We played ping-pong in gym for the next two weeks. At that point, we were supposed to rotate to paddleball, but after checking with Kevin, my dad decided that wouldn’t be a good thing for him. He’d had his cast off, finally, but paddleball involved four guys outside on a blacktop court, all hustling around chasing after a fast-moving ball, often getting in each other’s way and tripping over each other. That wasn’t the best activity for a kid who’d only just gotten a cast off his wrist.
So it was decided we’d play ping-pong for another two weeks. Which was okay for us. We loved playing ping-pong. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. At the end of the two weeks in each activity, the coaches had set up a tournament among everyone playing that sport. Kevin and I had kicked ass. We were better than the other kids. Playing every day in the gym had been great for us. We’d learned how to work with each other. Doubles ping-pong, competitive doubles ping-pong, is very much a team effort. If you want to win, you have to play well individually, but you have to help your teammate as well. I’d learned to move quickly out of Kevin’s way after hitting my shot, and I’d learned how to set him up for his shots, too. He’d gotten even better at his slams, and was now slamming the ball not just really hard, but slamming it to the part of the table where the guy he was hitting to would run into his partner trying to get to it. That guy would then hit awkward returns, when he could return the ball at all, and even I, a true defensive player, would sometimes have easy slams to hit as a result. We really meshed as players. He was constantly high-fiving me. We did a lot of grinning. We had a lot of fun. A lot of it was because we were trying to help each other, thinking about our partner every time we hit the ball. It was just great.
In our last game at the end of our first two-week session of ping-pong, we played in the championship game for our group of players. The two guys we faced were both good. They worked well together. They were friends who’d picked each other as partners like most of the gym class had done. They weren’t jocks, just ordinary kids, juniors like I was, but there seemed to be a chemistry between them, and they were better ping-pong players than anyone else we’d faced. I could tell, warming up against them, they’d played a lot and knew what they were doing.
I started off serving. I had a decent serve. I used lots of spin, trying to put my opponent on the defensive right away. A lot of guys didn’t know how to handle a spin serve and either returned it into the net or off the table, or sort of hit it weakly to the center of the table, where Kevin could tee off on it. Very frequently, we got a quick five points when I was serving, and we always set ourselves up so I’d be the first server for our team so as to take advantage of that. Kevin, being shorter, didn’t have as deadly a serve as I did.
These guys we were playing now weren’t intimidated by the spin at all, and the points were three-two, us, when I’d finished my turn. Not how it usually went at all.
They switched places at their end of the table and the guy now serving to me had a fast, low serve that skimmed over the net and would sometimes be to my forehand, sometimes to my backhand. It was sneaky fast and he placed it well, usually near the back edge of the table. I had to be on my toes just to return it and had trouble placing it where I wanted to in order to get Kevin set up for easy slams.
These guys were both good, and the game was much tighter than we were used to. What was to our great advantage, I think, was that we were more competitive than they were. Kevin, as usual, was really aggressive. He hated to lose, at anything, and his attitude had rubbed off on me at the table. I eventually got the hang of the tendencies of the guy who always served to me, Kevin was hot, and the score started tilting in our favor. We ended up beating them 21-16. They congratulated us. Everyone in the gym that had been watching, which was pretty much everyone as this was the final match, applauded, and it was time to hit the showers.
That was when Dad had called us into his office before we left the locker room. “Guys, your group is all going to paddleball next. I’d rather you didn’t do that, Kevin. Too much chance for you to get hurt. You two can play badminton, or stay with ping-pong another two weeks. I think that would be better than tennis. You’ll get a chance at that a month from now, but I think staying inside would be better until your arm is more fully healed. I’m going to leave the choice up to you guys. What would you like to do?”
Kevin had looked at me and raised his eyebrows. I was loving ping-pong, loving playing with Kevin as my partner, and so had told them both I’d love to stay with ping-pong another two weeks, and so that’s where we had again been assigned.
We’d stayed with ping-pong while all the other guys in our group rotated to paddleball, and again we had a blast. We went the entire period having lots of fun without losing a match, but because some of these guys hadn’t played doubles before and we’d just had a two-week bath in the game prior to facing these teams, we didn’t think we were anything special because of that. It was just they’d had less experience playing doubles. We could just goof around in a lot of our games and still win.
