Page 15 of Wilde Shorts
FLIRT
STEVIE’S PROLOGUE
My crushon Evan Paige started in sixth grade when Terrance “The Terror” Jackman pantsed me in front of an entire soccer team. It wasn’t the first time something like that had happened. I’d already been the focus of school bullies for years, pretty much since I’d come out of the womb flamboyantly gay and unable to hide it.
As I’d stood there, gasping with an oncoming panic attack while desperately clutching at my tiny, terrified dick and raisin balls, the most beautiful creature had stepped in front of me and yanked my pants back up before I could even cry out for my mommy like my inner toddler demanded.
Not that crying for my mommy had ever done anything more for me than earning bonus tears, but still. I’d been humiliated.
“What the hell is going on here?” my hero’s deep voice boomed. Suddenly, instead of a team full of bullies, there were thirty angels staring at us with halos of innocence spinning lazily over their heads.
“Nothing, Coach Paige,” Terrance said. “Steven’s just so skinny, his pants fell down.”
“And I’m the queen of England. Go sit in Coach Castillo’s office until I come for you. Now.”
After shooting me a menacing look behind his coach’s back, Terrancetook off for the cement-block recreation building on the far side of the field. The other kids shuffled around until the coach barked at them to get back to a dribbling exercise they were supposed to be doing. They took off running like a unified pack.
A pack of wolves. Rabid ones.
When he turned back to me, the coach’s face softened. I looked up into kind gray eyes, a stubbled jaw I’d never have, and one of those chin dimple things that made him look like a Disney character. His thick, dark hair had some wave to it, and I remember wondering what it would feel like to touch it.
“Are you okay?” he asked in a gentle voice, as if I were a baby rabbit he might accidentally scare off.
I coughed a bit to make sure my voice didn’t crack when I answered. “Yes… yes, sir. I’m fine.”
“What are you doing out here by yourself?”
I looked over at the kids in their soccer shorts and brand-name Dri-FIT tops. Each of them wore the kind of popular athletic socks that cost almost ten bucks a pair. I looked at myself. I wore my brother’s hand-me-down Hanes sweatpants from Walmart, tube socks that came ten in a pack, from the same, and a faded Care Bears T-shirt I’d lucked out in finding at Goodwill the previous summer. Of course, it still fit a year later. I was destined to stay the size of a fourth grader for the rest of my life.
Clearly I wasn’t part of the team.
“I, uh… I was supposed to bring lunch for my brother. He works for Coach Castillo.”
The large man looked around until he spotted the shredded brown paper bag several feet away on the ground. Kade’s ham sandwich lay in its baggie on the grass, and the apple had obviously rolled over the baggie of pretzels, crushing at least half of them. The condensation from the water bottle had wetted the bag enough to break open a hole when the bag had hit the ground.
Kade was going to kick my ass.
“Here, let me help you gather this up,” he said, kneeling down to collect the items. I couldn’t help but notice the muscles in his back moving under the thin fabric of his shirt… or the rounded tightness of his butt, clearly the result of playing so much soccer… or the dark hairs covering his shapely legs beneath the slippery fabric of his shorts…
“Stevie!”
I snapped back to reality and saw my brother rushing across the field toward us.
“Oh shit,” I muttered before remembering I was cursing in front of an adult. “Uh, sorry. That’s… that’s my brother, so I’ll just…” I held out my hands for the items he’d picked up. It was an awkward transfer since there wasn’t a bag to put it in. I finally had to pull out the hem of my T-shirt to make a kind of hammock for them until I could give them to Kade. “Thanks for… thanks,” I said before turning and making my way across the grass.
Sure enough, Kade kicked my ass. But not there in front of my new crush. Later, at home before Mom got back from work. After I’d asked who the tall handsome coach was.
“You stay the fuck away from Coach Paige, you got me?” he’d growled. “Nobody wants your pansy ass mooning over the soccer coach. It’s bad enough people know you’re my brother—I don’t need you coming around where I work and making a spectacle of yourself.”
Yeah, my brother was a peach. He’d made sure when he’d grabbed me, my Care Bears shirt hadn’t survived the pummeling.
After that, I’d been reduced to catching glimpses of Coach Paige from a distance. During summers when I was able to skulk around the soccer fields without Kade discovering me, I’d done so. During the school year when I’d learned he wasn’t just a summer coach in Valley Cross but a school team coach in nearby Hobie, I’d managed to sneak away to some of their games.
I’d learned more about him. His name was Evan, and he was almost twenty years older than I was.
He was straight.
He’d dated a woman named Sierra, and I remember thinking how exotic she’d sounded. I’d stayed up at night in my top bunk and imagined what it looked like when Coach Paige had sex with Sierra. Was he sweet and gentle with her or hot and rough? Did he like her breasts, or was there any way he’d prefer a flatter chest?If there is a god, I remembered thinking,please let him be an ass man.