Sitting on hot turf is rough on your bum. The wild heat we had just six days before Thanksgiving came from nowhere. I would lean back with my hands behind me, but then that hot black rubber under the fake grass would stick to my hands, and I don’t want to look like Swamp Thing in front of the girl's lacrosse team from Buckhannon.
Gilmore didn’t seem to care though. He still, even with all this turf stuck to him from the sweat beating from his forehead down to his palms, smiled that ear to ear grin. He always had this smile on, and I always gave him hell for it. I could say the most horrid thing to him, and he would still smile. He said something about the girls in the field beside us, but it was his normal “talk but take no action” things he would say.
“Alright,” I said back to him, meeting his gaze at them. “Next time they break for water, walk over and talk to one.” I knew what was coming next.
“You know, I’m suddenly sick and can’t walk right now,” he said to the sky, now avoiding looking in their direction. Gilmore, who shared my first name, had to use his last name. He didn’t mind though, as he was in love with his name. He even had a tattoo of the initial G on his right calf. He skipped leg day the next day at the gym because he said it “hurt,” after getting his ink. Everybody called him a pussy.
Despite the more idiotic things he would say, he was still no doubt good-looking. Although the smile was his defining look, he also had a slender body with lean muscles all over and short hair he always seemed to keep combed. Everybody knew it, and we all told him. It filled his ego, but he never embraced his looks when we told him it was his best quality. So, when he would say he wished he had a girlfriend, we told him he didn’t need to wish, just talk to one and ask her out.
Even with all the sweat covering me, I still felt the need to pee. I was dead tired after playing goal, trying extra hard to block every shot Mike King, my old hockey mate, sent my way. Not only did he have a hard slap shot, but he could whip that ball fast also. The bruises on my inner thighs from his shots were already starting to sprout. They started as yellow, large spots beneath the skin, and within a day, they would be purple.
The bathrooms were on the far side of the fields, a good ten-minute walk from where we sat. Behind us, the last of our teammates from our pick-up game picked up their gear and zipped their bags shut. ZZZWWWUUUPPP. Coach Cato, with his incredibly pale bald head, nodded at us and said he would see us in the spring when the regular season started.
Now just the two of us on the sidelines, I said to Gilmore “I gotta go. I’ve been holding this in since our second water break.” I looked over to the fieldhouse bathrooms, built of gray cinder blocks that trapped every degree of heat inside its walls.
“Isn’t that the bathroom coach Newman gave you a pep talk in,” he asked, joining my gaze.
“Stall to stall, while we were both taking a shit.”
He started laughing, and although it wasn’t funny in the moment when it happened, I laughed too. “What was it he said at the very end? I always forget.”
Still looking at the bathrooms, I tell him. “He stood up after he finished his pep talk, where he told me this was going to me my game. That I was going to have a shutout and I did. Then he walked to the sink, washed his hands, and said to me ‘Get all that shit out of you now while you can. It will make you faster on your feet.’ and then he walked out.”’
“Bwwwaaaahahaha,” came from Gilmore as he fell to his back. Some of the girls looked over at us, surprised to hear his laughing. His grey, sweat soaked t-shirt that said Big Shot Lacrosse 7v7 had black turf all down his back now.
I stood up, and noticed the O in shot on his shirt was a bit faded and looked like an I instead. I pointed at his shirt, said loudly “big shit,” and walked towards the bathroom house. Behind me, his laugh died down and his face reddened, the girls now looking over at him.
Inside the bathroom, it was humid. Like a sauna had been turned on as a way to torture any athlete looking to take a tinkle. Even the sink shot out hot water from its knob marked cold. Tile floor that didn’t match the rest of the building created an odd sense in there. In the stall closest to the door is where I sat and listened to coach give me the wildest pep talk ever, comparing Saint Albans High to the “turd coming from his behind,” and saying, “I would flush them with my goal keeping that night.”
The fresh air outside felt like a brand-new world. The heat was still there, but I could breathe again. The sun had fully come out now, shinning its brightest it had all day. The green fields were full of color. Yellow, white, orange, blue and red ran through various parts of the fields, creating a mural of sports fields we could step into and play on.
Across everything, at the far end of our field we had been playing on, I see the gray shirt of Gilmore, and another figure, dressed in black athletic attire with some maroon on the shoulders, passing a lacrosse ball together. I could have sworn that the rest of our team had left, gone home for the rest of the day, but maybe I had been mistaken.
Gilmores stick was his classic gray, two black stripes at the bottom where his hands would go. His netting at the top was purple, his favorite color. My eyes followed the ball as he passed it to his mystery partner. The little white ball arced in the air, falling into a strange netting connected to a plain black stick. I didn’t recognize it, so I assumed someone on the team had gotten a new one and was testing it out.
