Body Checked by My Straight Captain novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Pass

Coach called Ty at noon on Sunday and did not say hello.

"Your captain was in my office at seven," Coach said. "He wanted to hand me the C."

Ty sat down on the edge of his bed.

"Why?"

"Ask him. I'm only telling you so you know what you're quitting on Monday."

The line went dead.

At nine that night Ty climbed the stairs to Lars's door with snow in his hair and knocked once, hard.

Lars opened it in a gray T-shirt, with his feet bare on the cold floor.

"You can't give it back," Ty said. "You don't get to hand in a letter and feel better and call that fixing it."

"I didn't do it to feel better."

"Then why?"

"Because it was the only thing I owned that I could put on the desk."

Ty pushed past him and stood in the middle of the room.

"You said I wouldn't want to hear why. I want to hear it."

Lars shut the door slowly.

"The sheet wasn't the only thing," he said. "Last April I gave you a card."

"What card?"

"The dinner card. I wrote your name on it and put it in your hand."

Ty frowned.

"I remember. You held it out like a parking ticket."

"I was nervous."

"You looked like you'd rather be anywhere else."

"I was nervous," Lars said again. "You looked at it. You looked at me. You said, 'Pass.'"

"Because I thought it was a courtesy."

Lars stared.

"I'd been on that team a year and a half," Ty said. "Brody had just told the whole locker room I'd bought my spot with my father's checkbook. And the captain hands me a card like a man doing his duty."

"It wasn't duty."

"I didn't know that! I thought five guys would sit there and wait for me to leave. I thought you were being polite so nobody could say you hadn't asked."

Lars's voice cracked on the next word.

"I paid for your chair. I sat across from it for two hours."

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