Page 27

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

LOUIE NEEDS TO stop kissing him.

Ryan needs to tell Louie that he has to stop.

The first time was bad enough. Ryan thought about it for days. He still thinks about it sometimes. All the time. Nonstop.

Still, the first time was easier because Ryan could call it a fluke, an accident. High temperatures, thunderstorms, and the soft chirp of the cicadas just does shit to you. It makes you think you need to kiss someone because it’s summer and that’s what you were told you’re supposed to do when you were a teenager.

But now Louie has kissed him twice. Twice is not an accident. Twice is… something.

Twice is what keeps Ryan up that night. And the night after that.

Louie acts like it didn’t happen at all.

And that’s probably the best course of action. The season is starting—on the road in Toronto of all places—and Ryan needs to survive that. Maybe he can think about Louie and the way he kisses him like he’s the most precious person in the world after that, when they’re back home.

He’s not sure that Louie understands how he kisses. Ryan has never been kissed like that.

“I have never been kissed like that,” Ryan tells Carrot, who proceeds to drive straight off Rainbow Road. Ryan wanted to hang out today because he misses Carrot, but he also needed to talk with someone who isn’t a walking disaster.

“Okay,” Carrot says and puts down his controller. “Tell me more. Who was on the other end of this life-changing tongue action?”

“Uh, a guy,” Ryan says. He looks around for a pillow to grab. He needs emotional support. Unfortunately, this apartment hasn’t changed at all since Ryan moved out and Carrot has not yet discovered the many advantages of throw pillows.

Carrot picks up his beer. “Yeah, I figured. Did you meet him this summer?”

“Kind of.” Ryan shrugs. “I met him before this summer, but I really, really met him this summer.”

“You met him with your mouth.” Carrot nods, like a mouth-meeting connoisseur. “Did you…” He wiggles his eyebrows.

“No,” Ryan says. He doesn’t know why he sounds so offended. When he still lived here, he left the premises to hook up with Kaden all the time. And Carrot definitely had to listen to way too much of Ryan’s personal shit while hardly ever sharing personal shit of his own.

“Why not?”

“Because he’s… emotionally constipated,” Ryan says. “He’s not there yet. And, honestly, I don’t know if I want to get there with him.”

Carrot shoots him a look.

“What?” Ryan asks.

“You know that I follow you on Instagram, yeah?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I just… I was also following you on Instagram this summer.”

Oh. Shit. Oh, fuck. Did Ryan just accidentally out Louie? That’s what Carrot is implying, right? That he saw the photos Ryan posted throughout the summer. And that he’s deduced (in Sherlock Holmes fashion) that Ryan didn’t hook up with Nick, who is extremely married to hockey, or with Liam, who is extremely married to his wife. Which only leaves one option.

How does Ryan keep doing this? And why the fuck is everything so complicated? He just wants to talk to his friend about his life and it’s so unfair that he can’t.

“Let’s talk about something else,” Ryan says. “Are you seeing anyone?”

“Yes,” Carrot says, without missing a beat. That’s why Ryan loves Carrot. “The guy with the cute Labrador who lives down the hall. I run into him every fucking day when I go to practice. It’s like he knows I’m dying to pet that dog.”

“Very funny,” Ryan says flatly. “It’s a cute dog, though.”

“Adorable. And always happy to see me.”

Ryan sticks out his bottom lip. “I’m also always happy to see you.”

“That’s because you’re actually a golden retriever,” Carrot says and reaches out to ruffle Ryan’s hair.

Ryan sighs and leans back. He nods at the TV. “Wanna restart this?”

“Or,” Carrot says, “you could just tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“Everything.” Carrot shrugs. “You know, all the stuff that’s bugging you beyond the emotionally constipated guy.”

“Nothing’s bugging me,” Ryan grumbles. “It’s more like… I feel… ugh.”

“I can relate to that feeling at least. Sometimes you have an ugh phase.”

“Yeah, but… I shouldn’t be having one?”

“Because?”

“Because,” Ryan says, “things are awesome in Hartford. I played a good season. I had a great summer. That doesn’t add up to an ugh phase.”

Carrot nods. “But?”

“But things are different. I don’t have anyone like you in Hartford. Or anyone like Slaw. I’m part of the team, but I’m not—they don’t know me.”

“They don’t know you’re gay,” Carrot translates. He’s good. That is also why Ryan loves him. “Yet.”

“Yet,” Ryan echoes.

Ryan is already writing an apology text in his head when he gets off the ice after the game in Toronto. The Cardinals walked in and said, actually, this is our place now. They were tied at one until the second intermission, their first goal scored by Louie, then Nick followed that up with a hat trick in the third. They got two empty netters, one of them Ryan’s.

