4. Wes

Wes

I’m not thereto greet Jamie when he returns from Montreal on Sunday—I’m already boarding a flight to Chicago for yet another away game. The good thing is, after this one, we’re looking at a one-week stretch of home games. One blessed week of sleeping in my own bed. One week of Jamie.

I can’t fucking wait.

My coat goes in the overhead bin and my earbuds go into my ears, but before I sit down Forsberg yells from the seat behind me, “Guys, it’s the gay shirt! He wore it again!”

I pause and give him a cheesy wink. “Wore it for you, cutie. Because you liked it so much last time.”

Forsberg throws a wadded-up napkin at me, and I duck it by dropping into my seat.

Of course, the real reason I’m wearing this shirt is that I didn’t do laundry, and it was lying over a chair unwrinkled. That and it’s a killer shirt. Forsberg be damned.

I make myself comfortable¸ closing my eyes and reclining in my seat as I mentally prepare for this very important game against the league leaders. Most of my teammates are doing the same thing.

When I feel the seat next to me depress under somebody’s ass, I assume it’s Lemming’s, because he and I often sit together on flights and the bus. Lemming, a redheaded D-man, grew up in Boston, too.

But when I open my eyes, it’s Blake sitting there, grinning at me. Clearly my new neighbor has made it his mission in life to bond with me, because he yanks the buds out of my ears.

“Dude,” he groans. “I’m bored. Talk to me.”

I stifle a groan of my own. We haven’t even begun our two-hour flight. That old Nirvana song suddenly comes to mind, and I try to remember the lyrics… Here we are now, entertain us. That’s pretty much Blake Riley. I’m here, and it’s your duty to entertain me.

And yet I can’t bring myself to dislike the guy. He’s hilarious.

Since he’s obviously not going anywhere, I click off my iPod and indulge him. “You hear anything more about Hankersen? Whether or not they’re putting him on IR?” Hankersen is Chicago’s star forward, and so far this season he’s scored at least one goal per game. He’s the biggest threat to us on the ice, so if he’s not playing tonight, that will definitely up our chances of beating the undefeated Hawks.

“No news yet,” Blake answers. He swipes a finger over his phone and pulls up a sports app, holding the screen toward me. “I’ve been checking religiously.”

“Well, if he’s playing, hopefully our defense can find a way to shut him down.” It’s unlikely, but a man can dream.

“How’d your roomie do this weekend?”

The question startles me. “What?”

“J-Bomb,” Blake clarifies. “His junior team had a tournament or something, eh?”

“Oh right.” It still makes me incredibly uneasy discussing Jamie with my teammates. But now that Blake has actually hung out with us, it would be even more suspicious if I clam up every time Jamie’s name comes up. “They won one, lost two. The team’s not doing great this season,” I admit. And I know that bothers Jamie. A lot. Just because he chose to coach instead of going pro doesn’t mean he’s not competitive. It kills him that his boys aren’t seeing any success this season.

“Sucks,” Blake says sympathetically. “Especially when you’re the coach. All you can do is stand there on the bench and watch. If it were me, I’d be all, ‘Put me in the game, Coach! Me! I can win this for us!’”

I snicker. “That’s ’cause you’re a glory hog.” Blake even has a trademark celebration move every time he scores. It’s a cross between riding his stick like it’s a pony and driving a locomotive. Stupid as hell, but the crowd goes nuts for it.

“Ha. Says the guy who’s got millions of puck bunnies following him wherever he goes. Like a row of baby ducks.” Blake grins. “I’ll bet you’re getting twice the pussy I did in my rookie year.”

You’d lose that bet, sucker. Time to change the subject. I point at the newspaper rolled up in his hand. “What’s happening in the world?”

“The usual bullshit. Politicians being assholes. People shooting at each other.”

“We shoot at each other,” I point out. “And get paid well for it.” It’s a weird job, really.

He rolls his eyes in a move that should look stupid on a dude but somehow doesn’t. “We aren’t killing people, Wesley.”

About three minutes ago we were praying for another athlete’s injury, but I don’t bother to point that out.

