Page 2

TWO

PATRICK

I watched my friends sit in the booth in Lumière for a midweek beer after practice. I’d gotten them to go ahead, pulling an excuse out of my ass so that they could sit alone for a minute or two. My two best buddies, my two boys, finally burying the hatchet one beer at a time.

We’d had a tumultuous few months as a team and as human beings.

Between an asshole teammate and deeply hidden secrets, the Steel Saints had nearly split into two.

Easton Harper captained the team, except an extortionate little fuck had been stressing him out to the breaking point over an attempted kiss and a truth inevitably coming to light.

Easton’s focus had wavered, giving that little shit a chance to push Easton out.

But a coach saw our friend’s talents, putting Elio into the mix.

To cut a long story short, the shit named Kyle had been ratted out for drug use, suspended, expelled, and all but forgotten about.

But the events he’d put in motion continued, driving the team to choose between a distracted captain and a sharp, focused alternative, even if the two had been friends for years.

But Elio stepped down in Easton’s favor, mending the team and their friendship.

And, at long last, I could have a cold beer with my friends again.

I wasn’t ashamed to admit that my heart did a little dance as I stepped inside. I glanced around, thinking I’d run into my shadow-to-be at one of the tables, but I hadn’t seen him since the tea party.

Before joining my friends, I got a tall glass of cold, pale ale.

Easton and Elio were sharing a quiet moment of reflection, which wasn’t too unlike how they had been acting since mending the rift a few days ago.

In that silence, they acknowledged the weight of their secrets while keeping in mind just how utterly silly it had all been.

Easton was gay, outed to the entire team for the shock effect; Elio was gay, too, yet so deeply closeted until so recently that he still looked over his shoulder when saying the word despite making a grand show last weekend and kissing a cute football player in front of the entire bar.

Heads close together, they talked about the trials of coming out.

I’d overheard them more than once. It was a big part of their lives, one I wasn’t completely welcome to.

Not that they excluded me; it simply didn’t relate, and both guys felt like they would bore me if they shared these things with me.

I didn’t begrudge them, although it wouldn’t have bored me in a million years to listen to what my friends were going through.

I carried my beer over to the table, set it down, and dropped into my chair. “Still talking about how awesome dick is?” I asked.

Easton choked on a mouthful of beer before bellowing a laugh, and Elio blushed furiously. They exchanged a look before Easton gave a little. “It’s pretty awesome.”

“Mm. I’ve got one of my own. It’s provides endless fun.” I lifted my beer. “To the ole musketeers,” I proclaimed.

Both my friends brought their glasses to mine.

“Aren’t we missing D’Artagnan?” Elio mused.

I wasn’t so well-read to think through each of my metaphors and similes.

And as I tried to think of a retort, my gaze swept over the opening door.

An out-of-place geek with black-rimmed glasses cautiously stepped into the bar.

“I think I found our D’Artagnan,” I said, lifting my arm and waving at Shane.

He spotted me and looked like he regretted all his life choices, something waning in him. He’d had the exact same look when I’d stepped into the bar the first time we’d met. He lifted his hand in a little wave and nodded.

“Another friend?” Easton teased. “How many does a guy need?”

“How many can I have?” I asked.

“I’m not sure there’s a universal limit,” Elio offered.

“I’m just saying, leave some for us,” Easton said, pretending to be friendless and concerned.

“We’re not friends,” I said as Shane carried a glass of something pink between the tables on his way to join us. As he begged for a chair from the table next to ours and dragged it over, I explained to Elio and Easton. “This is Shane. He’s my shadow.”

“Like Peter Pan’s?” Elio asked, earning a slap on his arm from Easton.

Shane sat down and introduced himself somewhat clumsily. “And I’m not, um, in the shadow form tonight.”

“Oh?” I asked.

“The research hasn’t started,” he said. “I’m writing my methodology this week.”

I frowned deeply. “Then who’s been following me everywhere I went for five days?”

