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Shorty doesn't notice the absence first. In hindsight that's lucky, though if he were to really think about it he would probably conclude that glancing towards Chuck's locker before anyone else did wouldn't actually have been suspicious. But given everything that happens later, he's still glad it's Roger who says it.
"Hey, where's Chuck?"
Roger can't know that those three words set a familiar dilemma spinning in Shorty's mind. It's one he faces often, a wooden top worn smooth by so many twists of the thumb and forefinger to send it careening in anxious circles: what would a normal man do?
Shorty makes a point of keeping his eyes to himself in the changing room. He doesn't know how long a normal man's eyes would linger on another man's bare chest, whether a normal man would politely avert his gaze if he accidentally caught a glimpse of pale thighs and a sharp hipbone. It's just not worth the risk, most of the time. But now, surely, the normal thing to do would be to turn and look towards where Chuck ought to be and apparently isn't, just like he would if they were all clothed. In this instance not looking would be odd.
Shorty looks.
"He didn't come home last night," Johnny says, with a shrug and a careless glance towards the conspicuously empty space between Joe and Roger. "Probably out prowling."
"God damn it, Day. I swear this time I won't cover for him with Ulbrickson if he's hungover," Roger says. Despite his grouchy expression and exasperated tone, Shorty knows he doesn't mean it. Roger and Chuck are thick as thieves; Roger would never hang Chuck out to dry no matter how many times Chuck slinks in late to practice squinting and grumbling about his headache.
Johnny's grin suggests he knows, too. "I'll believe it when I see it, Morris."
But Roger doesn't have a chance to prove Johnny wrong, because Chuck doesn't show up just in time to avoid Ulbrickson's wrath - in fact, he doesn't show up at all. That's unlike him.
Stranger, Ulbrickson says nothing about it. He substitutes Dutch in without so much as a frown, and the strange tension at the corners of his eyes warns the rest of the boys not to ask questions. They row poorly, and though Dutch clearly blames himself, Shorty knows it's because they're all preoccupied with the same thoughts weighing on Shorty's mind: something has happened to their two seat, and whatever it is, it's bad.
The rumors begin almost immediately. Joe, with his customary anxiety, wonders aloud if Chuck is ill. Johnny thinks injury is more likely.
"Family emergency, maybe? His folks live in town; he could be with them," Bobby says, muffled as he pulls his undershirt over his head. He emerges ruffled and frowning, rotating his shoulders with a wince.
Shorty carefully looks away from the flex of tendons in Bobby's slim neck. He doesn't believe any of these proposed theories - to him, they all sound like something Ulbrickson would have addressed immediately. Wherever Chuck is, whatever reason he isn't there with them, it's worse than the average personal tragedy: it's the kind of tragedy you don't talk about.
He is walking slowly back towards campus with Joe and Roger, making meaningless conversation to keep their minds off the obvious unspoken issue, when the source of the most likely rumor yet stops them.
"Hey," says a pinch-faced, red-headed twig of a man who Shorty vaguely recognizes as sharing a class or two with Don. "You've got a guy named Day on your team, right?"
Joe nods.
The man shifts his weight uneasily, expression now even more pinched than usual. His words are hesitant and nearly apologetic.
"My dad's a sergeant with the police and he said last night they picked up some college kid last name of Day at a bar. He wouldn't say what for, but he said it was a "sensitive situation" so I thought..." He shrugs, helpless. "In case it was sensitive enough that no one was gonna tell you. You might want to know."
No one speaks. Finally Roger, white-faced, croaks out a, "thank you."
The man gives a jerky nod of acknowledgement and flees, leaving the three of them standing there, absorbing the horrifying possibility that one of their own may, at that very moment, be in jail.
"That just can't be possible," Joe says decisively, though his voice wavers. "Picked up for what? It's gotta be a different Day. Chuck's crazy, but he's not crazy enough to get himself arrested."
Shorty has a sinking feeling that he, at least, knows what.
