirt with a purple logo— and Phoebe, in a plain white T-shirt, and Lina, in a tank top that showed off an impressive shoulder tattoo and a silver sports bra. A reminder that he wasn’t ever alone.

“But it’s up to you, babe.” Jeremy crossed his legs, his feet pointing away from Davis.

“No.” Davis swallowed, then took Jeremy’s hand. “I can try new things.” Jeremy shot him a hot smile. “After all, you’re at a sports event.”

“Watch yourself,” Jeremy replied, squeezing his hand.

“Counting on it.”