Foul Ball
Chapter 43: Jayce

to lose it.

I put my head in my hands, kneading away with my knuckles the headache that pulled at my temples, threatening to burst into an all-out migraine. The locker room was still empty. Silent. Lonely. I wanted so desperately to break down, to cry, But I couldn't. I had to be strong.

"Gregory?" someone said behind me, and I turned to see Dalton walk in from the back, tossing an old baseball back and forth as his eyes landed on me.

"Hey man," I said, clearing my throat. At least I hadn't started crying yet. "Ready for the game?"

"Ready as I'll ever be," Dalton's ass hit the bench next to me, but he continued to toss the ball. Before I could say anything else to him, the door opened again, and coach came in followed by the rest of my team. I tried to look away from them and at the wall to hide my emotions, but it was too late.

"What's going on, Gregory?" Coach Harris asked, hands on his hips as he stopped in front of me. "We've noticed you've been acting differently lately. Withdrawn. What's going on?"

"No, sir, I'm great," I lied, pushing air between my teeth. "A bit of a headache, nothing serious."

Coach Harris said nothing to this, but he watched me instead, with intense gray eyes that could pick a liar out of a crowd of nuns.

"You know you can talk to us, man," Kurt said, stepping up beside Coach Harris. Suddenly, something in the air changed, and I wasn't just surrounded by my team, or my friends, but my family. These guys were my family, too.

"Is it Mace?" Dalton said softly, and my head shot up to look at him.

"What makes you think it's Mace?" I asked stupidly, and Dalton ran his hand through his hair, uncertain.

"Candy talked to me, dude. She wasn't specific, but-❞

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"It's leukemia," I said before Dalton could finish. "Blood cancer."

The words hung heavy in the air, smashing into us from above, pressing against my chest and lungs and head like an excavator. Nobody said anything for a long moment, not even me. I feared if I continued to speak, I would probably just cry instead.

"Jayce?" Kurt said, resting his hand on my shoulder. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, um, thanks guys," I mumbled, allowing my head to drop. It wasn't until Coach Harris stepped up, kneeled down in front of me, and rested his big, burly hand on my shoulder that I lost it.

It was the fall of a mountain, the breaking of a great dam. I couldn't stop it, couldn't even control it. Tears spilled down my face and onto my shirt, hot tears, ugly ones, and for every, single teammate who stepped up and rested his hand next to the others on my shoulder or arm, the sobs intensified, and every head in the locker room dipped with sadness...but also with unity.

"Don't you ever think that you have to go through something like this alone," Coach said, squeezing my shoulder firmly. "And we'll make sure Ms. Britton knows that, too." He stood up then, turning to face my brothers who took a respectful step back to give him room. "That goes for all of you," he boomed over the heads of my teammates. "We are a family, god damnit, and family is there for each other. We're a brotherhood, and every man in here better damn well treat it as such."

As the guys nodded, he turned back to me.

"You'll get through this," he promised, and before I could even nod, Dalton threw his arms around me in the most desperately sad way anyone has ever hugged me before and whispered, "Stop crying, man, because you're going to make me cry, too."

I was feeling a bit better afterwards, knowing that I had such support from so many friends. Macey and I both did. When I got back to the apartment to tell her about it, expecting she might be annoyed that I'd blabbed, she wasn't annoyed. She smiled instead.

"God, I miss them," she said. "I feel like a terrible friend."

"You shouldn't, because they understand," I said firmly. "But, they did want to invite us to dinner tonight. Just to see you. What do you think about that?"

"I think that as long as they're okay seeing me as the mess I am, I would love to," Macey said, and even as the words left her mouth, I could see the hesitance behind her eyes.

"Only if you want to," I said softly. "They know we might not be able to."

"It's okay," Macey said, squeezing my hand with much less strength than she'd had only days before. "I want to see them."