He can't focus at all on his classes, and by midafternoon he has rolled the possibility over and over in his mind so many times that he's nearly convinced himself of it. And if he's right - if his vague, unvoiced hopes that he and Chuck might be alike in that way were founded after all - the truth is worse than anyone has guessed so far. It's the frightening truth Shorty reminds himself of each night before he falls asleep, like a parent reciting fables to a child to ward off bad dreams. The reality of Shorty's world is that dreams are dangerous, and anything beyond them is criminal.
And he's fairly certain Chuck learned that lesson the hard way last night.
No one else seems to have reached that conclusion yet - and why would they, Shorty thinks, when normal men don't think about those things unless forced to?
The whispers start up again almost before anyone is close enough to hear them, as the rattled and suddenly diminished team gather around Chuck's untouched locker before afternoon practice. None of them have changed out of their everyday clothes.
"I went back to the room after class and all his stuff was just - gone. If they really did arrest him then they must've let him out," Johnny says.
"Then where'd he go?" Roger asks, mulish. Shorty knows he'll be the last to think anything negative of Chuck, the last to accept the reality Shorty has come to believe they'll all have to face sooner or later. "He'd be here, if he could be. If there was a mistake, or something, if he needs our help -"
Roger cuts off abruptly, and those boys facing the lockers turn to follow his wary gaze, towards the yawning ceilings of the main hangar and the stairs up to Ulbrickson's office. Towards Ulbrickson himself. Shorty braces himself, breathes deep, and turns.
Ulbrickson looks different. He looks, cruel as it is to say, more human than Shorty has ever seen him. It's as though the shock and pain of what he has to say has stripped away all the unapproachable airs with which he holds himself and all that's left is just a man, not much older than they are, saddled with a responsibility he didn't want and doesn't know what to do with.
"As I'm sure you've all noticed, Day hasn't been with us today," he begins. The slight rasp of his throat clearing is loud in the worried silence. "This is a permanent change."
Shorty would have expected questions, protestations, expressions of concern. Instead there is only more silence. Ulbrickson closes his eyes for a brief moment, and when he reopens them all traces of uncertainty or warmth are gone.
"He was caught last night soliciting a police officer for... unnatural acts."
Finally, someone speaks - Roger, voice frail and disbelieving. "What acts?
Shorty's heart would hurt for him, if only it hadn't stopped at that one word. Unnatural. He doesn't need to guess what the next will be.
"Sodomy."
"But... he didn't really do it, right? Maybe the police officer was mistaken," Joe says, when it becomes clear Roger is too stricken to ask.
Jim nods in support, jerky and not quite believable even though Shorty is sure Jim believes it himself. "Chuck's a real friendly drunk; it could've come across bad."
"I'm told there was no mistaking it."
It clearly pains Ulbrickson to say it, which ought to be consolation, but Shorty hasn't truly processed a word since the first. And then the second. Unnatural. Sodomy. The words he refuses to think to himself for fear of giving any name to what he feels, even if it's only to remind himself why those feelings can never be expressed.
"Is he... in jail?"
Roger again, crestfallen, grasping at straws. It's no use. Shorty could tell him that, if the thought of speaking at all in this moment didn't terrify him back into silence whenever he considered it. Now is the time to be extra careful; one careless phrase could damn him just like a careless question damned Chuck.
"As far as I know, nothing... occurred, so he hasn't committed any criminal offense," Ulbrickson says. His lip is curled in distaste - at the suspended sentence? at the idea of the act itself? "He has however been removed from the team and his enrollment at the school is under review. If he is allowed to stay on, he will not be returning to us. Coach Bolles and I will be rethinking your seat assignments based on this new situation. For the time being, Schoch will take the vacated seat."
He can't even say Chuck's name. Shorty thinks maybe he'll never find the words to express the way that absence tears him apart, even if he could speak them out loud.
"He never made a pass at me," Johnny says, as soon as the door to Ulbrickson's office has swung shut behind him. "I swear. I'dve reported him in an instant if he did. I'm not - if I'd known he was a - a fucking..."
"No one blames you," Joe says. "None of us knew."