He caught Carrot’s eye across the ice after the final buzzer—Ryan definitely owes him a beer after this.

Liam taps his head when he gets to his stall. “Drinks?”

“Drinks,” Santa agrees loudly.

Louie refuses to go with them; says he needs to get some sleep. Ryan has an inkling that he probably didn’t sleep well during his pregame nap. It wasn’t as obvious during the preseason, but Louie has been nervous. Maybe about getting sent down after all. Louie played a perfect game, but knowing him, he doesn’t trust that he’s with the Cardinals for good.

If he’s going to be this un-fun all season, Ryan’s going to—he’s going to accept it and do nothing because Louie finally made it and Ryan will not ruin a good thing.

When Ryan ended up in a ditch last winter, he thought he’d never be able to go out for a drink in Toronto again, but now it doesn’t matter at all. Not his town anymore. He takes a handful of guys to a bar he likes and he sits in a booth with Liam, Santa and Waldo. Three guys who’ve been on the team for years. They are this team. Together with Nick and Yoshi. Obviously.

Ryan wants in. He is in. Only…

“Can I ask you guys something?” Ryan asks, glancing at the guys across from him before he turns to Waldo, who used to be the Cardinals’ You Can Play ambassador. When those were still a thing.

“Always,” Waldo says at the same time that Liam says “No” and Santa says “Only if it’s about ordering fries.”

“Yes, to the fries,” Ryan says. “I was wondering, though…”

“Hm?” Waldo prompts when Ryan doesn’t immediately go on.

“Oh, he’s making it suspenseful,” Liam says, nodding at Ryan. “I’m an old man, I might die before you get the rest of this sentence out, have you considered that?”

God, Ryan is so stupid about this. Wrong place, wrong time for sure. Then again, the perfect place and time don’t exist. “Have you guys ever had a gay teammate?” Ryan asks. He briefly considered reusing what he said to Carrot all those years ago: So, what if I was gay? Seems too bold now.

It’s like the world immediately goes dead silent.

It obviously doesn’t. People are still chatting, glasses are still clinking, the music is still being terrible. They’re still in a bar. Fuck, Ryan shouldn’t have asked in a bar with tons of other people around.

Liam is the first to say something. “Why are you asking?”

“Just out of curiosity,” Ryan says with a shrug. Playing it cool. He is not cool. He is dying. He knew no one was going to say, Yeah, duh, we love gay teammates . And yet he somehow still expected it; was surprised when the answer was a different one.

Santa nods. “It doesn’t really matter to us, you know? If a guy shows up and plays his game, we don’t care.”

Ryan does not love that answer. They should care. They should want that hypothetical guy to be safe on their team.

“What Santa is trying to say,” Waldo cuts in, “is that we accept everyone.”

“Yeah, that,” Santa says.

That’s better.

“We also don’t name names,” Liam says, suddenly sounding strict, like he does when Maja tries to eat crayons .

“Yeah, that’s fair,” Ryan says quickly. “I wasn’t asking… I was just wondering.” He wiggles in his seat and picks up the small menu with the sparse offering of snacks. “So, fries?”

Coming out is, unfortunately, a journey that never ends. It most definitely doesn’t end easily and with fries.

“Why do you want them to know?” Louie asks when Ryan confesses that he almost… confessed. Three games on the road and they barely talked, which isn’t that weird, but Ryan was starting to think that Louie might be avoiding him.

Because of the second kiss.

Now that they’re back home and he’s snuggled into his favorite blanket, he’s acting perfectly normal. If normal is the same as pretending it never happened.

“Because,” Ryan says. He’d love to look Louie in the eye while they’re having this conversation, but Ryan can’t anymore.

“Who you sleep with doesn’t make you who you are.”

“It kind of does.”

“How?” Louie says. “Do you think you’d be a different person if you were straight?”

“I’d be less anxious about people finding out who I sleep with, that’s for sure,” Ryan says. “Maybe it doesn’t make me who I am, but it’s part of who I am. And I feel like the guy who walks into the locker room is not entirely me. I miss being me.”

“Were you ever fully you?” Louie asks. “In Toronto, I mean?”

“You mean, was I out to the entire team?” Ryan laughs. In his dreams maybe. “Hell no. But I had my place on the team and it was a good place.”

“And you don’t like your place on this team.”

“That’s not really it either.”

Ryan doesn’t know how to explain it. It doesn’t feel the same. Doesn’t make sense to have this conversation with Louie either because he lives in a completely different world. In his world, you can just mind your business. Play hockey and anything beyond that doesn’t matter to him.

Ryan sneaks a glance at Louie and finds Louie looking back at him.

Or maybe it’s not that easy. It’s never actually that easy. Ryan could ask. He would if he wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t get an answer.