However, even being undefeated, we hadn’t played everyone. Just the luck of the draw, because the coaches assigned new matches by who was done playing their current match each day. We’d played and beaten everyone during those two weeks except for one team, and today we were now playing them in this rotation’s championship match.
Kevin joined me at my locker when we were changing into our gym clothes. I almost always dressed before he did because I got to the gym before he did, my previous class being right down the hall from the locker room. Today, he dressed, then walked to my locker. We were the only one’s still there. I was just sitting on the bench, wearing my shorts and socks and looking into my locker, seeing nothing. Kevin stood there watching me, watching me stare blankly into my locker, then asked what was up.
“I’m nervous.”
“Nervous! We’ll beat these guys like an old rug. We’ll cream them like soft butter. We’ll . . . .” He stopped because I wasn’t smiling. His own smile slowly disappeared, and he sat down on the bench next to me. “Why are you nervous?” he asked, his voice softer now and not so playful.
“Because of the guys we’re playing.”
“Tom and Brent? They’re nothing special. They’re good, but we’ll beat them, and even if we don’t, this is just fun. Why are you nervous?”
I turned my head and looked at him, then turned away. I paused, then said, “You remember that Saturday, when we both first talked?”
“Of course.”
“You remember I told you how I was being ostracized, and then broke down crying in front of the whole school because some kid said something I couldn’t handle?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, Brent’s the one who said it.”
Kevin looked at me hard, for a moment, and I saw his eyes actually darken. His expression got hard, and he said, “You want me to kick the shit out of him?”
I turned back to look at him again, at his serious face, and I couldn’t help myself. I started laughing, then roaring. Tears began running down my face. He reached over and put his arm around me, but I couldn’t stop. I laughed and laughed until my stomach started hurting, and I had to stop.
“What’s so funny?” he asked, puzzled, which started me in again.
When I could, I gasped, “You’re going to beat up Brent Colliers? He’s what, probably a foot taller and 100 pounds heavier than you are? He’s a senior and you’re a freshman. He’s on the football team and you’re . . .” I stopped because of the expression on his face. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
When I stopped, he said, “Okay, okay, so maybe I’ll just kick him in the balls.”
I started to laugh again, but I think I was laughed out and it ended up in a chuckle and then a grin.
He gave me a look and asked, “So you’re nervous because of what?”
I thought about that and didn’t really have a good answer. I did the best I could. “He brings back memories. When he said what he did, it felt to me that he was this huge guy and I was a tiny nothing. I felt like he could say or do anything and I had no possible response. I’m bigger now, but it’s hard to completely lose all those feelings of being so helpless and small. When I see him now, I always just look away. But now we’ll be playing him, and I’m afraid it’ll be like it was then, and I’ll just be a nothing out there. I won’t be able to play worth a shit, and I’ll make a fool of myself, and I’ll cause you to lose. I don’t really know how I’ll react, but I’m worried I’ll look stupid.”
Kevin didn’t answer right away, but put his arm around me again and gave me a hug. We heard steps then, and he pulled it away. Just as he did, my dad walked around the corner. “Oh, there you guys are. We’re ready out there.”
“We’re coming. Last minute strategy meeting. We’ll be there in just a minute.” Kevin smiled at my dad. I don’t think anyone’s entirely immune to his smile. Dad smiled back, said, “Hurry up,” took another glance at me, hesitated a second, then turned and left.
“Matt, we’ve got to go. Don’t worry about Brent. He can’t do or say anything, and you’re just psyching yourself out. Come on. Win or lose, it doesn’t matter. Let’s have fun.”
He stood up. I quickly finished dressing and joined him, and we hurried out to the gym.
Everyone was standing around our table. Brent and Tom had already been warming up and were ready to go. Kevin and I hit the ball back and forth for about a minute, and then Dad asked if we were ready. I looked at Kevin, then we both nodded.