Shorty did - or he hoped, but he isn't about to say that. Instead he just stands there wordlessly, helplessly, as the men he has trusted and loved all these months and years chime in one by one to say they wouldn't love him, if they ever knew.
"I blame me. I'm his roommate, I should have seen somehow, or - there were no signs -"
Jim shakes his head in that slow, solemn way of his, an authoritative pendulum swing that always captures and holds the attention of his squabbling teammates. "I'm - I was his best friend. I'm the captain. If anyone should have seen, it's me. I should have protected you. I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault either. We were all duped," Don says quietly. The soothing tone is so like Don, so unsuited to this situation as to be almost laughable.
Shorty doesn't laugh.
"Fuck." Jim scrubs at his eyes - not because he's crying, Shorty thinks, or if he is, they're tears of anger. "Under my fucking nose. A pervert in our locker room, watching us shower - how did he hide it so long?"
"They're good at that. Queers," Johnny says. "Hiding their foul - their disgusting desires so they can get close to normal people. It makes me sick.”
Sick. Johnny looks sick, and Shorty pictures that expression transposed onto Gordy's face if Gordy were ever to find out that he, too, shares a room with someone so sickening.
Sick. Disgusting. Unnatural.
Shorty says nothing. Neither does anyone else.
Finally, Jim speaks again. “I guess practice is canceled. Everyone take the day and… come to terms with it, I guess. Tomorrow is a new day.”
There are mutters of agreement and the shuffling of feet, but no one seems eager to leave.
“I've got a bit of whisky stashed away,” Bobby says, and that seems to be the trigger - no one explicitly takes him up on it, but the mass of boys begins to move vaguely towards the open doors and out into the darkening evening.
Just a day ago, Chuck would have been there with them, forcefully seconding Bobby's suggestion. The life of the party. With Chuck gone, all the life has drained from Shorty's empty husk of a body too. He doesn't want to wallow, doesn't want to join in on Bobby's pity party. Chuck's life is over, and in a way, so is Shorty's.
“Are you alright? You haven't said a word,” Jim says, hanging back to match Shorty's reluctant steps.
Shorty has never hoped with Jim, not like he hoped with Chuck. He knew it was too much to ask for Jim, upright and unfailingly moral, to be like him - let alone to think the sort of thoughts about Shorty which Shorty refused to think about him no matter how often they battered at his subconscious. But Jim is caring, now and always, and Shorty had hoped he would still be caring if he ever found out. He knows better now.
"Just - shock, I think. I don't... I don't want to think about it. I'd rather just go to sleep," Shorty says. None of it is even a lie.
Jim claps him on the shoulder. "'Course. Listen, it'll be alright. Dutch'll be just fine, and in the end we're better off, not having someone like that in the boat. You'll barely even think about it after tonight."
"Thanks," Shorty says.
Jim is right about one thing, at least - Dutch will be fine. He won't be Chuck, but he'll be alright, and the worst of it will be over. Shorty won't stop thinking about it, but so long as everyone else does he'll survive.
In a kinder world, perhaps Shorty would have awoken the next morning to a stripe of sunlight on his face and, for a brief moment, no memory of the day before. But it is February in Seattle, and so Shorty emerges from disquieting dreams to the grey of a cloud-covered dawn and the immediate, sinking knowledge that the day to come will be even worse.
The rest of the team looks little better when he hauls himself down to the shell house, all just as tired and drawn as Shorty feels. Bobby's contraband whisky doesn't seem to have helped any better than Shorty's early night.
No one says much as they change. Everyone seems to be doing their best not to look at Chuck's old locker and the empty space before it. No one else has the practice in not-looking discreetly the way Shorty does, so the avoidance only serves to make Chuck's absence more noticeable. Finally, wisely or unwisely, Johnny brings it into the light.
"It's weird. We can all admit it. It was weird not having a roommate last night, and it's weird not having a two now." His eyebrows come together in consternation and, as if he's afraid even the meager amount of regret that implies might damn him alongside Chuck, he hastens to add, "better, obviously. But it's going to be strange for a bit."
