Page 33 of Striking Range

“And now you do?” He sounds so instantaneously enraged that it makes me laugh.

“Not necessarily,” I explain. “You asked.”

I watch him promptly deflate. “Oh.”

There is a beat or two where we just sit here, and in this short amount of time, a fear I never considered before works its way up my spine, spreading throughout my body.

“Does it bother you? That I’m gay?” I ask him.

Everett makes a displeased face. “No, why would it?”

“Because we’ve kissed.”

His sharp features flush a bright red, eyes shyly sliding away from mine to stare at literally anything else. Like a middle school boy being confessed to for the first time, Everett appears to look, in this moment, so sweet to me.

“No, it doesn’t bother me.” He fiddles with the fabric of his jeans. Even his knuckles look to be tinted red. “But that Jacob guy… You, uh… He was hitting on you?”

“Yes.”

He takes a deep breath. “And you want to go out with him?”

“I’m not sure.”

Another pause of silence sits stagnant between us.

We are sharing this moment—a moment I can’t quite describe. He’s trying to read something in me that I don’t understand myself, and therefore cannot reveal at will. He’s fragile today, and maybe most days recently.

Eventually he nods, finding whatever he was looking for or giving up entirely before he says, “Let’s watch a movie.”

So, we do. And throughout the two hours we slowly relax, our guards falling to ash and our thighs pressed together. My head slowly falls to rest on his shoulder.

Just as it’s always been.

The game is tense. We’re in the third set, having taken the first and lost the second. Dante, who stands across from me on the sand, is sweaty and nervous—just as anxious as I am.

Coach Myers is damn near biting his clipboard, whispering in Heidi’s ear every three seconds, critiquing us, no doubt.

Sweat drips down my face, the small scoreboard showing 14-13. Two more points and we win. It’s our ball, and Dante serves, sending it to the back right of the sand.

Number 78 grabs it before it hits the ground, bumping it to his teammate to set. But by the time he’s ready to spike, I’ve already read his next move, prepared to block.

I slam the ball down hard on the other side of the net, cutting it to the right on a hard, close angle. There is no time to stop the momentum, to get beneath it.

The whistle blows; 15-13. One more point.

The sun is cruel as it beats down on us, and as I peek back at Dante, panting and full of pent-up anxiety, I call for a timeout.

Over the scantily set-up loudspeaker, the announcer calls out, “Sinclair with point 15. One more point and they take the game. Timeout called on Sinclair’s side of the court.”

I’m grabbing Dante by the arm before the announcement is over, pulling him to the back of the sand and away from the net.

“Hey, let’s take a moment, yeah?” I ask, doing my best to soothe him.

He nods, glaring across the court.

I continue, reassuring him as best I can. “We got this. It’s one point; we’ve done it a million times before. But we can’t take anything if we’re wired to the hundreds.”

Dante’s hard eyes find mine, all heavy pants and tapping feet, covered in sweat and borderline dismantled. We stare at each other. We have not been able to take more than a one-point lead this entire set, and things feel nothing if not bleak.