We pinged for serve, and they won. Dad assigned an assistant coach as referee, then told us all to shake hands and get started. We walked over to our opponents and I shook Tom’s hand and wished him good luck, then reached out my hand toward Brent without looking up to meet his eyes. When he didn’t take it immediately, I reluctantly raised my eyes to his, worried about what I might see. If he was looking at me disdainfully or disgustedly, if he was refusing to shake with me, I wasn’t sure how I’d react.
He was looking at me, but I was surprised to see some hesitancy in his expression. He met my eyes then, and quickly reached for my hand. He let go almost immediately after we’d touched. “Good luck,” he said. “You too,” I responded flatly.
We played. It was a one game do-or-die final. No best two of three or anything. One game. They were very good, by far the best team we’d played in these two weeks. We were good too, though. It was a tough match.
I played much better than I’d thought I would. I was still nervous. What I tried to do was not look at Brent’s face, just where his body was and his paddle. That way I wasn’t nearly as intimidated as I’d expected to be. I played my usual defensive game.
Kevin was a little off. Usually, he made an incredibly high percentage of his slams. Today, he was missing more than usual. He was still very good, but slams that he usually buried were going long a lot.
When we reached 11 points, they had 9. We switched ends of the table, and I used the time to speak to him. “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re not trying to prove something to Brent, are you? You don’t think you might be, uh, over-hitting? Maybe just a little?”
He grinned at me, but it was a forced grin with very little playfulness in it. He was so competitive that when we played matches, he seemed to have an inner drive and fierceness, and his usual sense of humor deserted him. “I might be a little. I’m pissed at him. You probably shouldn’t have told me that.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know that then. Look, just calm down. As you said, win or lose, let’s get through this. Just play your game.”
He scowled at me, and then realized he was doing it and his face softened. “I’ll try.”
So we started up again. It was their serve. Brent was serving and he had a wicked spin. Fortunately for us, it was always the same spin. I varied my spin serve, sometimes cutting it, sometimes using backspin, sometimes top. He always used the same sidespin, so I knew how to return it by now. However, he got lucky on a couple of them that he hit harder than he meant to. One just nicked the end of the table and didn’t bounce as high as I expected it to and I missed it entirely, and another was deep to my backhand and I hit it back into the net. The other points on his serve were hard fought, but the score was 13-12 them when it was Kevin’s turn to serve.
The game seesawed back and forth from that point on. All four of us were nervous, each trying not to lose it for our partner. Being nervous didn’t hurt Kevin as much as it did me because he hit the ball much harder and didn’t rely on finesse. It’s hard to finesse your shots when your paddle is rattling around in your shaky hand.
It was 18-17 in our favor when I took over serving. We split the first two serves, then I got a good break on a really soft serve that I tried to just clear the net with. Tom was standing a little deeper than usual because my last two serves had been close to the back edge of the table. My next serve was really soft with lots of backspin, and though he just was able to get to it on time, his return caught the net. 20-18 us. Match point.
I took a deep breath, a quick glance at Kevin, and served a sidespin serve. Tom returned it, and the spin brought it to my side of the table. I was out of Kevin’s way instinctively, but the ball wasn’t very deep and he just couldn’t reach it. It bounced twice, and the score was 20-19, still match point for us.
I looked over at Tom and Brent. Both were sweating, both were showing tension. Of course, Kevin and I were too. I grinned at our opponents, and incredibly, they both grinned back. I took a breath, and served another sidespin, but the reverse of the last one and with some downspin cut on it.
Tom returned it, but the spin took it to Kevin’s side of the table and short. Kevin, anticipating the same shot he’d missed the time before, had moved his body to improve his reach towards my side, and had to quickly reach back. He returned the ball, but it was short and high, a perfect set-up for a slam for Brent.
And slam it he did. He stepped forward, reached out and steadied himself on the table with his left hand and, reaching forward toward the net where that ball was hovering, slammed the ball home. I was furiously backpedaling and amazed myself by actually getting my paddle on the ball, but it fell far short of the table.
Tom was pumping his fist and yelling, Brent was showing a happy smile full of relief, when the coach who was refereeing the match said, “Point for Kevin and Matt. Illegal touching of the table. 21-19, game over.”
Brent looked stunned. I was watching him. Both of them stopped celebrating, then simply looked confused.