"Speak for yourself," Gordy says. The audible venom in it is startling; Gordy takes most things as they come and Shorty has rarely heard him angry , let alone vitriolic . "I won't miss him for a second. Now that I know I had him sitting behind me every day, looking at me - I don't like even thinking about it."
"Quit whining," Joe says, with a roll of his eyes. "He's gone and you made it out alright."
Shorty has never heard Joe like that, either. The situation has put them all on edge, made them their worst selves. Shorty doesn't want to examine what it's done to him.
Gordy rounds on Joe. "You try falling asleep last night knowing you sat with your back to one of those for months and tell me you wouldn't whine ."
Maybe, Shorty thinks, his own worst self is the small, vindictive part of him that wants to watch Gordy's face turn white with the realization that last night he slept with his back to one of those , too.
But he doesn't.
"If he didn't go for me he certainly wasn't going to go for you. Bobby's probably more his type," Johnny drawls.
It's bravado, surely, shoring up the cracks in his own masculinity brought on by the mere suggestion that having shared a room with Chuck might reflect in some way back on Johnny. But that's not how Bobby takes it.
"Say that again?" he says, dangerously calm, as he steps forward until he's toe-to-toe with Johnny.
"C'mon, Bobby, don't take it hard, I just meant guys like that've got a type, you know? Nothing personal, that's just how it is. It's not your fault you're a bit delicate -"
Bobby's fist hits his stomach with a solid thump .
"Hey, what the hell," Johnny wheezes, but Bobby cuts him off.
"Say that another goddamm time and I'll hit you worse."
"Christ, Bobby, it was only a joke," Joe says, managing a weak laugh. "Where'd you learn to punch like that, anyway?"
Bobby, absentmindedly shaking out his wrist, stares him down defiantly. "When people started making those kinds of jokes about me."
Shorty doesn't hear the rest of it - Johnny's chagrined apology, Joe's awkward peacekeeping, Ulbrickson's irritation at the sight of his boys scrapping like street urchins. None of that reaches him.
All he can hear is the impact of Bobby's fist, the pained whoosh of Johnny's breath leaving him and the ringing silence after, while they all stood there helplessly and no one told Bobby he'd been wrong to do it.
He rows worse than he's ever rowed and scowls so darkly at his knees the whole way through that no one calls him on it. He can't listen to Bobby's calls, even when - especially when - that sharp exasperation carries his name with it. He can't untangle Bobby's ordinary snappishness from that new version of Bobby from the shell house, the Bobby who hates people like Shorty enough that his gut response to the idea is a fist in the stomach.
Shorty's own stomach feels as painful and twisted as if he, not Johnny, has been punched.
If Shorty has one ally on the team, he thinks, it’s most likely Don. Don rarely voices an opinion on anything at all, and so far he has only offered a few vague platitudes to the more vocally horrified boys. He’s even flashed Shorty a bracing smile or two in the moments where Shorty has forgotten to look like his life isn’t falling apart. Those smiles make Shorty feel even sicker to his stomach than he already does, even though he knows Don means them as a comfort.
He ignores them as best he can and focuses on stowing his gear and mechanically putting back on his street clothes. Not-looking is easier than it’s ever been.
He’s doing such a great job of it, in fact, that Dutch has to call his name three times before Shorty remembers that it’s polite to look someone in the face when they’re talking to you.
“Sorry,” Dutch says when Shorty does look at him, wincing at whatever he must see in that look, whatever anguish Shorty hasn’t hidden well enough. “I can see you don’t want to talk about it. It’s just that no one does, and I wasn’t at that meeting Coach called yesterday, and I’d just like to know what happened to the guy I might be replacing, you know? Chuck’s my friend too.”
In the excitement and dread of the past day’s events, Shorty has forgotten that Dutch doesn’t know about any of it.
“He,” Shorty starts, but he can’t bring himself to try and find the words to fill Dutch in. It’s a pathetic last stand to make, but Shorty won’t be the one to sound the death-knell of that friendship if there’s any possibility someone else could bear the bad news instead.