The look of worry that struck Shane’s face was priceless. I threw my head back and laughed, but the others didn’t find it funny. That was alright. I cracked myself up.

“Wasn’t me,” Shane said. “I was going to text you some start date options.” He gripped his pink slosh tightly, uncertain.

I thought about it for a moment, then figured I had nothing to lose. “You’re welcome to have a drink with us anyway.”

His hand relaxed, a sliver of surprise crossing his face. He nodded with apparent gratitude, and I considered teaching this nerd the ways of socializing while we had our ankles tied together.

“How does it work, though?” Easton asked. “The shadow thing.”

Shane gave a half shrug. “I haven’t finished the methodology, but I suppose you’ll be seeing me a lot this semester. It’s an observation-based method of data gathering. Hopefully, I’ll have a passing grade by the end of it.”

“There’s no way you ever got anything lower than A plus,” I said.

“And Patrick gets your uninterrupted attention out of it?” Easton asked, swinging the conversation elsewhere.

Elio nodded. “Sounds like a good deal.”

I poked his rib cage with my elbow.

Shane hesitated. “I guess. I mean, the idea is to be unobtrusive. I have to write up reports on various things I observe for a long while. Not sure how invisible I can be.” Then, almost to himself, he added, “Though that never seemed to be a problem before.”

“And if Patrick gets all cocky and tries to impress you?” Easton asked.

I was about to raise an objection, Your Honor, but Shane just chuckled. “There are mechanisms in place to get around that. It’s all in my methodology.”

“The fabled methodology,” I muttered under my breath.

Elio looked at his beer, the bubbles constantly rising from the bottom of the glass. “I always thought our boy here was ripe for some observation. Of course, I imagined him strapped down in a soundproof room.”

“Maybe keep your kinky ideas for Jaxon,” I said, causing another furious blush to spawn on Elio’s face.

Easton was amused, turning to Elio. “You walked right into that one, didn’t you?”

“I guess,” Elio said in defeat.

This was it, I realized. This was what I’d been missing all summer long and in the months that followed. We hadn’t been like this since late spring when I was finishing my freshman year.

Shane took a sip of his pink stuff and frowned but quickly smoothed his face. “Do you guys drink a lot?”

Elio let out a low whistle, and Easton laughed. “Now, this sounds like a probing question.”

“Er, no, that’s not how…I mean…look, um, I don’t know how to…talk. Yeah, let’s go with that. I don’t know how to talk. I meant, do you hang out often?” His freaking out and calming down were a roller coaster of a ride.

Elio and Easton exchanged a look, the distance between them still fresh in their memories. Almost in unison, they nodded. “We’re a close bunch,” Easton said.

“We sure are,” Elio agreed.

Shane looked around the table, aware of something going on under the surface, but he didn’t scratch it any further. “Cool,” he said simply, pressing the rim of the glass against his lips and taking another eyebrow-curling sip of the pink potion.

The text message came four days later. I was returning from the gym when my phone pinged. The message was well-structured, almost email-like, asking when it was the most convenient for us to meet up.

My reply wasn’t as well worded. “Where you at?”

The dots bubbled on the screen, disappeared, then bubbled again. Shane was in his dormitory and had plenty of time. I went there and knocked on the door of the room he had given me.

He opened the door, once again wearing an oversized hoodie and baggy pants, black-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, hair as shaggy as ever. “Hey,” he said, stepping aside to let me in.

I looked into the room. A standard dorm furniture made up of a bed, desk, chair, closet, bookshelf, some shelves, and a score of personal items. “Cute place,” I said, looking at the framed certificates, recognitions, and a couple of trophies. I recognized those. “You play?”

Shane’s hand rubbed his collarbone, then moved to the back of his neck. “No.”

“Got these from a flea market?” I asked, looking at the state hockey wins in the Junior Hockey.

He glanced at them, tearing his gaze away almost as quickly. “That was a long time ago.”

“Alright.” I was a guy who knew how to take a hint. “What did you want to talk about?”

