Empty Net

by Avon Gale

  Laurent didn’t feel comfortable with anyone but him. He said as much.

  Liz shook her head. “That might be true. But Isaac? As much as I can tell you love him and want to help him, you’re not responsible for fixing this for him. That’s a difficult burden for anyone to have to carry. And you can help him, and so could I, but he has to be willing to do the work. And to do that, he has to see that it’s a problem.” She smiled sadly. “But from past experience, I can tell you that this is going to be very difficult for him to hear. He’ll argue, he’ll rationalize, and he’ll turn it back on you.”

  Isaac snorted despite himself. “Believe me, I’m used to that. How do I… I mean, what should I say? Just hand him a pamphlet and tell him to come see you?”

  “You have to talk from the heart and hope he listens.”

  Great. “I’ll try,” Isaac said. He stood up and shook her hand.

  Back at home Isaac spent some time looking over the pamphlets and wondering how to bring up the subject to Laurent. The playoffs weren’t that far away, and more than that, Isaac wanted to help Laurent. But he was starting to think Laurent needed a lot more help than he had to offer. He needed someone who knew specifically about the kind of abuse Laurent had suffered, who might give him better ways of dealing with his stress.

  The portion control was one thing, but the throwing up… how many times had Isaac heard him and just thought Laurent was being dramatic? How many times had Laurent done it when Isaac hadn’t heard him? That was the crux of the problem, because if he was doing it enough to pass out from dehydration, then he was hiding it from Isaac.

  Isaac knew Laurent well enough to know how spectacularly wrong it could go, and how very angry Laurent was going to be at him. Because there was only one thing Isaac could think to do that would make Laurent get help, and he knew Laurent wasn’t going to like it.

  “YOU’RE BREAKING up with me, aren’t you?”

  Isaac knocked Laurent’s shoulder with his own. “No. This is our place. Remember? Where I gave you a blowjob for the first time? It’s supposed to be magical.”

  Laurent looked sideways at him. “Magical.”

  “Yeah. Remember the s’mores?” Isaac tried for a smile, but he was too nervous about the conversation they needed to have. Maybe coming there was a mistake, but he’d been nervous the last time about the whole turning-tricks-for-cash thing, and that had worked out all right.

  “I remember that we couldn’t manage to make any. What’s wrong, Isaac? This is like the ‘Laurent, we need to talk’ place.” At Isaac’s guilty stare, Laurent stopped walking. “Can you just promise me that if we break up, you won’t do it here? I have nice memories, and I don’t have those a lot of places.”

  “I told you I used to suck cock for money here,” Isaac reminded him.

  “Yeah. And then you showed me why you made so much money doing it in the back of the Jeep. I don’t care that you did that. You know I don’t.” Laurent shoved his hands in his pockets and looked down. “What is it?”

  He didn’t say what did I do, but God was it ever implied. Isaac flipped his lip ring around a few times and then cautiously said, “I’m worried about you.”

  Laurent’s head snapped up. “What did I do this time?”

  Isaac reached out and took Laurent’s chin in his fingers. He’d figured out quickly what sort of things he could do to get Laurent’s attention without signaling some kind of awful memory about his father’s abuse. “Saint? Stop talking.” Telling him firmly to be quiet was one of them. Strange that someone who had been silenced his whole life would like that so much. Isaac leaned in and kissed him, slow and sweet. “I’m not breaking up with you, and I promise I would never do that here. I don’t want to do it at all. Okay? I love you.”

  Laurent didn’t talk, but he managed to sigh with so much annoyance that it made Isaac smile against his mouth. He kissed him until Laurent’s rigid posture relaxed a bit more and his fingers slid carefully through Isaac’s hair.

  When they pulled away, Laurent surprised him by putting his hands on Isaac’s shoulders, leaning in, and resting his forehead against Isaac’s. “You should—”

  Isaac bit him on the mouth. “Stop. Be quiet. I have to say this now or I’m never going to.”

  Laurent pulled back and gave him a wary glance, but he didn’t say anything.

  Isaac took a deep breath and then blurted, “I think you have an eating disorder and you need to get some help for it.”

  Laurent blinked. Twice. Then he laughed. “What?”

  Isaac stood his ground, his heart hammering, and remembered what he’d read and what Liz had told him. “You do. I’m serious.”

  “An eating disorder?” Laurent huffed. “Seriously? This is what you’re worried about?”

  “You passed out at practice the other day,” Isaac reminded him.

  “I was dehydrated. I told you.”

  “You throw up all the time. I hear you sometimes, and I think—I think you do it a lot more. I think you always have.”

  “I’m a nervous mess, basically every moment I’m awake,” Laurent said.

  Isaac kept at it. “You know you only eat half of your food after a game if we lose. Right? You don’t eat before games. And okay. Fine. I get that maybe it’s a goalie thing, but you’ve lost weight since the season started. And this thing you do, where you throw up to feel better? I know you do it because of what happened to you, because of your father, and I know you think it’s no big deal but it’s… it’s a big deal. And I noticed. I think you didn’t want me to, but I did.”