Don, standing before his own locker to Dutch’s right, shoots Shorty another kind smile over Dutch’s head and clears his throat. “He finally got himself into trouble he couldn’t get out of. Not the kind of thing people like to talk about.”
Dutch turns his attention on Don, which means he misses Shorty’s slump of relief at having been let off the hook.
“Legal trouble?”
“Doesn’t look like it’ll go that far.” Don sighs, brows furrowed in that pained scrunch so characteristic to him. Shorty has only ever seen it brought on by exhaustion or embarrassment before. Never by one of them. “I almost wish - no, I do. I wish it would have gone there.”
Shorty can barely hear Dutch’s horrified inhale over the pounding of his own heart in his ears as his fight-or-flight instincts kick in. He doesn’t want to hear what Don has to say next. He begged off Bobby’s pity-party specifically so he wouldn’t have to listen to this kind of talk, even in tones as measured and reasonable as Don’s.
But he can’t realistically flee without drawing attention to himself, so he is trapped at his locker as Don sighs again and elaborates.
“We were always covering for him, is the thing, for smoking or staying out late or just horsing around. He was always wilder than the rest of us. And I didn’t mind doing it, before, but… maybe it’s true that nothing happened this time, or that he was just so drunk he didn’t even know he was asking a man and not a woman. But I keep thinking what if, any of those other times I lied to Coach about where he’d been all night, what if I was enabling him to do it for real? What if I was condoning it without even knowing? It makes me sick to even imagine. I think it’s high time he faced some consequences.”
It’s the closest thing to an impassioned speech Shorty has ever heard Don give. He hated every word of it.
Suddenly there is bile in his throat, and Shorty barely manages to choke out an apology and stagger out into the open air beyond the shell house before he is doubled over heaving, retching up nothing but acid. It burns, bitter and stinging, but it’s no worse than anything else he’s felt since the news broke.
Soft footsteps behind him mean that Don, measured as ever, has followed.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you think about it; hell, I don’t want to think about it. But Dutch deserved to know.”
“No, of course.” Shorty can’t look at him. Don is being as kind as perhaps he’s able, and Shorty can’t play mute forever. He has to say something. “It’s only fair, since the rest of us know. I just - I wish I didn’t know. I wish none of us did. And maybe - maybe it’s our fault he got caught; maybe we made him too brave by always helping him out of scrapes. Maybe we could have prevented this and he’d still be here.”
Shorty can picture Don’s frown perfectly as he answers.
“It’s not your fault any more than it is Jim’s or Johnny’s. Like I said, he played us all for fools. You can’t protect a man like that from himself; you’ve just got to close ranks once he’s found out to keep everyone else safe. We’re safe now.” He hesitates, and Shorty knows that two days ago there would have been a friendly hand on his shoulder in this moment. But that isn’t safe. “My mom has a great tea recipe for nausea. If you need it.”
The new awkward distance between them just makes it easier to shrug Don off and walk away without a backwards look. He doesn’t want Don’s help.
Shorty is still Don’s friend, unlike Chuck. He knows now - too late - that he never had any allies.
By unspoken agreement, the boys - now plus Dutch, who hovers awkwardly at the back of the group and begins to apologize for not being Chuck several times before clearly thinking better of it - gather once again the next evening in Bobby’s room. There is no more whiskey; procuring it discreetly was always Chuck’s specialty.
With no alcohol to ease the way the atmosphere is sullen and dull, and Shorty thinks it might not even be down to the circumstances anymore. Things were just always livelier when Chuck was around, and now that he isn’t, there seems to be a permanent pall over the boys he left behind.
It’s still a mistake to mention it.
Shorty has watched Dutch open and then close his mouth again no fewer than four times, and the clear discomfort in every line of their temporary new two-seat’s posture tugs at Shorty’s heartstrings in spite of his self-preservation instincts. Dutch is the only one with enough distance from the situation to voice the obvious, but he obviously doesn’t feel secure enough in his place among the rest of them to do it. Shorty knows that feeling.
