Page 16 of The Poster Boy (Love The Game #3)

Marek

T o-do lists had never worked for me. The only thing they managed to do was pile up around the house.

In my pockets. In my phone. The only thing that worked for me was staying medicated, and then of course there was the panic mode setting where everything that needed to be done ten minutes ago finally kicked my ass into gear.

The fact that Church had dug himself out of his slump and was hot shit right now was the only thing that saved my ass.

I’d been a mess in practice all week. Training had been agony.

Everywhere I looked, Jay was there, ignoring me as usual.

I didn’t expect a marriage proposal or anything, but having him glance my way once or twice would have been nice.

Rejection was a bitch. I hated the way it clawed at me.

It wrapped its icy hands around my heart and squeezed until I couldn’t breathe.

And that’s when I knew I had to get out of my apartment.

The clutter was closing in on me, and I kept meaning to clean up, but I couldn’t get started for some reason .

That’s how I found myself across town at an outdoor rink. It was asphalt instead of ice, but that was fine by me. It didn’t take much to make me happy or to distract me from my wandering thoughts.

A group of local teens were playing when I sauntered up. At first, I was content to lean on the boards and watch the action. It wasn’t that long ago when I was a teenager, but it had been a hell of a long time since I felt any kind of freedom like the kind these kids must be feeling.

The minute I figured out I was gay, I’d known that shit was going to get hard for me.

It was a fact of life, especially when you were in a sport.

Gay athletes had always existed, but the world at large liked to pretend we didn’t.

That’s why being out had been such a big deal.

I still hated how it happened, but the bright spot in all the attention was that for every athlete that came out, it paved the way for others to come out and live their truth.

That’s the kind of thing I told myself on days like today when everything seemed harder than it had to be.

When the weight of my decisions dragged me down.

When nothing I did seemed good enough for anyone.

I was deep in mid-pity party when one of the teens stopped dead in his tracks and did a double take. “Hey, holy shit. You’re Marek Myers.”

The game stopped then as everyone swarmed the boards.

“Are you really Marek Myers?”

“Can you sign my shirt?”

“What’s the fastest shot you’ve ever stopped?”

“Did your other team really trade you because you’re gay?”

The explosion of questions reminded me a bit of what it was like inside my head on a daily basis .

“I don’t have a pen, but I have an extra stick if you guys need a player.” The whole lot of them started talking all at once again. They unanimously decided that I could play. It made the teams uneven, but the team that didn’t have me got the extra player to compensate.

Sometimes I played goal in little scrub matches like this, but today I didn’t.

Not only did I not have any gear with me, but the best way to get me out of my head was for me to play.

This was hockey in its purest form. You didn’t need ice or legions of fans.

All you needed were some sticks and some nets.

It was hockey for the joy of playing. These kids weren’t running daily drills to try and make the league.

They were just a bunch of kids with sticks and an outdoor rink in a neighborhood they might never leave.

None of these kids were going to the NHL, but that didn’t stop them from playing their hearts out.

Maybe it helped fuel their fire. Because for them, it wasn’t serious.

For them, it was a break from whatever might be going on outside this rink.

Here, it was just them and the game. And for a few minutes, I got to be part of that.

At first, the rain didn’t deter us from playing, but when the drizzle turned into a downpour, we sprinted to the gazebo for cover.

“What are you doing here anyway?” one of the kids asked.

“What’s your name?” I asked him. They’d introduced me, but I already forgotten most of their names.

“Tanner.”

“Well, Tanner, I was looking for a hockey game to join, and I found one.”

Tanner had the look of a kid who had a lot of questions.

I knew the type because I used to be one of the kids with a million questions.

It came with the territory of having brain chemistry that fired off in all directions at once.

I’d wanted to know the why of everything.

I wanted answers to questions that no one had a way of answering for me.

When I was a kid, it was about things like the sky or why people drove blue cars when red was the better color. Stuff like that. I’d wanted to know why people made the choices they made and how things worked. And later, I wanted to know why my parents stopped loving me because I was gay.

And then I decided that I didn’t necessarily need my every question answered.

The point wasn’t why they stopped; it was the fact that they had to begin with.

The why of it didn’t matter when the end result left me reeling.

Sometimes I still felt like the rug was going to be pulled out from under me.

It’s why I’d stayed single. If I didn’t get close to anyone, they couldn’t leave.

I hadn’t intended to come out, but I couldn’t unring that bell.

I’d made the best of the aftermath, but at times I wondered if I’d done the right thing.

