***
Noah
Christmas came with little fanfare, mostly because I’d blanked out the holidays in my frantic job search. My father, newly employed at Under Armour, spent it in the Dominican Republic with Jasmine’s parents. They got a kick out of texting us photos taken with their selfie stick. I had no idea why they’d taken my father, other than them feeling sorry for the perma bachelor who’d already stopping seeing the woman he’d been dating a few weeks ago, and them all having been friends as long as I’d known Jasmine. They were how we’d even met.
I spent Christmas morning with a cup of coffee and my laptop open on the job section of Craigslist in one tab, and Gavin’s Instagram in another. He hadn’t updated in days. Twenty-eight of them to be exact. Because I’d been the one to post a picture of Mel and Joe sitting on his couch, deep into the game, on Thanksgiving.
I’d also not heard from him since the day I’d left his house. The day when I’d cried the entire cab ride home with my face buried in my coat. The cabdriver had wordlessly handed me some tissue. Somehow, that single gesture was enough to break me every time I thought of it.
Clearing the thought away, or at least trying to, I closed my laptop and stared at the television. I hated parades, but always felt obligated to watch them. I kept it on mute because I hated the commentators, even though it was Anderson Cooper, and sat in the thick silence until someone rang the buzzer.
For one ridiculous moment I wondered if it was Gavin. But that made no sense. He was still under house arrest, and was likely also sitting in his house all alone.
The person rang the buzzer four more times in quick succession before leaning on the damn thing. I rolled my eyes. Jasmine.
I buzzed her up without asking who it was, unlocked the front door, and returned to my old-man position on the recliner. I wasn’t prepared for her to walk in with Marcus Hendricks. He was wearing jeans, Timberlands, and a black pullover hoodie beneath a North Face jacket, like any other guy in New York, but . . . he happened to be famous. And ridiculously gorgeous. Somehow I’d forgotten how hot all of Gavin’s friends were. Now, I gaped at him while wrapped in my afghan.
“What is happening?”
“Jasmine forced me to come here.”
Jasmine flipped the locks on the front door and pushed his shoulder. “Don’t be rude. You said you wanted to spend Christmas with me.”
“Yeah. Like with your parents.” Marcus frowned at me. “Bro Code says I can’t break bread with little homie over here. Sorry.”
I rolled my eyes. “Good. I don’t have any bread anyway.”
Marcus shot Jasmine a withering stare. “Why did you bring me here?”
“To starve you. Chill the fuck out and sit your overgrown ass down. I told you my parents are in DR.”
Marcus heaved a great, tragic sigh and flopped down on the loveseat. It was dwarfed by him, and I wondered distantly if it would collapse under his muscular body. The last thing I needed in life was the running back of the Barons getting injured because of my billion-year-old furniture.
“I really don’t have any food,” I said, struggling to get out of the afghan I’d wrapped around myself like a burrito. “We could find somewhere to order from. There’s usually a couple of places open.”
“We’ll be fine. I’m taking you both to my titi’s house for dinner. This is just a pit stop because I can’t handle being around her screaming children for the entire day.” Jasmine unzipped her coat and plopped down next to Marcus. “How’re you doing?”
“Fine. Job hunting.” I exed out the tab with Gavin’s Instagram. “What did you guys do all morning?”
“Had break—”
“Had sex,” Jasmine interrupted. “And listened to his parents rampage through the phone that he blew off going back to Virginia just to hang out with some random girl.”
Marcus gave her a mortified stare. “Damn, you don’t keep shit discreet.”
“Not with the bestie. Sorry.” Jasmine batted her eyelashes at him before crossing one legging-clad knee over the other.
“I see.” I looked from her to Marcus, and wondered when they’d gone from randomly dating to seeming so couplelike. Apparently, I’d missed a lot while wallowing in misery. “How’s Simeon?”
“He’s with Gavin,” Marcus said. “And don’t ask me shit about Gav because I’m not telling.”
Jasmine gave him another annoyed look. I sat up, frowning.