“I guess he really was the life of the party,” he says, offering a weak smile to the room at large. Dutch smiles weakly back.
Roger groans, low and guttural, and drops his head into his hands. “Don’t bring him up. Please. I just want to have a decent night.”
“No parties I want to be attending,” says Joe, with a sympathetic glance at Roger but - once again - no physical gesture of comfort. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think he’s going to hell, or anything -”
Johnny interrupts with a derisive snort. Joe amends.
“Well, I don’t really believe in hell at all, so I guess it’s a moot point. But listen, Shorty - it’s good of you to try and say nice things about him now, soften the blow and all, but the point is he was different from us. He might have been fun, but it was the wrong kind of fun, you know? He was a bad influence, only we didn’t see it at the time. And I worry about you, you know -”
“Me?”
Shorty hopes his shrillness sounds like outrage and not terror. Joe is being nice about it, in his own way, but he is not on Shorty’s side.
Joe holds up his hands placatingly. “I’m not insinuating anything; don’t punch me.”
“I’m not Bobby,” Shorty mutters. His heart pounds uncomfortably as it slowly settles back into his chest.
“You’re not, and that’s why I - like I said, it’s good of you to stick up for him still. I just worry that maybe being so good-hearted and loyal, it’s blinding you to the truth. It’s strange having Dutch here instead, yeah, but it’s better.”
The smile Dutch sends Joe is wider and more grateful than the one he gave Shorty. Shorty doesn’t even know why he even bothered speaking up; it was never going to go well. At least it didn’t go worse.
Roger groans again, louder, scrubbing at his eyes with his palms. “Can we please not talk about him? Unless it’s news that they locked him up after all, I never want to hear his name again.”
Roger might be the only person on the team taking the whole thing harder than Shorty is. Shorty would offer himself as a listening ear if he hadn’t been burned so many times already in the past three days. If everyone else is an indication, Roger’s anguish stems from something far more poisonous and dangerous than Shorty’s.
“I don’t think any of us want to put him in jail,” Jim says gently, though there’s an uncomfortable furrow in his brow. Shorty muses hysterically that his life must really be in tatters if even such a lukewarm show of support from Jim feels like a comfort.
Roger lifts haggard eyes to glare defiantly at Jim. The depths of sorrow reflected there are matched only by the hatred in his voice.
“I do.” He sags, looking back down at his empty hands. He sounds chagrined. “But it’s no use. I talked to my dad about it. Our families kind of know each other. Apparently Ch - he said he'd never done anything like that before; he was just drunk and curious what it might be like, and he made a mistake. He said he's not like that.”
“Do you believe him?”
Roger is quiet for a moment. Finally, he admits, “I want to. But I knew him too well.”
Shorty wishes that were the end of it. But Roger’s eyes are red-rimmed and glistening with angry tears, and his hands ball into fists as he continues, voice shaking with all the words he has been clearly been holding back just as tightly as Shorty has.
“And it doesn't matter, anyway. Doesn't matter if he did anything about it or he didn't; he still had those thoughts and he lied to me - to all of us, convincing us he wasn't a, a pervert, getting us to trust him - he deserves to rot in jail. Even if all he's done is mess with decent people's heads and make them fucking miss him - he can die for all I care.”
The room goes quiet. Shorty’s brain goes even quieter.
“So, Dutch, I hear you’re a decent hand at poker,” Gordy says.
Shorty doesn’t stay to learn if that’s true or not; he lets his stumbling feet guide him from Bobby’s room and out of the house without much input from his mind at all. He finds himself by the water, knees pulled to his chin in a halfhearted attempt to stop them from shaking. The patchwork rays of evening sun poking through the clouds to dance lightly on the sparkling grey waves do nothing to warm him. Perhaps, he thinks, nothing ever will.
The distant rumble of the shell house door rolling shut reaches his ears, followed by the slow approach of wing-tipped loafers on gravel. Bolles, then, heading home for the night.
“Hunt? Is everything alright?” The footsteps stop, a few feet away, and there is the gentle thump of a briefcase being set down, then a self-conscious laugh. “My apologies; of course it isn’t. Are you alright? Wouldn’t you rather be with the team? It’s not good to stew over these sorts of things alone.”