Shane wiped his hands on his pants and circled the room. “I got the methodology approved by my mentor. We’re good to go.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “When I open my eyes tomorrow morning, I’ll find half your face outside my window?”

He snort-chuckled. “Not exactly. I’ll accompany you to your practice and games some, maybe even most, of the time. And to some social events. I’ll come with you to watch your exercise routines, downtimes, stuff like that, but not always. And I’ll always tell you if I’ll be there. I’m not a spy.”

I pulled the back of his chair, turned it around, and sat down. “Alright.”

“But before we begin,” he said and trailed off, wiping his hands on his pants again and shaking them off. He crossed the room to his desk and pulled a drawer out. “It’s just a procedure,” he said, taking a plastic cup out of the desk with a plastic wrapper still intact around it.

“Oh, you don’t trust me,” I said grimly, just to watch panic spike all over his face. “Christ, I’m teasing you, Shane. I can pee for you.” I grabbed the plastic, savoring the redness that replaced the fright on his face.

I did my thing and brought the cup back, setting it on Shane’s desk.

He was still a little torn. “It’s just a precaution. If I have your testosterone levels in the normal range, nobody can question my data over an oversight.”

“But you’re studying behavior, right?” I asked, although I had somewhat of an idea.

“Behavior is just your biochemistry placed within the diverse context of other biochemistries,” Shane said. “And performance-enhancing drugs can go to great lengths in affecting your mood and actions.”

“Yeah?” I asked. To be honest, I was mostly just prompting him to keep speaking. There was something interesting about the way he talked about the things he knew everything about.

“It’s not unheard of that straight guys who take testosterone for muscle growth over a long period of time experience a spike in libido. In fact, it gets so sharp that regular sex isn’t enough anymore, and they, well, kinda go gay just to get off.”

I barked a laugh. “Boy, that explains more than you can imagine,” I said, thinking of how Easton swore Kyle had been dropping hints for a long time before Easton leaned in to kiss him.

Kyle, of course, freaked out, which was ultimately very lucky for Easton because he was now dating someone much more loyal, if equally scary.

“And you mentioned tracking my physical stuff.”

“Heart rate, blood pressure, stuff like that, yeah,” he said. “We’ll do it before and after some of the drills, all the games I shadow you to, and your workouts, but also at random times to find your baseline. For a start, we could write down some basics.”

I nodded obediently.

Shane produced the measuring tape. “Let’s see your height.”

I lifted a hand and laughed. “Six foot two.”

He didn’t write it down. “Still, if I could just make sure,” he said.

Reluctantly, I exhaled and walked over to the door.

“Your shoes,” Shane reminded me.

My eyebrows fell, but I did it. Shane measured me wordlessly, not even the barest expression on his face as he mouthed, six foot one , and wrote it down. He showed me a scale and weighed me, writing down a hundred and fifty-four.

“On the lighter side for a hockey player.”

“I keep hearing,” I said.

He measured the circumference of my neck and then mentioned my waist.

I lifted my sweater, baring my lean torso, only to earn a flaming blush from Shane. Gotcha , I thought as he moved around me and took the measures medically. “Perfect,” he said. “I’ll calculate your BMI later.”

“And interviews?” I asked.

“Nothing immediate,” Shane explained, looking away from me. His cheeks were still pretty pink long after I had pulled my sweater down my abs. “We can schedule that on the fly.”

“Alright,” I said.

He bit his lip and looked at his bed, then the window, then at my lips, but not all the way to my eyes. “That’s sort of it for now.”

“You want me to go?” I asked.

He hesitated, then nodded. “It’s better if we’re not too familiar. There has to be some distance.”

“Strange idea when you’re my shadow,” I mused.

“It’s a thin line, but I’m the one who has to walk it,” Shane said with a small smile. Yeah, he was fully capable of talking when he was in the right mood and setting. “You just have to understand that it’s not personal. I need to remain professional, that’s all.”

“Got it,” I said.

And we parted there. I left with a light stroll, and Shane stayed behind with a constant blush on his pale cheeks. Everyone liked the goddamn abs.