But this mystery person, they were so unfamiliar looking. I was still far away, but I could see this person had long hair let down, going to about the middle of their back. It was light brown, almost a mix of blond and brown. Who is this? I couldn’t recall anybody from our team with hair this long. Then, they faced their body more towards me to catch a bad pass from Gilmore. I could see now, the curve protruding from their chest, a lighter chin. A missing Adams apple. Only one thought came to mind when I saw this. No fucking way. He was actually passing with a lacrosse girl from George Washington High.
As I approached, I made sure to steer away from them, curving towards my stuff to not disturb them. Gilmore smiled that Gilmore smile. I could see he was happy in the moment, and I wasn’t going to take that from him. Hell, I hope he would do the same for me if the roles were reversed. She was his type. Same height as him, smiling just like him from cheek corner to cheek corner, both left-handed. He was in a trance looking at her.
That trance broke once he saw me. He walked away from their game of catch as soon as I got near my gear. He came over, his smile still there. Behind him stood the girl who now had the most confused look I had ever seen on a girl's face. I hope he isn’t coming to talk to me.
“What's going on,” I asked him as he approached me.
“Dude, did you see me,” he joyfully asked me, nodding his head slightly back towards her.
“Yeah, I did see you. My only question is why did you walk away?” The girl saw me look back at her and met my eyes. With Gilmore not paying attention, I motioned with my eyes for her to come over.
Gilmore began to say something, but I cut him off by motioning to him that she was walking to us. As she reached us, I could see she was barely paying attention to anything but him. The Gilmore charm had been worked on her.
He spoke up, introducing me to her. “This is Trevor, our head goalie.”
“Nice to meet you, “I told her as I reached my hand out to shake hers. “You must play for GW.”
Her hands were soft, barely wet with sweat. “Yes, I do. My names Allison.” Her voice was slightly raspy due to thirst. She smiled back to Gilmore and asked, “both of your names are Trevor?”
“Yep. That’s just how cool the name is,” he replied through that smile.
She asked Gilmore where we were from. She smiled at him and slightly tilted her head.
“We are from Hurricane,” he said to her, pointing in the direction of our town, as if it was the nearest building.
“That’s cool,” she replied to him. She was standing closer to him than I was, so I took the hint.
“Hey, I’m gonna start putting my gear up,” I told him, turning myself towards my bag. “We don’t have to leave yet, I just don’t want to leave it laying out in the open.”
As I slipped away from them, I heard him say “that's a good idea, and I’m getting hungry anyways.” He moved towards his bag by mine, once again leaving her alone. This time, however, she didn’t wait for a queue and followed behind us.
“Yeah, I’m hungry as well,” she said to him, somewhat sticking her chest out towards him. “I don’t really want to go with the team though.”
This is his chance. There is no doubt in my mind he is about to invite her to dine with us. I am even willing to sit alone and give them privacy if he does this. This is the moment we have all dreamt of. The time has finally come.
He looked at her, met her eyes and locked their gaze. He opened his mouth, and this came out. “That sucks.” He did not follow it up with anything else, didn’t gesture with his body she should ask to join us. All he said was that. Somehow, she didn’t walk away. She stayed there, locking eyes with him, waiting for something else to be said.
The girls at the field beside us started to make their way to their cars. Gear packed and hanging on their backs, sticks poking out of some bags and held in the hands of others. Allison saw this, held her head low, and said “I guess my team is heading out.”
“Seems that way,” I replied to her. “Our team left a little while ago. We had a couple stragglers stay, but I don’t see them anymore.” Nobody spoke for a moment, leaving us to just look at one another.
“Well Trev,” Gilmore said to me, even though I told him I don’t like that name. “I guess we should be going as well.” He smiled to Allison and put his final nail in the coffin. “See ya.”
She smiled back, nodded her head to me, and said bye to Gilmore. We threw our bags over our shoulders, and walked in the direction of my Subaru that I drove us in. Part of me wanted to tell Gilmore he was walking home, so that he could think about what he had done today.
We reached my car that we nicknamed “the oven” due to the heat it trapped in its black cloth seats and dark interior on hot days. I opened the trunk and threw our bags in, then moved to the driver's seat and Gilmore took shotgun.
I started the oven up, and Bob Segar started to sing to us Mainstreet. “Let me just change this tune,” Gilmore said, reaching for the radio dial as he settled into his seat. I slapped his hand from the blue dial. He looked at me, and I shook my head at him.
Once both doors were shut and it was only us who could hear each other, I asked him a question that could answer all my questions. “Did you hit your head today?”
As we drove off, Bob rang out loudly, “down on main streeeeeeet,” with electric guitars wailing along with him.
Add comment
Comments