Brent started to say something to the coach, then took a glance at me and closed his mouth and looked away.
I saw all this, and then walked over to him. “Did you know you can’t touch the table during a point?” I asked.
“No. I do it all the time at home.”
“There are a number of little rules a lot of people don’t know about in this game. Hold on a minute.”
Then I went over to the coach. “Coach, he didn’t realize he wasn’t allowed to touch the table. He could easily have slammed that ball without doing that. I don’t want to win on a technicality. Can we play the point over?”
The coach grinned. “Hey, it’s gym class, not the Olympics. Whatever you guys want to do is fine with me. Is your partner okay with that?”
I’d forgotten about Kevin! I turned to him. “You okay with playing that point over?”
He hesitated, then said, “If you want to.” He didn’t look happy about it.
“Kevin, I want to.”
“Okay.”
I went back and told our opponents we were replaying the last point. They looked surprised, and then pleased. It was my serve again.
I was more nervous this time. I didn’t want to screw up for Kevin. I thought maybe I could surprise them. I’d been using almost all spin serves, usually fairly soft so Tom would have to lunge for them and hopefully set up Kevin with a high shot. This time, I tossed the ball much lower and using only a little topspin, hit a hard serve deep to Tom’s backhand side. Tom got to it, but popped it up slightly. Kevin waited on the bounce, and when it came up, he hit a topspin slam about as hard as I’d ever seen him hit the ball, directly at Brent’s middle.
Brent could only raise his paddle defensively. The ball hit about an inch from the back edge of the table, and that it hit Brent’s paddle at all was sheer luck. It hit his paddle, and only from the force of Kevin’s slam did it have the momentum to rebound back towards me. It popped up into the air and I watched it, thinking it wouldn’t clear the net. Somehow it did, bouncing about two feet up in the air in the middle of the table and only a couple inches from the net. If ever a ball begged to be slammed, it was this one. I leaned forward and pulled back my arm for a slam, and Tom began backpedaling furiously. I brought my paddle forward, and at the last instant undercut the ball softly. It fell on their side of the table, barely bounced at all, and rolled to their end and off onto the floor.
Kevin and I did a brief hug of joy, then walked to the other end of the table and shook hands with Tom and Brent. This time, Brent didn’t hesitate to shake, but when my hand was in his, he held it for a moment and said to me, softly, “Can we talk a minute after gym? Just you and me?”
Whoa! That made me nervous all over again. I was about to pull away when I looked into his face. He wasn’t looking intimidating at all. If anything, he looked more nervous than I felt.
“Where?” I asked him, feeling cautious, still not entirely sure I wanted to do this.
“I’ll wait for you just outside the locker room. It’ll only take a minute. Please?”
“Okay,” I said after only a moment’s hesitation. “I’ll meet you there.”
◊ ◊
Lunch every day with Kevin and Becky was automatic. It was now like we’d eaten together forever, not only for a little more than a month. If I thought that way, I might even have been jealous of the relationship Becky and Kevin had. I’d swear they were in love with each other. I mean, sure, they were at each other’s throats all the time, and their teasing could get really vicious, in a way that looked anything but friendly but actually was. Nothing was out of bounds for them, but they did make sure no one could hear them. It was as though they’d each been waiting all their lives to sharpen their claws on just the right person, and that each other was the exact person they’d been waiting for. Some days I laughed so much I could hardly eat my lunch.
But you could tell, no matter what they said, they liked each other, maybe even loved each other, as their eyes gave them away. When they really looked at each other, without any challenging going on, I saw what I could only interpret as love.
Today wasn’t a challenging sort of day. Today, Becky wanted to know if we’d won our match and had again been triumphant in our ping-pong wars, or if we’d been thrashed and lost all our dignity, or, as she put it, as only she could have put it, we’d had our masculinity ripped from us and been made into girls. As happened quite often, Kevin, being more assertive than I was, had taken the floor.
“Okay, I’ll tell you about it, but I have to give you the background first.”
“Background? I don’t need no stinkin’ background! Just tell me who won!”
“Patience, little girl.” I grinned. It always got her goat when Kevin called her a little girl. “These things have to be told correctly; otherwise, you lose the drama.”
