Page 71 of Him

“We end it when we leave for training camp.” My voice comes out hoarse, and I pray he can’t hear the note of pain in it. “We only have the summer.”

Jamie goes quiet for a moment. “Yeah.” He sounds equally hoarse. “I figured.”

I can’t tell how he feels about that. Disappointed? Sad? Relieved? His expression reveals nothing, but I decide not to push for answers. Besides, I’m the one who came up with that rule. I should be glad he’s not fighting me on it.

“We should go to sleep,” I murmur.

“Yeah.” He closes his eyes, but instead of rolling over, he shifts closer and kisses me.

I return his kiss softly. When I put a hand on his hip, the fabric crinkles beneath my fingers in a way that feels unfamiliar. They’re not his usual underwear, so I break our kiss to squint at them in the dark. “Canning,” I whisper. “Are you wearing your boxer shorts with kittens?”

Even in the dim light I can see the corners of his mouth twitch. “So what if I am?”

For some reason, this makes me unthinkably happy. I lean in to touch my smile to his. But Jamie squirms a little, as if uncomfortable. Then he sticks a hand down the back of the aforementioned boxer shorts and brushes something.

“Everything okay back there?” I ask, wondering if he’d left the tag in them.

“Just, uh, a Skittle in my shorts.”

We both chuckle even as our lips meet again. And again.Finally I’m able to relax. His arms close around me and it feels like coming home.

Our mouths fit together so perfectly. Every time we kiss, I fall even more in love with him, and it has nothing to do with sex or lust. It’shim. His closeness and his scent and the way he soothes me.

My life has been chaotic for as long as I can remember, and I always dealt with it alone. My parents’ criticism, my confusion over my sexuality. But for six weeks every summer, I didn’t have to be alone. I had Jamie, my best friend, my rock.

Now I have even more of him. I have his strong arms around me and his lips lazily brushing mine, and it absolutely kills me that I have to give him up when I go to Toronto.

We kiss for a while. There’s no urgency to do anything more than that. Our dicks don’t even enter the equation. We just lie there making out, while his palms stroke up and down my back in sweet, reassuring glides.

Eventually we fall asleep with my head on his chest and the sound of his steady heartbeat beneath my ear.

TWENTY-SIX

JULY

Jamie

Several days later, I get an email from my agent.

A year ago, I loved saying that.My agent. Sounds pretty important, no?

Not so much.

When I was a kid I collected hockey cards. They came in packs of ten with a lousy piece of gum that tasted awful. In every pack there’d be one good player—hopefully not a duplicate of a card I already had—and nine guys you’d never heard of. Those nine went in the bottom of my shoebox, where they waited. Every once in a blue moon one of those guys would rise in the ranks, but usually they didn’t.

Fast forward ten years. To my agent, I’m one of those cards at the bottom of the shoebox. In fact, it’s unlikely the emails I get from him are even written by him.

This one asks me for the date I’m moving to Detroit. “The club will put you up in a hotel near the rink until you’ve found housing. Attached you will find the real estate agent’s contactinformation. Please set up an appointment with the realtor once you’ve arrived in Detroit.”

The end of summer crawls closer every day. I’m not going to be able to put off these plans any longer.

Between sessions at the rink on Thursday, I look for Pat in his cramped little office. Since I’d promised my mother I’d try to come home, I need to find out if that’s possible.

“Got a second?” I ask from the doorway.

Pat beckons to me, then turns away from his computer screen. “What’s up, Coach?”

Still tickles when he calls me that. Campers getwhat’s up, kid?