  Laurent’s face went from bewildered to pissed off in seconds, and he shoved Isaac like he had that day on the ice the year before. “Shut the fuck up.”

  Isaac stumbled, but he quickly regained his balance and moved closer. “No. Listen to me. You can hurt yourself doing this. You play a contact sport for a living—”

  “No. I sit on a bench,” Laurent snapped at him. “You’re the starting goalie. Remember?”

  It was not the time to be reminded of their rivalry on the team, lacking in acrimony as it might be. “You know we both play games, and believe me, I’ve been on the bench more this season than any other. And it’s fine. The team is what matters. But I’m not talking about hockey, Laurent. I’m talking about you.”

  “I’m not a girl,” Laurent huffed, dickhead mode out in full force.

  “Yeah. I noticed.” Isaac took a deep breath and inhaled the scent of earth and growing things, the cool spring air that heralds that something new is right around the corner. “Would you listen to me?” He took a step forward and another, until he was back up in Laurent’s space. “You know I’m right. You know I am. You throw up after you have dinner at my house. You throw up after we hang out with our friends. You—”

  “Your friends,” Laurent interrupted, and he sounded so vicious that anyone else might not get that all that hate was directed entirely inward. “I don’t have friends.”

  Isaac crossed his arms and tried to tamp down his own frustration. “You do so. People like you. Is that what this is about? You can’t handle that people like you instead of hate you, for once?”

  Laurent stared at him, and the openmouthed thing might have been comical if it weren’t for the fact that Isaac felt like he was tearing his own heart out of his chest.

  “Fuck you,” Laurent said, his voice trembling with rage. “I don’t know who the fuck you think you are—”

  “I love you,” Isaac interrupted loudly. God. Could they be any more dramatic? “That’s who I think I am. Someone who loves you.”

  Laurent stopped shouting, but he didn’t stop talking. “You shouldn’t. I don’t know why you would. Why anyone would.”

  “Did you just hear yourself?” Isaac moved closer, but Laurent took a step away from him. “Listen to me. I went and talked to someone. A therapist. And I told her about you.”

  If looks could kill, Isaac would be one dead, blue-haired, pierced, gay Spitfires’ goalie. But he wasn’t d
ead, and Laurent wasn’t talking, so Isaac didn’t stop. “I read some stuff. And I got some information you can look at. But I want you to call her and make an appointment. You have got to talk to someone about this shit, Laurent.” He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “That’s what I came here to tell you. That you need help, and I want you to get it. And she can help you. Not just with the—the disorder thing, but dealing with what your dad did to you.”

  “So? Where’s the ‘or what’?” Laurent asked, and he answered before Isaac could say anything. “Is it either I get help for my teenage girl problems or we’re through?”

  “Okay. One? It is not just girls, teenage or otherwise. And two? I thought you’d stopped reverting to jackass mode when I said something you didn’t want to hear. Also, you’re supposed to be being quiet.”

  Laurent shut his mouth, but he still looked furious.

  And that led to the last thing Isaac had to say. “There is an ‘or what,’ but it’s not what you think it is.” Isaac expelled a breath. “If you don’t call her and make an appointment, I’m taking my concerns to the coaches. I know that makes you mad, but I—I can’t lose you. I won’t.”

  Make that a twice-dead, blue-haired, pierced, gay Spitfires’ goalie.

  “I just want you to be okay,” Isaac said finally, with his heart in his throat. He’d fucked it up, but he’d done all he could. “I just want you to be okay, Saint. And you’re not.”

  Laurent stared across the distance that separated them, anger in every line of his body, and tension radiating from him like heat. He was breathing too fast, and the cool air had nothing to do with the two spots of color on his cheeks. Isaac wondered if maybe Laurent would go ahead and end things himself, happy memories of the lake notwithstanding.

  And then all the tension seemed to leave him in a rush, and his shoulders hunched as he stared down at the ground.

  “You’re right,” Laurent said, voice barely above a whisper. “I’m not. I’m not okay at all.”

  All around them birds chirped and newly budded branches rustled in the wind. Isaac breathed out slowly and nodded once. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” He carefully moved closer, until Laurent went unresisting into an embrace. Neither of them said anything else.

  What they had was every bit as tenuous as the nature all around them, but Isaac was as determined as spring to see that it grew.

  Chapter Fifteen

  LAURENT TRIED not to throw up before his appointment. He did everything he could think of—including biting his own wrist, because it felt so good when Isaac bit him that he thought maybe it would work.

  It didn’t. So he just gave in to the overwhelming temptation and went ahead and threw up anyway. He just needed to be able to have the conversation with this Liz Park woman without being so distracted. That was all.

  He’d agreed to go, not so much because Isaac threatened to tell the coaches, but because of that look on Isaac’s face when they stared each other down at the lake. Like he was well aware that Laurent might storm off or tell him to fuck himself with a twig, or save Isaac the trouble and break things off himself. And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Laurent was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. It had to, eventually. He’d learned nothing in life if not that.