Becky rolled her eyes, but Kevin was undaunted. “Okay, so we’re waiting to go out to the gym. Now Matt’s just sitting there at his locker and everyone else’s gone, so I’m thinking, Aha! Gamesmanship. Make ‘em wait. I’m a little surprised at this, Matt being Matt and all and something of a priss.”
When Kevin was done picking himself up off the floor and rubbing his shoulder, he continued. Well, maybe I’m exaggerating about the picking himself up part, but he did rub his shoulder where I’d lightly tapped him. And grin at me.
“So anyway, Matt’s just sitting at his locker, and I go to get him, and he tells me Brent, one of the guys we’re playing today, is the guy who caused him to break down crying in front of the school a couple years ago.”
Becky looked up sharply at me. I gave her a slight nod. She started to frown, and I smiled at her.
Kevin hadn’t stopped. “Well, I tell Matt, screw this ping-pong stuff, let’s waste the fucker. He says no, which doesn’t surprise me any because he’s such a gentleman and a second cousin of the Marquis of Queensberry and all and has an entirely screwed up notion of right and wrong. So we go out to play them, and I can’t do shit, being a little upset with what Matt told me, but Matt’s all over the table, making every shot, and basically saving our ass.
“I finally decide maybe I’m a little excited, wanting to beat Brent so badly. I decide this because Matt grabs me by the shorthairs and screams it at me. So I settle down, but by now the game’s close and anyone can win.
“Well, we get down to the nitty-gritty. Matt’s serving for game point. He hits a tremendous serve, Tom’s flailing around like a drunken lunatic and dinks the ball back in desperation, pure luck, and I feel like I’m on roller skates on a greased cookie sheet for all the traction I’m suddenly not getting. I’m wishing I’d grow six inches all of a sudden, too. Well, I’m always wishing I’d grow six inches, but I’m meaning height here so I can reach the ball.”
Becky groaned, and I giggled.
“I can’t get to the ball, so now we have to get this next point or go to the tie breaker. I’m all nervous, and Matt is cool as a cucumber that’s never been owned by a gay teenager. Matt serves—”
He stopped then because Becky was laughing too hard to hear him. He had to stop and wait for her.
When he could, he resumed. “Matt serves, I go to my imitation of someone who’s never played the game before because heaven knows this isn’t an important point or anything and I hit the ball about as badly as I’ve ever hit it in my life. Brent is drooling, waiting for it to come down, and I’m suddenly wondering what Matt will look like with a glass eye because I’m sure Brent is going to bounce this shot so hard off the table and into Matt’s face that he’s going to need one. I’m preparing my mea culpa speech when Brent goes ape-man and hits the ball so hard I’m sure it’ll break, and somehow, Matt’s able to hit it, but not back on the table. At that point, I was sure I’d blown everything except that thing I want to and then the referee gives us the game because he says Brent cheated. I let out a whoop and then I’m ready to go over and kick Brent in the balls just out of principle when Mr. Goody Two-shoes here, my esteemed partner, tells everyone that we’ll replay the point. Replay the point! I could have killed him!”
Becky looked at me with her mouth hanging open, like she was thinking I must have been crazy, and I said, “You had to have been there. I wasn’t going to win that way. Not with him.”
Kevin looked disgusted. “Anyway,” he said, drawing out the word and sighing, “we have to play another point. I’m saying to myself, ‘Don’t fuck up, don’t fuck up, don’t fuck up,’ and suddenly Matt hits about the greatest serve in the history of ping-pong and it completely handcuffs Tom and he’s lucky to even hit the ball back at all. He does but it’s a complete setup. I’m overanxious and almost miss the ball in my anxiety but hit a sort of dying quail to Brent and he miss-hits it back, probably because he’s in shock seeing the weak-ass shot I hit to him off the perfect setup Matt made that Tom had butchered. Matt sees Brent’s wounded duck coming and gets this look of glee on his face and I’m afraid he’ll be disqualified for excessive drooling. Tom blanches and starts ducking and calling for his mommy, and then Matt dinks the ball over the net like the wuss he is and we’re the champs, but he’s the champ and I’m just lucky I was smart enough to choose him as my partner.”
