Page 225 of The Locker Room

somewhere else.

“Bathroom?” he asked, looking at his shoes.

Leo looked up. “Sorry?”

“For Christ"s sake, Leo, I need the fucking bathroom. I"m gonna

be—”

Leo grabbed his hand and hauled him to the waiting-room

bathroom, and Xander looked at it in despair. He was too big. He was

too tall for the tiny cubicle. He had to… he had to—

He lifted the seat up with a clatter and leaned over, puking up

stomach acid because that"s all he had left. When he was done, he was

still shaking from head to foot, and he threw himself back against the

door of the cubicle, propped his feet against the base of the toilet, and

tried to pull himself together.

Christian Edwards will never play basketball again.

Oh God. Chris and basketball, wasn"t that what he said? Chris just

had basketball taken away, and Xander was going to have to pray that

he"d be enough. He didn"t know if the shaking, the tremors, the spots

dancing in front of his eyes would ever stop.

He wasn"t sure how long it was, but it wasn"t Leo who came to get

him, it was Penny.

“Xander, everyone"s worried about you. Come fall apart with the

rest of us, okay?” Her voice was shaking, and she sounded like a little

girl.

“Penny, you sound young,” Xander whispered. “You never sound

young. You didn"t even sound young when you were young.”

“I grew up, you know,” Penny said quietly. “I grew up that

morning when I saw the love of my life kissing my big brother. You ever

wonder why I don"t date a lot, Xan?”

Penny might have been the second person in the world to ever call

him Xan.