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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

RYAN IS SLIGHTLY worried that Louie will get bored of his hometown about three days in because Louie is the kind of person who wants to do stuff. He’s not a sit-still-and-do-nothing guy.

While Emery is still there, Louie plays street hockey with her kids in the driveway with an old net and sticks that he and Ryan’s dad dug up from the shed. By the time they leave, the kids are begging Emery to get them Louie’s jersey. Louie promises he’ll take care of it.

Ryan takes him to Ami’s annual potluck—they bring three dips because not even Ryan fucks up a dip. He’d bring grilled cheese if he could, but his specialty doesn’t travel well. Still, he might end up making some on the grill later on.

When they get to the Kurodas’ place, the backyard is already filled with people Ryan went to elementary school with, mixed with people he’s never seen before in his life. The wives, the husbands, the partners, the just-passing-throughs, the occasional cousin. Finally, for the first time, Ryan is also bringing someone these people have never seen before in their lives. Except for Ami, who’s obviously met Louie and gives Ryan this look he’d rather not try to read.

He meets Ami’s girlfriend Valeria, who is sweet and kind and all around wonderful, so Ryan can’t even be mad that Ami broke up with him for her. Although some of their friends have some things to say about her dumping Ryan for a girl. Ryan only rolls his eyes at them and says something about him and Ami never being that serious and that she can date whoever she wants and when he gets annoyed, he takes a plate full of leftover pasta salad and hides behind Ami’s parents’ little gazebo.

When Louie finds him, Louie has a plate full of mini burgers.

“Since when do you eat that kind of crap?” Ryan says.

“Well, you took all the pasta salad.”

“I’ll give you some if I can have a burger.”

Louie gently sets down a tiny burger at the edge of Ryan’s plate. “It’s fine, just take it.”

Ryan sighs. “Have you correctly deduced that I’m being pathetic?”

“Why are you—” Louie cuts himself off and shakes his head.

“What?” Ryan asks. Louie once told him that he hates people who don’t finish their sentences, so he’d better follow through on that one.

“Nothing’s changed between you two, right?” Louie asks.

Technically, no, nothing has changed. Except everything has changed. “This is going to sound selfish and shitty because I am selfish and shitty,” Ryan says, “but for years now, I felt pretty safe because every summer, I came here and took a few pictures of Ami kissing my cheek and us holding hands and sharing ice cream sundaes or whatever and people kind of backed all the way off and didn’t ask about my girlfriend or whatever. And when they did, I showed them a picture of Ami and said, look, this is her, I don’t see her a lot, but she’s amazing.”

“And now you don’t feel safe anymore?” Louie asks, voice low.

“I… no, that’s not it. I just don’t know what it’ll be like and if I’ll have to pretend to hook up with girls on the road or whatever.”

“I don’t think the guys will care if that makes you feel any better,” Louie says. “No one’s ever even asked me if I have a girlfriend.”

“Well, you’re straight, that’s different.”

Louie doesn’t reply.

Ryan suddenly feels like he stepped into something. He thinks about what Ami said when they came to see her at the firehouse. Ryan tells himself to stop thinking about what Ami said. Louie isn’t—he’s off limits. Part of the don’t ruin good things agenda is not sleeping with teammates or potential teammates. He made that mistake once; he won’t make it again.

“I know none of this will matter when we go back to Hartford,” Ryan goes on. “It’s just weird right now. Everyone here has been… you know, they’ve seen the photos I posted, too. And I haven’t missed that some of them thought I was stringing Ami along or whatever. Some definitely think I cheated on her. Which… I guess I kind of did.”

“I don’t think it counts when she’s in on it,” Louie says.

Ryan shrugs. Sure, she’s in on it, sure, it’s all a lie anyway, but only Ryan and Ami (and Firefighter Alvarez and some other people who know Ryan is actually very gay) are in on that secret. “Doesn’t change what everyone thinks,” he says.

Louie shifts a teensy bit closer, which is almost too close, except it’s perfectly acceptable. It’s just in Ryan’s head. It’s just that, when they met, Louie never sat this close to him.

“Can I ask you something?” Louie says.

Ryan considers Louie’s knit-together eyebrows. Then he shrugs again. “It’s going to be mean, right?”

“A little.”

“Whatever, at this point it doesn’t matter. Ask me.”

“Why do you care so much about what other people think about you?” Louie asks. “Or why they like you?”

It’s such a weird question. Even weirder than Louie asking him if he really needed another pair of shoes when they were at the mall. Doesn’t everyone care? Okay, maybe not everyone, but it’s not completely abnormal either. “Why wouldn’t I care?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Louie says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world.

“It doesn’t matter if I’m nice and kind to other people?”