Becky was laughing and so was I, but I managed to say, “You didn’t choose me. My dad assigned us to each other.”
“Yeah. I keep forgetting to thank him, too. That was genius.”
“What can I say? I did a great job of picking my parents.”
“But that isn’t all—” Becky had been about to speak when Kevin interrupted her. She turned to him. “What do you mean?”
“That isn’t all. After the game, Brent told Matt he wanted to talk to him.”
“Really? What did he want?” She looked worried.
I’d been sitting here, listening to Kevin and admiring him, admiring his style and storytelling ability. I was a little jealous, too. He was so at ease doing what he’d just done. He liked being on stage, being the center of attention, and being in that position always made me nervous. I didn’t much like people watching me. I felt they were judging me, and in general finding me wanting. He didn’t have that attitude at all. He liked the limelight. I admired his confidence and wished I had just some of it. It was just part of him, though, part of who he was. He became bigger when he was ‘on stage,’ when he had an audience. When I was in that position I felt diminished, smaller, and that everyone would realize my shortcomings. I envied him for being strong where I was so weak. I also enjoyed watching him. My feelings for him had grown in the last month. I thought about him all the time now. Before, I hadn’t really known him like I did now. The boy I imagined him to be back then was what I liked. I wanted that boy of my imagination to like me, but I didn’t really know him. Now I did. He was somewhat the same, but much different too. I loved who he was. My feelings for him were much stronger now than they had been. I didn’t tell him. Somehow I thought it would be wrong to do that, and unfair. I thought they might give him false hope. He was younger, and I was older, so we couldn’t be together, and telling him how I felt might raise his hopes, and so I didn’t tell him. But I think he might have known anyway.
Now, with Becky asking what Brent had wanted with me, I jumped in before Kevin could carry the tale further. I wanted in on this. I could do this with Becky. Not too many other people, but I was comfortable with Becky.
“He wanted to talk to me, and even though it made me nervous, he didn’t look threatening to me. He looked, well, he looked a lot of things, but threatening wasn’t one of them. I decided to listen to what he wanted to say. I am two years older than I was back when. I’m bigger. Maybe I’m braver. Mostly, I think it’s that I have the two best friends in the world now, and I didn’t have anyone then. That makes a huge difference in how I feel about myself.”
I looked at both of them, not smiling, trying to let them know what they meant to me. They weren’t smiling either. We all spoke to each other with our eyes. It was a good moment.
“Anyway, I took my shower, got dressed, and started to leave. Kevin caught up and wanted to go with me.”
“I still wanted to kick his ass. I knew I couldn’t, but still.” He was remembering, and was getting a little hot because of it.
“Hey, shut up. It’s my turn now.”
“I was just saying.”
“Well, don’t.” I grinned, he did too, eventually, after his emotions had quieted a bit, and then I continued. “Kevin wanted to join me. I think he thinks I’m a wimp. I told him to go to his next class. He frowned at me and then left. He didn’t go to his next class, however. I saw him in the hall. He walked about thirty feet past Brent, then stopped and waited. I think he was thinking that he was covering my ass.”
I said it like it was stupid of Kevin, and silly and trivial, but I was just saying it that way. That sure wasn’t what it had felt like at the time. I looked at Kevin, and I had some emotion in my eyes. I think he saw it before I had the sense to look down.
I turned back to Becky. “Brent was there waiting. I walked up to him and stood there, waiting to see what he had to say. I felt a little scared, but not much. Mostly, I was curious.
“He didn’t say anything at first. He sort of fidgeted. Then he started talking. I’ll try to tell you what he said the best I can, but he said a lot and I probably won’t get it word for word. Anyway, he said, ‘Matt, I don’t know how to do this. I need to apologize for what I did a couple of years ago, but know an apology is way too little and way too late. I’ve felt awful about it ever since. I can’t explain why I did it. I was hanging with some other football players at the time, and you may not know how they are, but some are really macho and they feed off each other, and I was one of them, at least I wanted to be one of them. I was only a sophomore and still finding out who I was. It wasn’t their fault, though. I don’t mean to say that. It was my fault. But it wasn’t really me. I think I did it to be one of them, for them to like me. I’m not excusing it. I’m trying to explain it. I’ve tried to explain it to myself ever since.’
