Page 16 of Tough Guy (Game Changers #3)

Ten minutes later, Fabian was saying his goodbyes to his friends out on the sidewalk. He kissed both of them on the cheek, and Ryan felt a stab of embarrassment over how much that meaningless gesture had affected him last week.

“Shall we?” Fabian asked him, after Vanessa and Marcus had left.

Ryan half expected Fabian to loop arms with him, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, “So that wasn’t too terrible, then?”

“God, no. That was awesome. I had, like, goose bumps.” Ryan held his arm out, as if to prove it, before realizing he was wearing a heavy coat. He put his arm down. “Is it weird playing in front of a small audience like that?”

“Not really. I like how intimate it is. It wasn’t so long ago that I was only playing open mics like that.”

“And you miss it?”

Fabian laughed. “No. I worked damn hard to get where I am now. I played open mics while working shitty retail jobs and occasionally playing with a string quartet for hire. Then I started recording my music and getting it online. I was asked to open for a few local artists, which eventually led to my being able to book my own shows. Now I’m on an indie label.

” Fabian quickly added, “Just a small one. Medium-sized, if we’re being generous.

I’m not making piles of money, but at least the label does a lot of the tedious stuff so I can focus on making music. ”

“That’s cool. What’s the next step?”

“Super Bowl halftime, obviously,” Fabian said wryly. Ryan laughed.

They walked in silence for a bit, and Ryan said, “I like your friends.”

Fabian snorted, but Ryan could see that he was smiling.

“Vanessa can be a bit much sometimes. She’s pretty unapologetic about, well, everything.

When she meets someone new, she tends to come on strong, like she’s testing them.

She’s a total sweetheart, really. Like, the best friend you could possibly have, but she isn’t shy about who she is or what she believes in. ”

“No, I can see that.”

“So that’s why she started talking about sex toys right out of the gate. I don’t think she would have if you weren’t there. Which I know is kind of fucked, but her thinking is sort of like...” Fabian seemed to search for his next words, so Ryan offered some.

“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen?”

Fabian smiled. “Right. If you can’t stand her belief that sex is a positive and natural thing, then get out of the group.”

Ryan considered this. “You don’t seem as comfortable talking about it as she is.”

“Oh, I am. I mean, no, no one is as comfortable as she is, but in the right company I have no problem. I appreciate that not everyone is comfortable talking about sex, though, whether or not they enjoy it.”

“Right.”

“I agree with her about it being natural. I think sex is fun. It should be fun anyway.”

Ryan couldn’t honestly remember the last time sex had been fun for him.

The rare times over the past few years that he’d actually had sex, it was more or less an act of desperation, especially if it involved another person.

Even with the men he’d had relationships with, the sex had always been stressful for Ryan.

Performance anxiety, his own body issues, and being completely unsure of what to say, or what his partner wanted from him, had always tripped him up.

Jerking off was just easier. Or, at least, it had been, before he’d started taking the meds.

But Ryan had always held on to the belief that sex could be fun, with the right partner. Or if he could ever let go of some of his hang-ups. He liked the general idea of sex a whole lot.

“You’re quiet,” Fabian observed. “Am I being as bad as Vanessa right now?”

“No,” Ryan chuckled. “I just get lost in my own head a lot.”

The night was cold and there was a brisk wind howling up the corridor the buildings made on both sides of the street. There was an ominous weight in the air of impending rain, and Ryan hoped it held off until they were both safely indoors.

“Do you, um...are you...” Ryan silently cursed himself for sounding so stupid, then tried again. “Is there someone that you’re...with? Now?”

Fabian batted his lashes at him. “Ryan Price. Are you asking if I am spoken for?”

“No,” Ryan said quickly. “I’m just curious. You never mentioned anyone, but I wasn’t sure.”

“I am currently unattached.” They walked for a minute in silence, and then Fabian added, “I’ve never been particularly good at finding men who deserve me, as Vanessa likes to say.”

Ryan didn’t like the idea of some bozo who didn’t appreciate Fabian getting to touch him. “No?” he said.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Fabian said wryly, “but I sort of love attention. And I get plenty of it with a healthy dose of adoration from my fans. I realize this makes me sound pompous, but it’s the truth. I’m sure you understand, given who you are.”

“Sort of. I guess.” Ryan wasn’t sure his NHL career had ever actually been the reason a man was attracted to him.