Louie frowns. “That’s not the same. ”

“How is not—”

“You know you’re doing your best to be kind and that should be enough for you,” Louie says. “Some people will never see that you’re a good person and some won’t care either. They won’t like you for the weirdest reasons. You know, because they think your hair is stupid.”

Ryan runs his fingers through his hair. “Excuse me?” What’s wrong with his hair? Granted, Carrot laughed at him when he came home with this haircut, but Ryan really loves it.

“I’m not saying your hair actually looks stupid.” Louie rolls his eyes. “I’m saying it’s enough that you know. Because you can never please anyone anyway. What other people think about you is none of your business. You have to like yourself. Everything else doesn’t matter.”

“Huh,” Ryan says. Does he like himself? Not every day, that’s for sure. Definitely not right now. He looks at Louie and his tiny burgers. “Do you like yourself?”

“That’s a really personal question,” Louie says and eats a burger.

Ryan laughs. He holds out his fork to Louie. “I licked that, but if you want some pasta salad…”

Louie takes it and spears a noodle, then takes Ryan’s entire plate, quietly munching on the pasta salad while Ryan stares out at the Kurodas’ backyard. The tightness in his chest that he’s been carrying around with him ever since they arrived has mostly disappeared.

With a glance at Louie, Ryan says, “Thank you.”

He won’t just stop wondering what all these people think about him from one second to the next, but Louie has a point. Ryan sees most of them once a year, at this party, and for the rest of the year they practically don’t exist. Ami is happy and kissing her girl by the grill, swatting at people with the tongs when they get annoying. And Ryan is—he’s sitting here with Louie and a bunch of tiny burgers and maybe that’s happiness, too.

Louie starts talking about hockey—about Nick, about how easy he is to play with. “He’s amazing,” Louie says. “He’s better than anyone else I’ve ever played with.”

“Do we have a little crush?” Ryan teases.

Louie laughs. “No, it’s just fascinating, isn’t it? Guys who are that good can play with anyone. He’s got such a sense for the game. He always knows where I’ll be.”

“Yeah.” Ryan nods. “Just a tiny little hockey crush.”

“Says the guy who had a hockey crush on my dad.”

“Oh, I’ve been cured, don’t worry.”

Louie shrugs the tiniest bit. “He was a good hockey player. I don’t think that’s—I think that’s why I thought I had to do whatever he was telling me. Because he does know what he’s talking about. People pay a lot of money to send their kids to his camps.”

“And you got all that for the low price of zero dollars and some childhood trauma.”

“It’s not trauma ,” Louie says. “It’s—”

“You guys!” Ami kneels down in front of them with two plates. “You have to try my girlfriend’s chocolate cake.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Ryan says and takes one of the plates. “That’s so cute. You’re bringing me your girlfriend’s chocolate cake.”

Ami’s cheeks go pink. “Shut up.”

“Why is everyone telling me to shut up?” Ryan asks. “I speak the truth.”

“No one wants to hear the truth.” Ami laughs. She hands the other plate to Louie. “Cake is so much better than the truth. Although I’ve noticed that my dad likes you a lot better now.”

“I’ve noticed that, too,” Ryan grumbles. Ami’s dad actually smiled at him when he got here, which hasn’t happened in approximately five years.

“He didn’t think Ryan was good enough for me,” Ami explains to a confused-looking Louie.

“Even though I have great hair and I’m rich.”

“Not rich enough,” Ami says with a wink. “No, really, he doesn’t care that much about money, but he didn’t think we were being serious.”

“Which he was correct about,” Ryan says. Maybe it’s a good thing their little charade is over. Maybe it was stupid and just helped Ryan lie to himself about what kind of life he was living. It was an easy way out, although for a while he believed he deserved an easy way out.

Ami smiles tightly. “You’ll be okay without me.”

“We’ll make sure he’s okay,” Louie says and gently jostles Ryan.

Ami seems to approve. “I like you way better than his high school teammates.”

It’s not hard to like Louie better than Ryan’s high school teammates. Whenever some of those guys started talking about girls, Ryan wanted to walk right out of that locker room. Some of them were also deeply decent and Ryan tried to stick with them, even though he never felt as deeply decent as them because he spent his entire time lying to them and pretending he was so straight and so into chicks and really loved boobs. He was never actually Ryan around them.

If someone had told him that he’d one day have teammates that he’d be comfortable enough with to come out to them, Ryan would have—he would have laughed for a million years, honestly. He’s never thought much about it before, but he’s definitely not the guy he was back then. He’s not the guy all of these people think they know. They can’t even like him because they don’t know him.

Louie knows him.

Louie knows him and he’s here anyway.

Ami smirks at him.

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit.

“Enjoy that cake,” she says and wanders away, but not without shooting Ryan another look over her shoulder. I see you , it says.

Ryan eats his cake.

He will not think about it.