Clark, the celebrity I’d been spotted with, had been mute on the whole issue.

He’d barely been seen in public since, and when he was, he was alone.

At least I wasn’t alone. I might not have Kelsey nearby anymore, but I still had her. And I had the guys. And I had a group of curious teenagers.

I stuck around for a while answering their inane questions. An alarm went off on my phone, alerting me to the fact that I had an hour until I had to be at the rink. I quickly booked an Uber, much to the kids’ dismay.

The rain stopped then, and most of them decided that they wanted to get back to their game. Tanner hung back and leaned on the boards with me, watching the rest of the kids play .

“Is it hard?” he asked, in a small voice. “Being gay?”

“In general or?”

Tanner shrugged.

“Most things are hard sometimes. People haven’t always had the best reaction to my coming out, but those people aren’t around me anymore.”

“Are people mean to you about it?”

I glanced over at Tanner. “How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

I’d been years younger than him when I figured myself out. By the time I was his age, I’d already been kicked out of my parents’ house.

“Seventeen is a hard age.”

Tanner exhaled. “No shit.”

“Listen, Tanner. No matter who you are, there are going to be people who don’t like you.

People who should like you, and love you, but sometimes they turn their back on you because of something you can’t control.

And it sucks ass, but it’s their loss. Find the people who let you be yourself. They're the ones who matter most.”

“You’re pretty smart for an old guy.”

“Most days it doesn’t feel like it, but I do okay.” I glanced at Tanner. “You okay, kid?”

He considered it for a moment. “I don’t know how to tell people.”

He couldn’t meet my gaze or even say the words, but I understood what he meant.

“It wasn’t so long ago, you know, that I was where you are. No one knew I was gay. And I wish I could say that coming out was this amazing experience for me, but it’s never been easy.”

“My mom knows. She’s cool.”

“Then you’re already one up on me.” Part of me still held some kind of shame that my parents had basically abandoned me when I’d come out.

The memories of it weren’t good ones, and often thinking about them made me feel tangled up inside.

“My parents were not cool about it. So, I think that no matter what happens, you’ll be okay. ”

My Uber chose that moment to pull up, but I slid a card out of my wallet and handed it to Tanner. “That’s my agent. I’ll tell him to arrange tickets for you guys. Give him a call in a couple of days.”

Tanner’s face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Thanks!”

I pulled my phone out and sent the text to my agent before I forgot completely and piled into the Uber.

I’d had good luck with Uber drivers so far in that most of them didn’t give a rat’s ass who I was.

Being a hockey player wasn’t like being a Hollywood celebrity.

Everyone didn’t recognize you the way a movie star was recognizable, but the post-Clark press tour had put my face in front of more people.

This Uber driver wasn’t a superfan, but they’d followed my story enough to know who I was. And, of course, they asked the inevitable question. The one I’d given a non-answer to every time it had been asked of me.

“Were you traded because you’re gay?”

I told the driver the same thing I told every media outlet, every vlogger, every person with a microphone and a camera.

I was traded because it was in my contract.

Hockey players got traded all the time, and my trade was no different.

I was one more question away from getting it tattooed on my forehead.

The drive to the rink was far too long with the chatty driver, and I arrived feeling irritated because of it. The endless questions hadn’t stopped the whole time. It had felt like an interrogation .

They’d also taken their sweet time getting here, and I barely avoided being late. Something that Coach O’Neil pointed out to me when I walked in.

“Cutting it close, Myers.”

“Sorry, Coach.” My face burned with shame, and a bit of anger. I was well aware that everyone else was clearly ready to start practice, and I still had to change.

Coach herded the rest of the guys out to the ice while I shoved my way into my practice gear. I’d managed to shake off a bit of my mood by the time I was ready to join the warm-up. I hurried onto the ice and nearly crashed into Brookbank.

“Sorry, I didn’t see you there.”

Brookbank grunted a reply and kept skating.

For a split second, I thought of chasing after him and asking what his beef with me was.

It was fear that stopped me. I knew I wasn’t a catch.

I was flighty and had a hard time wrangling my brain on a good day.

My house was a mess, which felt like a good metaphor for how my life was going currently.

But Jay knew none of those things. He knew none of that, and yet I’d been good enough to have sex with but not good enough to talk to.

My already dark mood only got worse, and after that practice was a nightmare. Not for me. For the guys. I used my ire and my hurt feelings, and I stopped every single shot they threw at me. When the whistle went to signal the end of practice, I was the first one off the ice.