Disowned
by Victor Thomas
Chapter 1
Date: September 2024
Joshua
A satisfied smile grew on my face as I took a step backward, looking over my reflection in the mirror. I flexed my left bicep, then my right one, and watched the shadows on my chest rise and fade as I moved my pecs.
You my friend, I grinned to myself, are getting sexier every day.
"Stroking your own ego?" scoffed one of my teammates as he walked past.
"I'm looking damn good today," I said, taking a last look in the mirror before continuing on toward the showers.
"So sad you have the wrong audience here."
I laughed. It was sad, indeed. All those workouts Coach had given us lately were doing wonders for me, but helped little in the locker room full of straight jocks. I took the towel from my waist and draped it over the hook on the wall. Vince and Drew on the basketball team were in there rinsing the sweat off their bodies, not paying me any mind. I snapped my fingers at them.
"Guys," I said, pointing to my face, giving them a cheeky grin, "eyes up here."
"Oh, come on!" Vince groaned, rolling his eyes.
"Come on, guys," I said, flexing my muscles. "You can't possibly tell me you haven't noticed a difference."
"Like we're interested in your body," Vince said. He clapped his hands on his face and mocked in a squeaky voice, "oh my god, I have a half a millimeter extra skin on my triceps. It must be the missed workout last week."
I grinned and poked him in his shoulder.
"I'm not that bad, am I?"
"No, you're worse. And you're definitely in love with yourself and you know it."
"He loves himself so much," Drew said, moving his hand up and down beside his groin.
I threw a bar of soap at him, smiling the whole time.
"You guys suck."
"You wish," Vince said.
It was hard for me to deny that. What seventeen-year-old high school boy wasn't horny most of the time? While I felt lucky that my teammates had taken my coming out news so well, it sucked to be the only gay guy at Chouteau High. That was the way it felt, anyway, like I was the only one. I wasn't really, of course, I can think of at least two gay couples right now, but they're not available.
"Do you need your soap back?" Drew asked, picking it up from the floor.
"Sure, thanks."
The soap came flying at me, and I reached up to catch it, but it slid out of my hand and hit my foot.
"You get an A for effort," said Vince. "Hey, did you guys hear that the football team won against Erie?"
"Who cares about football?" Drew gurgled into his shower stream.
"Have you seen their games?"
"Isn't it just a bunch of pussies running around passing a ball back and forth?" Drew said, grinning at me.
"Sounds like Joshua's version of paradise," Vince said.
"Jesus, guys. Shut up."
I rolled my eyes.
Vince squirted water through his front teeth.
"But for real, those guys are really into it," he said.
I had seen them working out a few times, and they were really good. Unlike our basketball team, some of the football players would definitely get scholarships to decent colleges. Not that I was interested in one. For me, running and bouncing the ball on the court was a great hobby and an opportunity to hang out with my best friends, and it kept me in good shape as well.
"Oh," Vince said, looking like he had just figured out some difficult math problem, "I heard something interesting today."
"Your parents had sex before you were born? That's not possible," I said.
"Ha, ha. This is something that interests you much more…"
"Okay, gossip king. Spit it out."
Vince stood there silent under the running water, and the grin on his face got wider, like he was enjoying the attention. I stared at him, not that he wasn't easy on the eyes, and gestured for him to continue. I knew that face; there was something big coming.
"It's nothing big," he said finally. "There's just a rumor that some football player came out of the closet," he added nonchalantly.
"Who?" I asked before I even realized I had opened my mouth.
"Wow. Another athlete playing on your team." Drew slapped me on the arm. "Dude, you got competition!"
"Your new buddy is the Latino guy," Vince said. "Javier something."
I turned off the shower and grabbed my towel. The name sounded vaguely familiar. Maybe I had a class with him, or did at one point before. In my mind I went through all my classes, but Javier's face wasn't within my recollection. I made a mental note to go and check the football team's next practice.
What are the odds of having another gay jock at Chouteau High, I thought. Pretty good odds actually. There have been quite a few guys come out as gay in the last ten or twelve years, including several athletes. Even so, I had to admit that Vince's news was interesting.
The three of us got back to the locker room and began dressing. Vince and Drew joked about something, probably at my expense, but I didn't pay attention to them. My brain was still processing the news and all the opportunities it opened. A goofy grin grew on my face.
"I'm starving," Drew said, interrupting my daydream. "Let's go and grab some burgers."
"Excellent idea," Vince said. "Unless it ruins Joshua's diet."
I ran my hand along my abs.
"You guys are just jealous."
"In your dreams," Drew said. "Put on your shirt and let's go."
Soon, the sound of lockers being slammed echoed in the room, and the three of us left the locker room. We headed to the Hornet's Nest, which was popular with the local high school kids. I was hopeful that Javier would be there, but the odds were not on my side. Classes had finished over an hour ago.
Another gay athlete at school, I thought, ignoring what my friends were discussing. If Javier looked anything like some of the football players I had seen around the school, I was very eager to meet him.
One more time, I tried to recall seeing a Latino guy working out, but couldn't. There was one way to fix that, I thought. I'll have to introduce myself.
Authors deserve your feedback. It's the only payment they get. If you go to the top of the page you will find the author's name. Click that and you can email the author easily.* Please take a few moments, if you liked the story, to say so.
[For those who use webmail, or whose regular email client opens when they want to use webmail instead: Please right click the author's name. A menu will open in which you can copy the email address (it goes directly to your clipboard without having the courtesy of mentioning that to you) to paste into your webmail system (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo etc). Each browser is subtly different, each Webmail system is different, or we'd give fuller instructions here. We trust you to know how to use your own system. Note: If the email address pastes or arrives with %40 in the middle, replace that weird set of characters with an @ sign.]
* Some browsers may require a right click instead
