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Tommy

“Young man,”

the guy who’d offered me the internship said, “you’ve got a real knack for this. When you graduate, you’ve got a job waiting for you here.”

“Wow, thanks!”

I said and for the first time in a long time I felt excitement over my future.

The fact was, I loved sports reporting! I took the internship to avoid Amos and fell head over heels for the work.

Because I’d spent the last three years analyzing football plays, I realized I was damned good at it.

That fall, I followed plays, sat in on meetings with other reporters, and talked about the different players’ skills and abilities.

I also advised a few reporters on how to pick apart the plays to give insight on what could be done to improve or, at the very least, predict how they would play the rest of the season.

By the time the season ended, I wasn’t thinking so much about Amos, or at least not obsessing about Amos, and I’d been offered a full-time job starting next summer.

Okay, yeah, I was lying to myself.

I thought about Amos a lot.

I wondered how his career was going and how he liked being on a professional team.

I wondered what it would have been like if we could have dated in real life, with me writing about his career from a personal perspective.

Not that football tolerated such things—two openly gay men in a relationship, one in sports journalism, the other an NFL star.

And yeah, Amos would be a star.

He was made for the game.

Amos was a touchy subject.

I knew I’d been a coward by running away, but when I met Clifford Price, and he half-heartedly offered me an internship, I decided to accept for no other reason than to avoid Amos.

I’d spent the weeks in Corpus Christi pouting and moping. I figured the internship was an answer from the universe— my way of avoiding the guy and never having to deal with him again.

The last email I got from him stabbed my heart though.

I hadn’t opened it for several weeks because no one reads email anymore.

The only reason I did was to check the status of the scholarship I’d put on hold for the internship.

I then cried for a full day before I put the whole Amos thing behind me, convinced it was for the best.

One of my great uncles once told me the best way to get over a relationship was to stay away from your loved one for six months.

I was determined to get over Amos, so if six months with no communication was all I needed, then by God, that’s what I’d do.

I returned to the university at the end of January and had another crying fit at seeing Amos’s and my old room empty.

His being drafted meant he was no longer at school.

I decided not to move back in, knowing living there without him would kill me.

Owen agreed to let me room with him during our final semester.

Time flew by, thank goodness, and although I knew Owen was still in contact with Amos, I intentionally didn’t lean on him, nor on any of the contacts I’d made, to learn more about how he was doing.

The truth was I didn’t want to know.

I was past my six-month hiatus, but I still missed him, but damn if I was going to give in now.

I graduated in May and started work in June with no downtime in-between.

The magazine wanted me to help them cover the rookie training camp that began in mid-July.

The work was a lot less hectic during the summer than in the fall, and I was happy about that since I had a lot to learn before I was thrown into the work.

I’d been assigned to shadow a crusty old reporter for training camp, and mostly, he wanted me to watch and not say anything.

When I ended up walking into Amos’s training camp and seeing him getting his ass handed to him on the field, I was glad I could disappear in the background.

I watched how he performed next to the other rookies as he was put through his paces.

Amos was good.

Out on the field, there was no doubt he could handle the pressure and the intense heat in this part of the summer.

I smiled when some of the other rookies fell to the ground, saying they were going to die of heat exhaustion.

There were benefits to being from Texas, and learning to stay upright when the temperature was nearing triple digits was one of them.

When Crusty, as I secretly referred to my mentor, asked me what I thought, I was surprised since the man had never asked me anything, much less what I thought of players.

I ran through my memory, then mentioned which players I thought were doing the best.

I skimmed over Amos, not wanting to show I had any emotions either way.

The old man looked at me and cocked an eyebrow. “I heard Amos Clark was your roommate. I’m surprised you didn’t brag about him more.”

I blushed and shook my head. “I didn’t want to show preferential treatment. The truth is, he was the best rookie out there. He was cool and collected, and when the other players seemed to be melting, he applied himself even more.”

The old man regarded me for a long time. “I thought the same thing. The boy has potential if he can keep up this pace. What do you think? Can he keep up?”

I knew where this was going. The man was trying to pull information about Amos from me. I shot him a huge smile and said, “That’s yet to be seen. But if you’re asking me what I think? My money’s on him.”

The man laughed. “You’re not going to divulge anything, are you?”

I kept my smile in place. “If you're digging for dirt, you’ll have to dig elsewhere. Frankly, after living with the man for three years, if anyone’s going to print dirt about his college years, it’s gonna be me!”

Crusty leaned back in his chair and belted out a laugh. “I’m willing to bet you manage to pull this gig off after all,”

he said, surprising me with the compliment.

We left the stadium, and that was the last time I was that close to Amos Clark. Until he blew up his career, that is.