“And there’s a new velociraptor they discovered in North Dakota. Get this—it was seventeen feet tall, with claws and feathers.” He’s nodding aggressively. “That’s a badass raptor. Fucking scary, really. But even scarier is that new flu. Did you hear about it?” He gives an exaggerated shudder. “It comes from sheep. I hate sheep.”

A bark of laughter escapes me. “Who hates sheep? They’re, like, woolly and harmless.”

“Sheep are not harmless, bro. The sheep down the road from my grandparents’ farm?” He shakes his giant head as if recalling a crack den in his neighborhood. “Those fuckers were mean. And loud. When I was a kid, my parents were like, ‘Oh, Blakey, look at the little lambs!’ And those fuckers would come over to the fence and bleat in my face.” Blake opens his mouth and makes a MEH-EH-EH sound so loud that heads turn all over the plane.

“That sounds like it, uh, made a deep impression on you,” I say, trying hard not to laugh. “Where did your grandparents live, anyway?”

Blake makes a dismissive motion with his hand. “The West Bumfuck farmland well outside of Ottawa—”

West Bumfuck?Sounds like my kind of place.

“—Lotsa agriculture. Lotsa sheep. And now those fuckers are gonna kill us with the flu. Cheezus. I knew they were evil.”

“Uh-huh.” I give my iPod a longing glance. I could be relaxing to some tunes right now, but instead we’re reliving Blake’s childhood terrors. “There’s always some new flu scare, and it turns out to be nothing.” Though it amuses me to see a big dude like Blake wigging out. “I heard these new strains spread especially fast on airplanes.”

He gives me an evil glare. “Not funny. They found a case on Prince Edward Island.”

“That’s not close to here, though?” My Canadian geography is a little shaky. But I’m pretty sure I can’t catch the flu from someone who lives a thousand miles from Toronto.

“That shit travels, man. I mean—we could be infecting Chicago right now.”

I nudge him with my elbow. “Let’s tell ’em that all of Canada has been exposed. They’ll cough up the puck every time on the back check.”

He gives a big, bellowing laugh and slaps me on the chest with his big paw. That’s when my phone lights up. Unfortunately, the name I see on the screen is my father’s, so there’s an instant knot of tension in my chest.

Things haven’t improved much with my folks since I graduated from college. They still insist that my “gayness” is a phase. My dad still treats my success in the pros like it’s something he made happen. My mom still forgets she gave birth to me half the time.

I spent the holidays with Jamie’s family in California, and when Jamie’s mom Cindy suggested we invite my parents to fly out, I responded with five minutes of hysterical laughter, until Cindy finally chided me into stopping. Then she gave me a big hug and told me she loved me, because that’s the kind of mom she is.

All I got from my folks was a brief phone call wishing me a happy holiday and reminding me that if I want to come home for a visit, I need to show up alone. Yup, Jamie isn’t welcome. Scratch that. Jamie doesn’t exist. My parents don’t acknowledge that I am living with a man. To them, I’m a heterosexual athlete bachelor who’s crushing pussy all over the place.

“I need to check this,” I tell Blake.

I unlock the phone and give the email a quick read. Quick being the operative word, because the message is all of two lines.

Ryan, your schedule indicates you’ll be in Boston next month. Your mother and I expect you to join us for dinner. Hunt Club, Saturday, 9:00pm.

He doesn’t sign it “Dad” or even “Roger”.

“Dinner with the parentals, eh?”

I jump and find Blake peering over my shoulder. Fucking hell. It’s a good thing I have a lock on my phone, because this dude probably wouldn’t think twice about snooping around in it.

“Yeah,” I say tightly.

“You guys aren’t close?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Shit. That’s no good.” Blake leans back in his seat. “I’ll introduce you to my folks after the next home game. They’re awesome. Trust me, after ten minutes they’ll be your surrogate family.”

I already have a surrogate family—the Cannings. But I keep that to myself. And then I feel annoyed about keeping it to myself, because goddamn it, why does everything in my life have to be a secret? I fucking long for the day when I can proudly introduce Jamie Canning as my boyfriend. When I can talk to my teammates about my personal life and tell them about Jamie’s amazing family, or invite them over for drinks without having to see Jamie duck into the guest room when he has to go to bed. Because he’s not a guest in our condo, dammit. It’s his home. And he’s my home.

