Rites of Passage

by Catherine Gayle

  “Why are you here?” I asked. If I could figure out what he was after, what he wanted, then maybe I could get through this. But every time I thought I had the mystery of him solved, he went and flipped the script on me, leaving me floundering again while I tried to sort him out all over again.

  “I’m here because I don’t think you should be alone right now.”

  “You already said that,” I snapped.

  “Well, it’s still true.”

  “But why you?”

  “You have someone else who’ll come hang out with you?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “That is the point,” he insisted. “That and the fact that you matter to me—”

  “Why? You don’t know me.”

  “I might know you better than you think I do.”

  “Yeah, right.” I snorted and stood up, stomping into the kitchen. I took out a glass and filled it with water from the tap, more as a means of getting away from him than because I was thirsty. “You’ve known me for all of a week. Sleeping with a person doesn’t do a damned thing as far as getting to know them.”

  But he’d followed me into the kitchen, which was far too small for a single person. Now that there were two of us in it, I felt more claustrophobic than I’d ever felt in my life. I backed up against the counter, trying to find enough space to take a breath.

  Drew didn’t take the hint, somehow crowding me even further and looming over me. “Okay, well, let’s try this on for size. You feel like you’re all alone in the world, and maybe you’ve been that way for so long that you’ve convinced yourself that’s how it should be. You blame yourself for all the bad things in your life. For getting HIV. For possibly passing it on to your baby. For the fact that the baby could be suffering, and it’s all because of you. You don’t think you deserve anything good in life, so you’re doing everything in your power—maybe subconsciously, maybe not—to punish yourself for all the bad, which only makes everything worse. Any time something good starts to happen, you hit the sabotage button, and everything starts falling apart again. So now you’re in this massive downward spiral, and not only do you not see a way out of it but you’re determined to stay in it. Am I getting close? Because I think I am. Because I’ve been there. Maybe I didn’t have a baby factoring into things, but I might as well have. Because if my teammate ends up getting HIV because of me, he could transfer it to his wife. To his kids. They’ve got three, you know. You met them this afternoon. Dana, his wife? She was the one who asked you to watch their baby in the pool for a couple of minutes. So even if it’s just Zee who ends up being HIV-positive, it’ll be five lives affected. Because of me. Because of my selfishness for wanting to play a game—a fucking game, for Christ’s sake—when I could have gone ahead and retired and not put anyone else at risk.”

  I stood there blinking at him in an effort to keep my tears at bay and to process what was going on. “But you said yourself that no one’s really at risk if you’re not practically dying. The virus dies pretty fast once the blood leaves your body.”

  At that, he jerked down the collar of his T-shirt, exposing the massive scar on his neck. “I was practically dying. If Zee hadn’t shoved his bare hands on my neck when he did, which was gushing blood like a geyser, I probably would have. Right there on the ice, in front of thousands of people and Lord only knows how many people watching the game at home. The skate blade barely missed my carotid artery, and the guy had his fucking hands practically inside my body to try to save me. But that’s not my point,” he said on a ragged sigh.

  I shook my head. “I’m not following.”

  “My point is that I get where you are right now. I was there not too long ago. For a different reason, maybe, but the guilt is the same. And it takes you to an ugly place where you can’t see a way out other than maybe to just end things—”

  “I’m not suicidal,” I cut in. I wasn’t sure why I needed for Drew to understand that, but right now, I needed it.

  He looked at me like he didn’t fully believe me. And why should he? Normal, sane people didn’t take razor blades to their arms unless they were trying to end their lives, did they?

  “I’m not,” I repeated, this time with a hell of a lot more oomph in my tone. “I don’t want to die. I just…” My words trailed off. After a moment, I shook my head, completely at a loss.

  “You just don’t know what else to do,” he finished for me.

  “Right. Something like that.”

  “I get that. Because I was there.”

  “And now you’re not?” I asked, a fresh wave of tears clogging my throat so badly the words came out on a choke. But there was a strange note attached to them. It felt oddly like hope.

  “Now I’m not,” he said. “There are good days and bad days, but that’s part of life. More good days lately, though. And I want to help you get there, too.”

  Which sounded well and good, but… “Why?”

  “Because I think we can understand each other in a way that no one else is going to understand us. And that has to be a good thing, doesn’t it? So I want to help you find your way to the other side.”

  I wanted that, too. More than I could allow myself to say, because saying it out loud would give root to that hope, and I couldn’t bear to have it squashed like a bug.

  But when Drew picked me up, carried me into the living room, sat on the futon, and pulled me into his lap again, I allowed it.

  “Okay,” I said.

  He chuckled, which made his chest rumble beneath my cheek. “Okay? What exactly are you agreeing to?”

  Hell if I knew.

  ZEE WAS IN Gary Asher’s office along with the whole coaching staff and what seemed like half the Thunderbirds’ front office when I showed up later that week for my meeting. I’d assumed it would only be the general manager and maybe a couple of the coaches present, so this entourage caught me by surprise.

  Even though this meeting was all about my future and whether or not I’d continue playing hockey, my mind had been elsewhere right up until this moment. It’d been on Ravyn and how we’d spent most of our free time together over the last few days. Much of that time had been spent in bed, but she hadn’t cut herself again.