“Am I missing something here? Why are you acting like I wronged him?”
“Well,” Marcus said in an overly sarcastic drawl. “Since you dumped his ass—”
“Dumped him?” I demanded.
“—he’s quit being Gavin Brawley and has become Bridget Jones after a breakup.”
It caught me so far off guard I didn’t even think to point out his tendency to reference romantic comedies.
“What the fuck? I didn’t dump him. We were never together!” When both Jasmine and Marcus gave me dull stares, I shook my head. “You know what I mean. And me leaving was a mutual decision. He agreed that it wasn’t going to work. Me staying in his house would have just made it harder on both of us come the end of his house arrest.”
“So then why is he miserable and you’re fine?” Marcus crossed his arms over his chest, not buying it. “Clearly he gave more of a fuc—”
“Okay, first of all?” Jasmine interrupted. “It’s not Noah’s responsibility to babysit your friend’s delicate feelings. So he’s sad? Good. It means he cared about Noah. But that doesn’t mean Noah should get himself into a situation that won’t go anywhere good just so your little friend can be spared. Please.”
“Yeah, well, maybe Noah should have—” Marcus broke off, scowling. “Well . . . Well, whatever. Fuck it. I’m not involved anymore.”
“Good. It’s not your business anyway, you drama queen. This isn’t like you and your ex who dumped you because she thought you’d cheat. This is about a perma hidden relationship. Not even being able to leave the house together. Not even being able to kiss outside because some creepy pap could be lurking!”
“Okay, I get it,” Marcus said. “Fuck, Jasmine. You go on forever.”
“I thought you liked it that way,” she said sweetly.
Marcus flipped Jasmine off, and she smirked. Maybe this was their version of foreplay. It reminded me of my banter with Gavin, and I was so jealous I regretted not being left alone.
“Look,” I started. “I get that you’re defensive, but I didn’t want to fall deeper down the rabbit hole of in-love-with-a-famous-closeted-athlete.”
“So if you were in love, tell me how you told my boy you’d keep in touch but then iced him out.”
“I haven’t iced him out,” I said, sharper this time. “He asked if he could text me and never did. I thought he was done.”
Jasmine rolled her eyes and sank back onto the couch. “Big-ass babies.”
I wrapped myself in my afghan again. “If you want to know the truth, I have no idea what to do in this situation. Stay, go, call him or cut the cord . . . Whatever we do, it seems like we’re setting ourselves up for failure.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Marcus said. “But I can tell you that he misses you. It wouldn’t hurt to drop the fool a line or two. Just saying.”
I usually hated when people said “just saying” because they thought it gave them an excuse to say whatever the hell they wanted. In this case, though, Marcus had a point. For all that Gavin was tough and prickly and liked to seem impervious to the world around him, there was so much more to him. And after we’d gotten close, it hadn’t taken him long to show those other sides. Was it narcissistic to wonder if he’d wall off those other versions of Gavin Brawley because of what had happened between us? I didn’t want to believe I had that much of an impact on his life. Except, part of me did. Part of me hoped I meant as much to him as he did to me. And that he couldn’t just get over it and dial up a new fitness model to fill my space.
I wanted to matter.
As if sensing I’d lapsed into a deep brood, Marcus and Jasmine turned on the sound to the parade. They spent the next few minutes criticizing just about every aspect of it, and I took the chance to slip my phone out of my pocket.
The last text message I’d exchanged with Gavin had been on the weekend between Thanksgiving and my return to his estate on the following Monday. He’d asked if I was okay, and I’d simply said “yes.” Now that exchange bugged me. I wondered how he’d perceived it, and my actions, and it was that lack of knowing that prompted me to start typing. The message got too long to be a text so I prayed that Gavin was staying on top of his email and sent it along.
Hey Gavin. Merry Christmas. I hope you and Simeon are doing something more fun than I am. Funnily enough, I’m sitting here with Marcus and Jasmine. Weird how this all worked out, isn’t it? I’m sitting here watching them and how obviously smitten they are (don’t make fun of my word choice), and I’m so fucking jealous. Because if I was a different gender, that could be us. We can’t have what they have because the world is awful and people are hateful. It’s really hard to let that slide.