His height, and the muscular body hockey had given him, had definitely been factors, but no one he’d ever hooked up with had seemed at all interested in hockey.

Ryan hadn’t even bothered to mention his occupation to most of them.

“Right, so it wouldn’t be hard for me to find a man who loved my music and was thrilled to have sex with me.”

“Sure. Easy,” Ryan said dryly.

Fabian nudged him with his shoulder. “Listen. I’m just saying, I could find a nice boy who was already half in love with me just from watching me onstage, but I tend to gravitate toward the men who have almost no interest in me beyond appearances.

Men who are usually so into their own creative pursuits that they couldn’t care less about anyone else’s.

They just want to fuck me and tell me about their brilliant idea for an art installation, or show me their photography, or complain about publishers not understanding why their book is so great. ”

Ryan’s brow furrowed. “Why would you want to be with those guys?”

“I don’t know!” Fabian gave a high, frustrated laugh when he said it. “Believe me, if I knew I would stop.”

“You should stop.”

“Yes, thank you, Vanessa. What about you?”

Ryan froze for a second, and then scrambled to catch up with Fabian. “What about me what?”

“Do you get a lot of hockey groupies?”

“Uh, no. The kind of guys I’m into...aren’t usually hockey fans.”

They stopped at an intersection, waiting for the walk light, and Fabian turned to look up at him. “And what kind of guys are you into?”

You. Exactly you. “Um.”

“Sorry.” Fabian took a step back, and looked at the sidewalk. “It’s none of my business. I won’t judge you, believe me. I have friends who are into just about everything you can imagine. But you don’t have to answer me.”

“No. It’s okay. I’m not that adventurous. But I like men who are...the opposite of me, basically.”

Fabian seemed to study him a moment, as if trying to calculate what the opposite would be. “So, small guys?”

Ryan shuffled his feet nervously. He’d never talked about his personal tastes out loud to anyone before. Even his past partners. “Usually, yeah. And other stuff.”

The walk light came on, and they crossed the street. When they reached the other side, Fabian picked up right where they’d left off. “Twinks?”

“Not exactly, no. But that’s close, I guess. Age doesn’t matter. It’s not even a body type. It’s more about...how they present themselves.”

“Okay, now I really am intrigued.”

Ryan could not believe he was trying to describe his perfect man to his perfect man. “Okay. This is it: I like men who sort of look at what men are supposed to be and say ‘fuck you.’ I like men who have the confidence to be themselves, even if it means a lot of people are gonna look at them funny.”

For an agonizingly long time, there was no reply.

Ryan was sure he’d just spouted a bunch of nonsense at Fabian, and Fabian was now wondering why he’d allowed such a weirdo to walk him home.

It wasn’t until they had approached Fabian’s street that he said, in a voice so quiet Ryan almost didn’t hear him over the wind, “I love that.”

“What?”

“Everything you just said. I hate to stereotype, but hearing words like that coming from someone like you...”

“A big, dumb hockey player?”

Fabian shook his head, but then said, “Maybe. Not dumb, though. Ryan, you are so far from dumb. But you know how I feel about hockey players. About jocks in general. They were always around, invading my life, growing up. My parents placed boys like that—men like that—on pedestals. It was so obviously what they wanted me to be, and there was no way I could be that. Ever. As soon as they realized that, they lost interest in me.”

“I noticed,” Ryan said.

Fabian gave him a sad smile. “I know you did. That’s why you were different. You think I had other hockey players showing up at my recitals?”

Ryan’s heart skipped at the mention of Fabian’s recital. He hadn’t realized that Fabian remembered that night.

“Only you,” Fabian continued. “I never told you how much that meant to me.”

“It was nothing.”

“It was definitely not nothing. It was...” He laughed humorlessly. “My family couldn’t be bothered to make time to see me. That was my final recital at the Conservatory, and I was performing a piece that I had composed, and even that couldn’t compete with a goddamned hockey game. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“When I saw you there, at the back of that room. It meant everything to me.”

They had reached Fabian’s apartment building, which was awkward because they were kind of in the middle of a big moment. They stood facing each other at the bottom of the stairs that led to the front door, and Ryan had no idea what to say next.

Thankfully, Fabian spoke first. “I know I was probably rude to you when we lived together.”