“I’m not stewing,” Shorty says mutinously, without turning around.
It’s no good; Bolles is simply too kind a man to be put off by childishness. He steps around in front of Shorty to offer a hand up and, when Shorty accepts it, hauls him to his feet with ease and a friendly clap on the arm.
“This too shall pass. Things always look better in the morning.”
“Been a couple mornings already, sir, and they haven’t started to so far.”
Bolles’ bracing smile fades as he drops his hand with a sigh. “You know, Al wants us coaches to present a united front, no further discussion of the subject. He’s right, probably; it’s not the sort of thing I want to talk about more than I have to. But it has to be hard for you boys, having one of your own -”
“It’s fine,” Shorty says quickly. He simply can’t stand there and listen to yet one more person repeat the same sentiment he hears in every denunciation, every wrongheaded attempt at comfort: unnatural. Better off without him. He can die for all I care. “We’re all fine. Pretty much forgotten about it already. Dutch is a swell guy.”
“If you’re sure,” Bolles says with an understanding nod. He stoops to pick up his briefcase and begins to turn.
An impulse seizes Shorty. If he were anyone else - if he were Roger, or Bobby, or Don, or just a slightly more ordinary version of himself - he would take this opportunity to add a sentiment of his own. It’s what’s expected. It’s what a normal man would do.
He closes his eyes and tries not to hear the vitriol in his own voice as he gives in.
“I just - I hope he's fucking happy. Now that he's ruined everything for everyone. If I could say one thing to him, that's what I'd say: I hope you're happy now."
It’s maybe the closest thing to the truth he’ll ever be able to say.
Shorty feels like a shell of himself as he dresses, eats, and heads down to the water for morning practice the next day, and the day after, and the day after that. He keeps his eyes downcast as his teammates laugh and joke - even Roger, who is slowly but surely beginning to bounce back as the weeks pass and the wounds close over. He gets used to the feel of the boat with Dutch in it and Dutch’s company out of it.
And slowly, though Shorty never could have imagined it in those first few excruciating days, things return to a semblance of normal for him, too. Bolles watches him a little too closely at times, but Shorty has learned enough lessons for a lifetime and he has no plans to give anyone cause for concern. He accepts Bolles’ worry and Don’s smiles and Jim’s kindness, because it’s what a normal man would do and Shorty has seen the consequences of doing otherwise.
His resolve is tested only once, on a perfectly ordinary outing on a typical grey Seattle day. Shorty walks a pace or two behind, counting cracks in the sidewalk as Joe and Dutch argue good-naturedly about the latest Mae West film. Shorty hasn’t seen it yet, but he is making notes of which scenes show off her figure best in order to tailor his own eventual review to match.
“Oh lord,” Dutch says, halting his stride for just long enough to make Joe stumble in place. “Let’s no one tell Morris, yeah? We’ll never hear the end of it. Christ, city this big, you’d think we could avoid him.”
Shorty looks up from the sidewalk, heart in his throat.
It’s as he expected: Chuck, smaller without his rower’s bulk, wearing a sober suit and hat so at odds with the man Shorty remembers, stands on the street corner ahead of them like a rabbit caught in the crosshairs.
“I’m surprised he’s brave enough to show his face this close to campus at all,” Joe says, with an air of vague disinterest. “But I guess he always was foolhardy.”
Chuck's face, haggard but hopeful as his gaze lights on the three of them and recognition tugs his drawn mouth upwards, makes Shorty's heart hurt. But then Chuck's eyes land on Shorty in particular and the painful, earnest understanding in them is more than Shorty can handle. It seems that, just as Shorty always suspected Chuck, Chuck has always suspected him, and in his last-ditch attempt to cling on to even one person from his former life, he and his yearning eyes could put Shorty in danger.
So Shorty does what any normal man would do, and doesn't meet them. He looks instead to Dutch and Joe and hopes the lump in his throat sounds like anger.
"Let's cross the street.”