Anyway, this is getting long so I’ll just say this: please don’t undo everything you’ve done in the past four months. If you look at the blogs and watch the news, the tone people use when they say your name has changed. It’s no longer like they’re talking about a bully who got a lucky break he didn’t deserve. Now they talk about you like someone who’s actually trying to make a change in terms of how he interacts with fans, and who cares about his image. And that’s fucking awesome. Doubly awesome because you didn’t hype the school donation, and they found out on their own. They knew that came from your big soft heart.
The mania around Gavin Brawley is still going strong, and everyone still wants to see DatBrawleySmile. Including me. Don’t fuck it up now. And don’t go back to ignoring your appointments and bills! You don’t need anyone taking care of you, Gavin. You made it all of this time without football, and you didn’t think you could. It’s time to start trusting yourself.
Love,
Noah
Chapter Eighteen
Gavin
The new year started with an explosion of bullshit.
Both Max and the frat daddy who’d threatened to out Simeon teamed up and went to the media with their tales. Two weeks until my house arrest ended, and the Super Bowl, and some shitty tabloid called The Mirror called me with a heads-up that they were running the story.
“What the fuck we gonna do?” Simeon paced my living room, towering over me as I remained slouched on the sofa, and brushing past Mel and Joe with every step. “Man, we’re so screwed. I hate myself. I swear to God, I hate myself.”
Frowning, I grabbed at the back of his shirt to try to stop him charging around the room. He didn’t even pause.
“I shoulda never messed with guys. Woulda been easier to pretend I’m into girls. Or fuck,” he said, ripping his hands through his hair. “Or stay celibate and make up girlfriends like Manti Te’o.”
“Simeon,” Mel said sharply.
“How hard can it be to get it up for a woman? Women are beautiful. Maybe I should have tried.”
When Mel grabbed his arm and hauled him to a stop, Simeon finally stopped pacing. He looked from her to me with wild eyes. The same guy who stayed calm and kept his smile even after a furious blitz by men twice his size was unraveling. Sweat dampened his auburn hair, and his hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists.
“Simeon,” Mel said again, calmer this time. “We’re not going to entertain ideas about self-inflicted conversion therapy.”
“Then what do we do?” he demanded.
“We have two options.” Joe stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Mel. “We could try to bury the story or . . .”
“Or what?” Simeon shouted.
Joe’s attention shifted to me. It seemed like he was waiting for a reaction, or a cue, but I had nothing for him. It was the first time we’d been in the same room since Thanksgiving, and I had a hard time looking at him. The only reason he was still getting paid was because of Noah vouching for him, and because . . . I’d floundered when left to my own devices. Buried my head in the sand for weeks. Until Noah’s email had snapped me out of it and prompted me to start handling my own business, my own fan mail, and my own damn cooking. But I hadn’t replied, because it had felt too much like an email from a platonic friend. My brain had more trouble coping with that reality than this new debacle.
Right now, panic should have been spreading through me like an uncontrollable blaze, but I felt nothing. Just numbness that Noah and me had ended things, and this was happening anyway. I’d lost him . . . for no reason.
Joe turned to Simeon again. “Or you can come out yourself, in your own way, before the story runs at the end of the week.”
“What?” Simeon cried at the same time I muttered, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
I waited for Mel’s input, given the grim expression on her face. She spread her hands, but I didn’t know if it was in helplessness or frustration. Or both. There had been very few times in her career when her hands had been tied, but two of her most well-known clients having identical scandals was likely enough to make her hair turn white. How would she make money off us if there was no one willing to pick us up after our contracts ended?
It was a cutthroat way to look at it, but this was a cutthroat business. Half the time a football player got a big break was after someone more famous got injured or aged out. We made our livelihoods on the backs of other people’s misfortune. This was just one of the rare times when my existence was a misfortune, and it was screwing Mel over too.
