Chapter Text
The alarm on Eric’s phone goes off at 6:30am and he rolls out of bed without really opening his eyes to pull on the clothes and sturdy hiking boots he’d set out the night before. He and Coach are going hiking together before Eric’s workday begins at noon.
Day hiking and weekend camping trips are something Eric and his dad used to do quite often when Eric was younger. Eric had never been enrolled in Boy Scouts -- now he has new suspicions why -- but Coach had been an Eagle Scout as a teenager and knew the ropes. Throughout college and the early years of their marriage the Bittles went camping regularly. Once Eric had been born, Suzanne pointed out that babies were difficult enough to care for with access to comfortable bedding, running water, and a washer and dryer in the basement. So the overnight trips had ceased, temporarily, until Eric was old enough to pull his own weight. Then he and Coach would head off for a few days -- occasionally a week during the summer -- while Suzanne stayed home tending the garden, lunching with church friends, and losing track of time down in her studio.
At some point during Eric’s teenage years, though, these father-son trips had become less frequent until they stopped altogether. Part of it was moving south to Madison, where they were further away from all their favorite hiking trails up in Chattahoochee. Coach’s job had also become more demanding once they were in Madison, while Eric’s summer break filled up with jobs, driver’s ed, studying for the SATs and ACTs, his baking, and his vlog.
They haven’t been on a camping trip since … the summer after Eric’s sophomore year in high school? He’s not yet awake enough to remember. He suddenly wonders if the camping equipment is still in the storage space over the garage, and whether Jack likes camping. Maybe during the week Jack is here they could drive up to Ellijay and spend a night up Bear Creek Trail.
His father’s in the kitchen packing a rucksack with water bottles and the usual trail mix, his favorite under-ripe bananas, a couple of apples.
“Coffee?” Eric asks, blearily.
“Already in the thermos. We’ll want to hit the road before the sun gets much higher. C’mon sport.”
“Right.” Eric snags a day-old muffin from the Tupperware on the counter and follows his father out to the drive, where Coach has already backed his truck out of the garage.
They listen to Morning Edition on their way out of town, Eric clutching the thermos of coffee between his knees and sucking down his first cup of coffee in semi-desperation while his father drives in a silence only occasionally broken by grunts of approval or disapproval at the morning news.
Eric’s acutely aware that this is the first time he and his father have been alone since That Night When Eric And Coach Came Out, and figures this is probably his moment to man up and ask his dad … any one of the dozens of questions he’s thought of lying awake in bed at 2am and 4am and 6am during the past ten days.
Coach beats him to it, though -- surprise number one for the morning.
He clears his throat as they pass the turnoff for Buckhead Road and asks, “So your team -- they treat you right son?”
“They do, sir.” Eric sucks at his coffee and smiles, thinking of Lardo and Shitty cuddling Jack on the couch up in Pawtucket.
“You’re … out to your teammates. Your teammates know you’re --?”
“Gay,” Eric supplies. “At least, I’m pretty sure. I’ve never felt about any girl the way I feel about Jack.”
His father nods, still staring at the road. Eric sees out of the corner of his eye the way his father flexes his hands on the steering wheel as if he’s conscious of gripping the wheel too hard and is trying to loosen his grip.
“Gay then,” Coach says. “Your teammates know you’re gay.”
“They do, yeah. Shitty was actually the first person I told -- back in the fall of my freshman year. It was --” Eric snorts to himself, remembering the stack of index cards and the way his hands had been shaking. How Shitty’s calm acceptance had made him feel both weepy and elated with relief. “He was the first person I’d ever told. The first time I'd said it aloud, even to myself. It was good.”
“And they -- there haven’t been any incidents?”
Eric realizes what his father is driving at, “No - no, sir. Everyone on the team -- they’re good. Samwell doesn’t tolerate -- we all go through the trainings and everything. And the coaches hold us to it. And even the guys who might be a little ‘no homo’ about things, they never -- it’s so much different than here. It really is.” He hears himself reassuring his father and wonders when this conversation had become about his father’s anxiety.
“I’m sorry,” Coach says, so quietly Eric almost misses it under the burble of the radio.
“What?” he asks, leaning lightly to the left to hear better.
“I’m sorry,” Coach repeats, more clearly this time as he reaches over to switch off the stereo. “Your mother and I -- I’m sorry we didn’t -- we should have done more.”
Eric sits with that for a few miles of winding back-country road. His parents don’t even know all the details of the bullying he lived through in middle and high school. Getting locked in the utility closet was impossible to hide, and he’d told enough in front of the principal and vice-principal, the school counselors, football coaches, and his parents to ensure the ringleaders were punished. But he’d been humiliated, ashamed of the way his fear kept him from returning to school, and -- once they moved to Madison -- terrified that history would repeat itself if he didn’t keep his head down and absorb whatever it was the bullies in his new school chose to dish out. Which had mostly been verbal harassment, physical intimidation, petty tripping and shoving. Things had never escalated like they had back in Gainesville.
Eric wonders now whether silence had been the best solution. Maybe if he’d told his parents about the ongoing harassment earlier they would have realized -- everything would have come out into the open a bit sooner. He’d always thought his father would be ashamed of a sissy son who couldn’t give as good as he got. But he’s starting to think he’s misjudged his father in more ways than one.