  I hoped that I was at least part of the reason.

  I’d been doing some Googling about cutting while she was gone to work at the tattoo shop, learning as much about it as I could. My research revealed that many people who got started cutting themselves continued to do so because the pain almost gave them a high of sorts, so it became an addictive tendency.

  My plan was to give her a much healthier high: orgasms. So far, she was on board, and it seemed to be working. And really, there were far worse things we could be doing. To be completely honest, I’d rather be with her now instead of here at Thunderbirds headquarters. But she was working, anyway, and I’d promised Gary I’d be here.

  Besides, if I hadn’t shown up, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that London Nazarenko and Tallie Fielding would double-team me and drag me by my ears into the building.

  As long as I’d known her, Tallie had always had a thing for fixing people. She used to focus her efforts on her brother-in-law, but these days she liked to spread the wealth since now he was clean and getting his act together.

  Now that London was married to Dima, the two of them were perfect foils for each other. If one couldn’t get through to someone, the other took over. Frankly, I’d rather face the music with the team than have those two in my grill again. They’d done more than enough of that over the summer when I was doing my best to pretend I didn’t exist.

  After shaking a few hands and greeting everyone, I took a seat. “Feels a bit like the Spanish Inquisition, boys.” I raised a brow in question.

  “We’re not here to intimidate you,” Gary rushed to say. He nodded to his secretary, who brought over a bottle of water and a selection of fresh fruit, but otherwise his focus was fully on me. “Everyone in this room just wanted to be part of making sure you k
now how much we want you to continue to be a contributing member of this team. We know you’re still up in the air about whether you should play or not, but we aren’t. We want you to play for many years to come.”

  Everyone, huh? I took a quick mental inventory, but it didn’t take much exertion to realize that Mr. and Mrs. Jernigan, the hyper-evangelical team owners who were overly concerned with appearances, weren’t present. I also didn’t have to search my memory too hard to realize that, other than a cursory Get Well Soon card sent from Mr. Jernigan’s congregation, I hadn’t seen or heard from either of them since my accident.

  That wasn’t much of a surprise, really. Mrs. J, in particular, was all about morality. She couldn’t stand the way we cursed, and she did everything possible to keep word of anything she believed to be less than savory about any member of the team from getting out to the public. Lord only knew what she assumed about me now that it’d been revealed I was HIV-positive.

  A few of the journalists who’d reached out to me over the summer had tried to get me to talk about how I’d contracted the disease, but that was none of their business, so I’d declined to comment.

  Maybe Mrs. J assumed I was gay, like a couple of other hockey players who’d come out of the closet during the playoffs this past year. For all I knew, she could still be living under a rock and not realize that HIV wasn’t just a gay disease. Maybe she thought I was a drug addict and got it from sharing needles. That wouldn’t go over well for the morality police. Maybe she believed I’d been the one sleeping around in my marriage. All of those things would rate me high on Mrs. J’s Hockey-Playing Hooligan Meter.

  But since neither she nor her husband had attempted to get to know who I was and what I was all about, they would probably never know how I’d come to be HIV-positive.

  The team owners were the least of my worries, however.

  I unscrewed the lid of my water bottle and took a sip, collecting my thoughts. “Okay, so everyone here wants me to play. But there are a lot more people whose opinions on this subject need to be taken into account.”

  “Such as?” Zee demanded, sitting up straighter.

  He’d come in today wearing a suit, just like everyone else in the room other than me. Not sure why I hadn’t thought of it. Maybe because I’d been far more focused on how I could help Ravyn than I was on myself lately.

  Professional attire notwithstanding, Zee had the sort of look in his eye that he always got at the face-off dot, like he was ready to rip the head off the guy on the other side of the puck if he so much as dared to take a swipe at it. I’d been on the other side of that look a few times, before we’d both joined the Thunderbirds. Hell, I’d seen it a few times even in practices, too. Zee was just as intense then as he was in a game. I’d never met a guy who was more competitive or more willing to stand up for his teammates.

  I just never thought I’d be the teammate he had to stand up for.

  “Such as every guy on every other team in the league,” I said, trying to keep my cool while also getting my point across.

  “Bullshit,” Zee shot back at me.

  I could appreciate his fervor, but this wasn’t something we could just close our eyes and wish away. I needed to make sure everyone in this room understood where I was coming from. “They’re bound to be scared. Doesn’t matter how much we know about how HIV is spread. There are still so many misconceptions out there it’s ridiculous.”

  “Fear doesn’t make it right,” Doug Spurrier, the head coach, pointed out.

  “And it doesn’t make it legal to exclude you,” Gary added. “No one can prevent you from playing.”

  I had a silent chuckle for myself, thinking about how Mrs. J would love to do exactly that. “Maybe not legally, but they can sure as hell make me uncomfortable for choosing to continue playing.”

  “Which is when the rest of the boys and I will make sure they learn their lesson,” Zee said.