“Listen,” she said when the silence in the room became too much. “We can fight this. Ignore it. Threaten to sue anyone who publishes it. The rumor will still be there and people will still wonder and question, and maybe your own teammates won’t let you live it down, but we can do our best to silence it.”
“And will doing our best stop it?” Simeon asked. “Can we kill the story before it goes live?”
“We can try,” she said again.
“Trying isn’t good enough! They’ll just go to someone else. Or put it on social media.” Simeon started pacing again, this time while shaking his head and muttering under his breath. With each word, his accent grew thicker. “I knew that damn fool still had the video on his cloud. Fucking knew it.”
“You’re awfully quiet over there, Gavin.”
I looked at Joe and scoffed out a laugh. “What do you want me to say?”
“This is your life and career. I want you to say what you want us to do.”
“Oh, now you want to know what I want?” The mocking in my voice likely could have cut through language barriers. The universal undercurrent of fuck you. “About a month ago, you screwed up the only decent relationship I’ve ever had without waiting to get my opinion on the matter.”
“I was looking out for you. And you know that. That’s why I’m still here.”
“You’re here because Noah believed you had my best interests at heart. I still think you’re a fuckboy.”
Simeon had stopped wearing a path in my carpet to pause and stare at us. He’d heard the story, of course, several times, but it was the first time I’d said it in front of Mel. The fact that she didn’t look surprised or upset was one of the reasons I loved having her for an agent. Despite the nagging over social media accounts.
“If you didn’t trust me, you would have fired me despite what Noah’s opinion on the matter was,” Joe said flatly. “And if you do trust me, you need to tell me and Mel how you want us to tackle this. Do you want to fight the story?”
“It’s not a story. It’s the truth.”
Simeon sank to the sofa and put his head in his hands.
“And from where I’m sitting,” I said, “my biggest regret right now is letting my fear get to my head and then letting Noah walk out the door, since I’m still being outed. And by someone who doesn’t mean shit to me. I should h
ave nutted up and done that shit myself so I could’ve kept the person who matters.”
Mel put a hand on my shoulder, but Joe just kept watching me with his shark eyes. Waiting for me to spit it out, save the emotional shit, and tell him how to spin this.
“If I dial up ole Spence and ask if he can do a follow-up interview to post like, tomorrow, what are my odds?” I asked, shifting my attention to Mel. “Doomed?”
“If I judge the Barons by the standard of toxic bullshit that dominates most locker rooms? A Super Bowl win with Phil as their tight end would mean we’re fucked,” she said matter-of-factly. “They won’t think they need you to win. Let alone a bisexual you. And your other scandal would give them an excuse beyond your sexuality, so they’d come out of it without being labeled as homophobes.”
It was what I’d expected, but it still took my breath and darkened the edges of my vision. Could I live with retiring this young? Technically I could. I’d have enough money to never have to do anything else another day in my life. But could I cope with not having football in my life? With never again wearing pads or being on a football field? Seeing the turf or the crowd or the lights so high above of us all? Last summer I would have said no. I hadn’t thought I could go six months.
In Noah’s email, he’d said it was time to start trusting myself. The fact that I’d made it through my house arrest intact without setting foot on the turf should have proved it to me. But the reality was that I’d survived because of him.
I’d not only survived, but for the brief moments we’d had together, I’d been happy. Without football. After he left is when it had all gone to shit. And yet, I’d chosen the sport over him.
“Simeon can do what he wants,” I said, looking at all of them. “But I’m not running and hiding anymore. Dial up my boy Spence. I’m done lying.”
***
Noah
Vice will be publishing my coming-out story tonight. Can you come over. Please?
The text came out of nowhere, and the ensuing panic attack was immediate. I’d never had a panic attack before, that I’d identified anyway, but this one was crippling. I had to sit on the floor with my head between my knees, sucking in even breaths until spots stopped dancing before my eyes, I stopped shaking, and my breathing evened.
Illegal Contact (The Barons) Page 24