“‘Matt, when you broke down, I almost did too. I couldn’t believe I’d done that. Everyone else was laughing and saying things, but I knew I was the one who’d caused that, caused you all that pain. I felt horrible that I’d done that. I knew I didn’t want to be someone who’d do something like that. I almost cried myself. I wanted to take back what I’d said. I wanted to go home and cry. Right then. But it was too late. I wasn’t even brave enough to go to you. I knew I should, but all the other guys were clapping me on the back and saying things, and I just couldn’t. I hate what I did to you, and I hate that I was that much of a coward even more.’
“‘Ever since then, I’ve wanted to talk to you, but I’ve been scared. I knew you hated me. How could you not? Look what I’d done! Look what kind of a person I had to be to do that! I was so happy when you came back to school, and amazed, too, you could do that. I’d never have had the balls to do that. Never. You did. I just looked at you in awe for that. I watched you, and saw what you were going through, and continued to hate myself because I knew I should help you, but was still afraid for my own reputation. How sick is that?’
“‘I’ve watched you for the past two years, feeling ashamed every time I saw you. I really wanted to talk to you, but just couldn’t. Then today, I knew I was going to play this championship game against you. I was really nervous. I didn’t know what it would be like. I thought, no, I was sure, you still hated me, and I expected to see that when you looked at me. I never expected you to offer to shake my hand. I thought you’d turn your back on me. You didn’t. I knew you were brave, and strong. You proved it all over again today.’
“‘Then, when you’d won the game because I didn’t know the rules, what you did then, when you stepped in trying to be more than fair to a guy that had done what I had to you in front of the entire school, well . . . .’ He stopped, and I saw the expression on his face. I knew then he was speaking from his heart, that he really meant what he was saying, and that what he was saying meant a lot to him. He looked away from me quickly at that point, and stopped to compose himself. Finally, after some time, he looked back at me. ‘Matt, you’re one hell of a guy, and I can’t tell you strongly enough how sorry I am about what I did. If there’s any way you could forgive me, well, I don’t see how you can. But I wanted to say, if I can ever do anything for you, anything at all, I will. Just ask. Please.’
“Then he stuck out his hand again, and I saw a plea in his eyes. He wanted to be forgiven. He wanted me to forgive him. He is this big guy, at least six feet four, maybe five, weighing well over 200 pounds, and he was acting like he needed my forgiveness.
“I was really surprised. I had had no idea he’d thought about what he’d done to me. I was just a kid that was being tormented. Lots of kids are treated like that all the time. In the nature of things at high school, it’s just something that happens and gets forgotten, except by the kid who suffers. That Brent should remember it and regret it so much said a lot about him to me. He wasn’t a dumb jock football player. He was a sensitive kid, just a year older than I was.
“I reached out and took his offered hand. I told him, ‘Brent, I don’t know you at all. But believe me, I haven’t thought all that much about it. It happened, I recovered, and I’ve moved on. It hurt terribly at the time, but I was more upset with me than you. I shouldn’t have broken down and cried like that, and it embarrassed me. Yeah, it was due to your remark, but it was also because of all that had been happening. You simply made a remark. A remark that hurt, but it was a culmination of many things that made me do what I did. Whether it was you doing that or someone else, it was just a remark, and it caught me at the wrong time. I was vulnerable then. It happened. But you can stop feeling so bad about it. I’m over it. If you want me to forgive you, okay, I do. And I really appreciate you telling me this. It gives me some closure. It shows me there’s one fewer bad kid in the world than I thought there was.’
“I smiled at him, the best smile I could. He grasped my hand firmly with his, then reached over with his other hand and squeezed both our hands. He smiled back at me. I could read a lot of emotion in his eyes. We stood there looking at each other till some small blond kid showed up and ruined the moment.”
That caught them both by surprise, but one of them recovered quickly. Becky said, “Yeah, he’ll do that,” before Kevin could reply. As soon as he could, he was at her again, and I was able to sit back and just watch.