  But that was exactly what I didn’t want to happen. The thought of any guy on the team needing to drop his gloves over me didn’t sit well. At all. But especially not our team captain, and that was exactly what would happen if some douche canoe on the other team tried to start something because he felt threatened because of my disease.

  “We’re trying to come together as a team, though,” I pointed out. “I think we’re set to make good strides this season with the changes Gary made in the off-season, but every time some asswipe on the other team tries to tell me where I can shove it, if one of our guys tries to pick a fight with him—”

  “We will all come together as a team,” Zee interrupted. “It’s called closing ranks around one of our own. It’s not letting anyone get away with shit when it comes to one of our teammates. This can absolutely bring us together. No, not just can. It already has. You just haven’t been around the rest of us enough to see it for yourself, and it’s going to continue to bring us together.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Not in the way we should be.”

  “Look,” Zee said earnestly, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the table in front of him. “You and I both know—hell, everyone in this room does—that there are a lot of things that can happen to bring a group of players together. Getting to know each other better over these first couple of seasons has helped a ton. Playing like shit together and trying to keep our heads up has been a struggle. But there’s something to be said for facing adversity as a group. The teams I’ve played on that have been the closest, the ones where every guy would throw down for any other guy on the team at any time? They were the teams where something awful happened to someone, and we all rallied around him. You know that, too. You’ve experienced it before. Not here yet, but that’s already changing, whether you like it or not.”

  “I just—” I cut myself off, trying to figure out how to say what needed to be said in a way that they’d accept it without shooting me down again. “I don’t want to be a rallying point. And I don’t know if I’m ready to be the newest poster boy for HIV-positive athletes. That’s a hell of a mantle to carry.”

  “And combined, this team has broad shoulders,” Zee said. “Let us use them. We can all carry it with you.”

  The man wasn’t going to give an inch. He was digging in his heels and refusing to budge. Damn it. But I had a grudging respect for him on that score.

  “I just—”

  “Drew,” another voice cut in. I shot my head around to find Dr. Willie Masters, the team’s head physician, staring me down. “I’m going to tell you the same thing I told you when you first filled us in about your HIV status. Everyone on this staff and in the league as a whole is already taking all due precautions. The likelihood of another accident taking place that’s as serious as the one at the end of last season is extremely small. But even if it does happen, we’re all prepared. And now, everyone involved with this team—and the league—is fully in possession of the facts.”

  “Not only that,” Jesse Coakley, the equipment manager, said, “but my guys and I’ve been researching all summer, and we’ve got a bunch of Kevlar options for you. Neck protectors, socks, sleeves. All sorts of things to give you extra protection in case another skate comes at you at a bad angle. You can try them out during preseason and pick out the ones you like best.”

  “We’ve bought extras,” Gary added, “in case any of the other guys want to wear them.”

  Doug nodded. “In fact, we’re strongly recommending they do. The Players’ Association won’t allow us to mandate that the whole team wears them, but we’re doing everything we can to convince all the boys that these things are for the best, just like wearing shot protectors on their skates.”

  “So everyone’s on board,” Zee said, staring me down. “Everyone but you.”

  Lovely. I sat there trying to come up with another argument, but the uneasy clenching of my gut was a strong indication I was out of any good ones.

  Gary sat back in his chair, crossing his arms. “I don’t think we’ve made it any secret that we’ve been groomi
ng you to captain this team once Zee retires or moves on. He’s been a hell of a leader his whole career, and he’s done a great job of setting an example for the rest of the guys on this team in terms of how to go about their business. But he’s not going to play forever. We—all of us, including Zee—believe you’re the man to take the helm when that time comes. Prove us right, Drew.”

  I glanced over at Zee, trying to gauge how he felt about that.

  Gary was right in that the team had made it clear that’s what they wanted, although this was the first time anyone had come right out and said it to my face. That was the only logical reason they would have given me one of the A’s to wear since our inaugural season.

  What kind of leader would I be if I ran off to hide instead of facing the adversity that came my way? I’d had it easy my whole life. My parents had been able to provide for me and get me into the best hockey programs. I’d worked hard, of course—no one got into the NHL without dogged determination and extreme effort—but compared to so many of my teammates and opponents, I’d had an easy path through life. The worst thing that had happened to me was my ex cheating and giving me HIV. Compared to so many others, my life had been a cakewalk.

  When Zee met my gaze from across the room, it was with that same fierce look as earlier. A challenge. No, a dare.

  Well, hell. I couldn’t exactly back down now, could I?

  THE NEXT TIME I went to the support group meeting, I wasn’t able to disappear by holing up next to Drew and hiding in his shadow. Yeah, I’d told myself I’d never go to one again…but that was because he knew so much of the truth, and I didn’t think I could face him again. But then he’d gone and made it clear he had no intention of avoiding me despite that knowledge, and I wasn’t sure which end was up anymore.

  While we still had more scorching-hot temperatures than cool and the leaves were still green instead of the rich reds and oranges of fall, the calendar kept inching closer to October. After his meeting with the Thunderbirds and ultimately making the decision to play hockey again this season, now Drew had to participate in training camp and other team functions. Which meant he was busy during the day and couldn’t come to the meeting with me.