Page 148 of The Locker Room

May darkness.

“You"re it, boy. You and Edwards were going to take us there.

Now I don"t know what bug crawled up their ass about Edwards, but

you"re who we"ve got. And you"re good. Not as good as the two of you

combined, but… but you can do it alone. Everyone can see it. It"s nice of

you to play with the team, and the team appreciates it—but you"re it.

You"re our Magic, our Larry Bird. You"re our guy. You just need to stop

kicking shit and falling down!”

Xander smiled faintly, and blinked hard. “Thanks,” he said softly,

not knowing how to respond to all that other bullshit. He got out there

and he played. That"s what he did. When he was on the court, the ball

made sense, he knew where shit went, and he could make the world into

his place. It did not make him special—it just made him safe.

Malloy seemed to know he hadn"t gotten very far. He patted

Xander"s shoulder and told him to “hang tough,” and then left him to his

shower.

When Xander got home, Chris wasn"t there. Obvious, but that

didn"t make it hurt any less.

Lucia was in their room, wordlessly cleaning up the lotion mess on

the wall, and Xander had a moment to think that maybe he needed to

find something better to do with his temper. Wasn"t that a girl thing?

Breaking shit on walls? God, one minute he was all congratulating

himself on his adult decisions, and the next he was a whining, tantrum-

throwing girl. How in the hell did that happen?

Lucia looked at him as he came into the room and started hunting

for his “home sweats,” the ones that no one saw unless they lived in the

house, and sighed.

“You want to tell me what happened?” she asked quietly. “Or am I

just the help?”

“You"re a friend,” Xander told her, still rifling through his drawers.