I’m not usually one to wallow in the injustice of it all. I understand the world I live in. I know that being gay still has a stigma attached to it. Doesn’t matter how many strides are being made, there will always be people out there who won’t accept that I like dick, people who will judge and spew their filth and try to make my life miserable. The fact that I’m in the spotlight now only makes it worse, because there are so many other factors to consider.

If I come out, what will it mean for my career?

For the team?

For Jamie?

For Jamie’s family?

The media will swarm like a horde of bees. The bigots and assholes will crawl out of the woodwork. The spotlight will no longer be just on my game, but on the personal lives of everyone I care about.

A queasy feeling churns in my gut. I remind myself that it won’t be like this forever. Next season some other hot new rookie will take the media by storm, and I’ll be forgotten. And by then, I will have proved to my new team that they can’t survive without me, gayness be damned.

“Ooooh ya,” Blake suddenly exclaims. I look over to see him reading something on his phone. “Guess who just went on IR?”

My breath hitches. “You’re shitting me.”

“Nope. Right here in black and white.” He holds up the phone, then twists around in his seat to address Eriksson and Forsberg. “Hankersen’s out. At least five games.”

A whoop sounds from behind us, and then Eriksson’s loud announcement blares through the cabin. “Hankersen’s out!”

There’s a collective burst of excitement. Don’t get me wrong—we all feel for Hankersen. An injury is the worst thing that could happen to an athlete, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But at the same time, hockey isn’t just a game—it’s a business. We’re all playing toward the same goal. We all want that championship cup. A win in Chicago tonight gets us one step closer to that goal.

My phone flashes again. This time it’s Jamie’s name looking up at me with the text message icon next to it. But Blake is settling in his seat again, so I don’t give in to the urge to unlock the screen.

My teammate, of course, sneaks another peek. “Text from your roomie,” he says helpfully, as if I’m not fucking aware of it.

I grit my teeth and tuck the phone in my pocket.

“You’re not gonna check it?”

“Later,” I mutter. “He’s probably just reminding me to grab groceries when I get back tomorrow morning. Nothing important.”

Those last two words are like poison—they burn my throat and rip my stomach to shreds. I feel sick and guilty for even saying that out loud. For implying that Jamie Canning isn’t important when I damn well know that he’s the single most important person in the world to me.

I am such a shit.

“So,” Blake says, oblivious to my pain, “I read that J-Bomb got drafted by Detroit. That’s killer. Why didn’t he go?”

For a second I just blink at him. “Where’d you read that?”

“Google, my friend. You heard of it? J-Bomb didn’t want to move to the Motor City?”

Shit! Blake is a nosy fucker. “He wanted to coach. The dude played goalie, you know? That organization has a pretty deep bench behind the net, and he didn’t think he’d ever get to play. This old coach of ours hooked him up with a job. Great opportunity.” I hear myself starting to babble and clamp my jaw shut. Did I give too much detail? Do I sound like I know too much? Now I’m sitting here hating my own paranoia.

“Uh-huh,” Blake says, looking distracted now. “So how do you think a guy could defeat a seventeen foot velociraptor, anyway? I mean, you’d need some serious weaponry. That fucker would be fast, too. Like Indy 500 fast.”

“Um…” I lost control of this conversation a long time ago. “Taser maybe?”

“Right. Good idea. Be fun to taser a raptor.”

Later, when Blake gets up to take a leak, I shield my screen and unlock my phone so I can see the message. The text says MDISH. It takes me a second, but then I understand the abbreviation. How hard is it? I reply.

Hard enough to operate the remote.

The picture is a carefully angled shot from our sofa toward the television. But the focus is on Jamie’s cock, which appears to be aiming the remote at the television. One stick-drawn arm is pushing a button, and the other has its drawn hand on its…hip. Well, dicks don’t have hips. But still.

Tell him not to watch any Banshee, I reply.

He’s chosen Die Hard II.

Tell him I miss him.

He knows, was Jamie’s reply.

I spend the rest of the flight with my earbuds jammed in, brainstorming dick pics that might make Jamie smile.