32. 32

32

Ant Decker

It’s my worst nightmare come to life. It’s everywhere. Dry kindling sprinkled over an open flame. It spreads like wildfire.

The internet is abuzz. Every interaction Robbie and I have had on the ice since the season began has been played back, sliced up, and slowed down.

It’s damning.

It looks exactly like what it is: two guys who couldn’t stand one another, slowly but surely finding themselves unable to keep their eyes off each other.

Every clip they play is the same or similar. It’s Robbie and I on the ice, on the bench, or heading to the locker room. We’re close to each other, talking or looking at each other. There’s something in the space between us. Something hard to name but something easy to see.

In the beginning, I was better than him at hiding it, but lately, that’s changed. I’ve started to look at him the same way he looks at me. Internet sleuths and stalkers alike don’t miss it. They pinpoint the exact moment it happened for the first time. I gave Robbie an assist and watched him as he scored. My eyes lit up, dewy and almost sleepy, sparkling as Robbie skated rings around our opponents. It was the game we played after the first time we fucked. The game we played after he told me he could feel where I’d been when he moved.

A hockey game with a basketball score.

A secret smile has bounced back and forth between us ever since, passed from one of us to the other like something precious.

Tiny, barely-there touches have been zoomed in on and slowed down, a fist bump that lasted too long. A pat on the back that ended with a jersey being fisted in his hand or mine. Minor hesitations between us have been analyzed and reinterpreted. Slight feints have been highlighted. Shared glances and hands that have reached for the other unconsciously have set to sultry music and played over and over.

Minor interactions have been viewed under a microscope, magnified, and made into something big.

Something I’ve always known was coming for me.

I’ve sat in locker rooms for years and scanned the faces of my team members, knowing their behavior toward me would change if they knew this about me, trying to identify who’d take it best. Who’d take it worst. I’ve always known that when it happened, people would treat me differently. They’d talk to me differently. They’d talk about me differently too. What they wrote about me would be different as well.

It won’t be about the game I play anymore.

It won’t be about my stats ever again.

It’ll be about this. Forever.

I’ve dreaded it all my life.

I’ve thought about it for years, playing it out and trying to determine how it will go down.

The reality is worse than I thought it would be, and believe me, that’s saying something. My entire being feels like it’s being squeezed. Crushed. Like my life force, the thing that keeps me together, is in the process of being surgically removed.

It’s what I expected to feel, but not why I expected to feel it, and that has shocked the unholy shit out of me.

It’s been five days since I left the McGuire house. Five days since I’ve seen Robbie, and it’s the thought of Robbie being caught up in all this that upsets me more than anything. I think of him all the time. His beautiful face. His beautiful, happy face. His honest, open face and his soft heart .

A face that smiles easily because it doesn’t know what it’s like to be hated.

My heart pounds in my throat when I think of that changing.

I can’t stand it.

I won’t allow it.

I have to cut him loose. I know that. It’s not rocket science. It’s obvious. He can find a girl to date tomorrow, be photographed making out with her a few times, and the rumors about us will die down. It’ll happen quickly. People are assholes, but they have a short memory.

I type a message telling him so a hundred times. A hundred times or more. I look at the screen and read my words back to myself. They make sense. It’s the right thing to do. The obvious, right thing to do.

I just can’t fucking hit send.

I can’t do it.

I’ve tried and tried and tried. I’ve tried calling him and saying the words, but I can’t do that either.

The team’s mood is different. Cautious. Guarded. There’s an undercurrent that wasn’t here before. They may not know everything, but they know something’s up. I’ve heard guys talking in hushed tones on the bus, in the locker room, at the hotel bar.

Some of them suspect us .

Some think it’s the craziest thing they’ve ever heard and that neither Robbie nor I would ever ‘do something like that.’

It’s that, the ‘something like that’ that kills me.

I know where thoughts like that come from and the kind of thinking that gives rise to them.

When I think of Robbie being exposed to that, I feel physical pain. I feel hot and cold all over, and for the hundredth time, I look down at my screen as I type the message I need to send to set him free.

My thumb hovers over the send arrow, shaking as I will myself to do it. I try and try and try.

At long last, by the time I’m so exhausted I’m seeing double, I delete the message and type another one instead. I don’t look down to read it back.

I hit send without hesitation.

I miss you.

He takes less than twenty seconds to reply.

I’m on my way.