Eric sighs. “I know you and Mama tried -- you even changed jobs to get me out of Gainesville. That’s not nothing Dad. I didn’t ever think you wished me harm … I just. It would’ve been nice to know a little sooner that me being gay wasn’t gonna throw you for a loop, you know?” It would have been nice to know I wasn't alone in this, he thinks, but doesn't quite have the guts to say.
They pull into the parking area at the trail head and Coach kills the engine on the truck. They sit in silence, looking out into the thick wooded hillside beyond the gravel lot. There are only two other vehicles in the parking area on this weekday and the air is broken only by the cooling down of the truck engine and the songbirds wrapping up their early morning songs.
“I am sorry,” Eric’s father says again, to his hands at rest on the steering wheel. “I don’t -- talk about this much. At all.” He clears his throat and Eric looks at him sidelong, trying to read Coach’s expression. He looks tired and for the first time Eric thinks, startled, a little bit old.
He looks at his dad and thinks of him, for the first time, not as Coach or as his father, but as someone who -- like Eric -- has spent a lot of time carefully hiding parts of who he is from the world.
“Mama said you had a boyfriend?” Eric asks, tentatively, trying to remember what he can of the conversation the night he told his parents about Jack.
“Alex,” Coach says. “Alex and I … we were together for a few months. He was much more involved in the gay scene in Durham than I was willing to be. By the end of my freshman year I knew I wasn’t going to go pro and that I’d end up working with kids. Either way ...” He shook his head. “Today -- today in some parts of the country school teachers can fight to keep their jobs even if they’re out. At the time, I knew my career would be dead before it began if I was known to be gay. And then I met your mother.”
“Mama isn’t …” Eric doesn’t know how to ask the question that makes him feel sick to think about, because even formulating the question makes him feel like a horrible human being for wondering if his parents’ marriage has been a sham all these years.
“Your mother and I love each other,” the firm conviction in Coach’s voice releases something in Eric’s chest that allows him to breathe a little easier. “I’m bisexual, Dickey. I know that’s still an unpopular thing for a man to be, but it’s what I’ve always been. I dated girls in high school, was hopelessly in love with my straight best friend, had a few relationships with men the first two years of college, and then -- I met your mother. Alex and I were still together through the end of sophomore year but he broke up with me over the summer. And when your mother and I ended up in the same class in the fall, we started hanging out more and -- that was it. For both of us. It still is.”
“Okay,” Eric says. “Okay, good.” He’s more relieved than he even expected to be that his parents are happy together. It’s been haunting him since that night, the chance however minuscule his father married his mother to pass -- the idea makes his skin crawl.
“I’m damn proud of you, son,” his father says, after a handful of silent seconds passes between them -- slightly easier than any of the silences they’ve endured since the night they both came out.
“You’re -- what?” Eric’s thrown by this.
“I’m proud of you,” Coach repeats. “I feel -- it seems clear that your mother and I have not told you this often enough. You are -- I think about you coming out to a whole team of hockey players your freshman year of college, son, and I think about the courage and strength that took. It’s strength and courage I’ve never had. You were worried your mother and I would disapprove of the fact you were gay but you told us anyway. That's bravery.”
His hands spasm again on the steering wheel, clenching and releasing, and he sighs. Once again, Eric sees a new vulnerability, a new fragility in this big man he’s always felt slightly intimidated by. He’s always felt like his father looms over him, slightly, both protective and also imposing. Someone whose stature Eric will never be able to live up to. But this morning he’s looking at his father, almost reluctantly, with a strange double vision. He’s seeing Coach, yes, but he’s also seeing Richard Sherman Bittle, the football player who’d never been able to say to his own parents, “Alex-and-I-are-dating.”
His intimidating father, Coach Bittle, thinks that he -- Eric -- is the one who’s got a backbone.
“I thought -- I thought --,” Eric starts, then stops again. “You were so disappointed when I wouldn’t play football! And the pies and Beyoncé and --I thought you were worried I’d turn out gay!”
“I wasn’t worried you’d turn out gay --” Coach snorts. “Hell, son, I was almost a professional football player and I turned out gay. One of the guys I was with my first year at UNC was a marine who ended up serving in Desert Storm. As far as I know he's still gay. I just never knew -- I’d look at you, kid, and see everything I love about your mother -- and I’m glad the two of you are close. You have her backbone and her kindness and generosity." He pauses. "I just sometimes wondered what I’d contributed amidst all that.”
Eric raises an eyebrow, tossing the last few drops of coffee out the window and screwing the thermos lid back in place. “So your son … who’s a gay athlete. You’re wondering what you could possibly have contributed to my DNA.”
“It was the --” Coach waves a hand in the air, “-- it was the sequins and the --”
“Oh for the love of God, you’re never going to let me forget the sequins! It was one outfit.” Eric rolls his eyes. And then they’re both chuckling, a little, as they climb out of the cab and stretch their cramped legs in preparation for climbing the first steep incline.
“One was more than enough, son.”
“You’re such a wuss,” Eric teases. “One of these days, we’re getting you on skates.”
“Mmm,” his father responds. “First, we’ve got this trail to hike before lunch.”
“You’re on.”