  Isaac was braver than Laurent was. And he loved Laurent. He said he did, and he’d looked so upset.

  “I just want you to be okay. And you’re not.”

  The thought made Laurent want to throw up again, but he was almost out of mouthwash, and he had to leave soon anyway.

  Why the fuck did Isaac have to be in love with him? Why did he have to notice all the things he did? Why did he have to pay attention to Laurent when all Laurent wanted was to be invisible?

  Is that even true anymore, though? Don’t you want Isaac’s attention? Haven’t you always?

  With a scowl Laurent pocketed the keys to Isaac’s Jeep and went down the stairs. As he did so, he noticed the tenant in the one-bedroom apartment across from his was coming out with a box. That would explain the commotion that morning, when it sounded like a herd of elephants was storming up and down the stairs. The sound had played enough havoc with Laurent’s nerves that he’d thought about opening the door and yelling something mean.

  But being in love was making him act less like a douchebag, so he didn’t. Laurent realized he should have probably offered to carry the box, but he was cutting it close, and love hadn’t made him a completely different person. Just a better one. Maybe.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Mrs. Bowen emerged and crowded the tiny lobby space.

  “Oh, Lawrence, dear,” she said, still incapable of saying his name correctly. Even the present she’d given him at Christmas was addressed to the wrong name. “I was wondering if you and that nice young man of yours would like the apartment now that Mr. Welsh is moving out?”

  Laurent was at a loss for words. “I, uh.” He started to feel hysterical. “I don’t know. I can ask him.”

  She patted him on the arm. “You should. That studio is only big enough for one person.”

  “I like it,” Laurent blurted out, because he did. He liked it, and he realized he liked Mrs. Bowen too. For the most part. She was kind of nosy, in addition to not being able to say his name, but they had shared the nicest Christmas Laurent could remember. Sure, most of that was because of Isaac. But still.

  “You and your young man could get married, you know,” she continued breezily, as Mr. Welsh returned for another box. “I wish my Harold and I could have married John—or Edward, maybe. I get them confused. But I guess the world isn’t ready for that yet.”

  Laurent wondered sometimes if she were delusional or really was some kind of sexually deviant octogenarian. He hoped it was the latter, even if he had no idea what to say to her.

  She didn’t seem to expect a response, but Mr. Welsh—armed with another box—came down again and muttered, “Goddamn fags. That’s the problem with this country.”

  Laurent stared daggers at his former neighbor’s back. He was glad he hadn’t offered to help him carry anything and wished he were better at being an asshole when someone actually deserved it instead of when they didn’t.

  “Hmph,” Mrs. Bowen said. She leaned in and patted Laurent again. “Don’t you worry, Lawrence. I don’t give a rat’s ass about that, obviously. And he’s said that kind of nonsense before. But he wanted to put up a Donald Trump for President sign in the yard, and so I decided to just keep ignoring his request to fix his leaky faucet until the sound drove him crazy enough that he’d leave.” She smiled and the corners of her eyes wrinkled from what Laurent imagined was a good life. “Good riddance, asshole.”

  “I’ll ask Isaac about the apartment,” Laurent said. “And my name is Laurent. With a T on the end. But it’s French, so you don’t say it.” He repeated it for her. “Like that.”

  She didn’t look put out by his correcting her, which was nice. He wanted her to know his name, and to call him by it. I don’t want to be invisible. Not anymore.

  “Oh. Well, heavens. I’ve been saying that wrong the whole time. Would you like some angel food cake?”

  “I have a doctor’s appointment,” Laurent said. He realized he was going to be late but hoped making nice with his landlady and being a decent human being would excuse him somewhat. “But thank you.”

  “Oh. Nothing serious I hope,” she said. “Speaking of plumbing, I do hear yours quite often…. You know, the doctor might give you fancy medicine, but I always say a peppermint is good enough for tummy troubles.”

  Laurent’s face went red, and he mumbled a hasty good-bye as he got the hell out of there. On his way to Isaac’s Jeep, he hit a box marked Fragile, which was perched precariously on top of another box near the curb—obviously part of Mr. Welsh’s belongings.

  He wasn’t that decent a human being that he couldn’t appreciate a little revenge.

  Luckily the drive to Liz Park’s office wasn’t far, and there was very little traffic
because it was a weekday afternoon. So Laurent arrived five minutes before his appointment time. He took out his phone and sent Isaac a text that said, im here, and waited to see if Isaac would say anything in response.

  When he didn’t immediately reply, he sent oh i wrecked your Jeep sorry and smirked a little when he received a message that said dick. It was followed up by good. Laurent climbed out of the Jeep, which was awkward considering he was a tall man and they didn’t seem to make Jeeps for people over five nine—no wonder Coach Samarin never wanted to ride in it—and headed into the office.

  Liz Park was a nice woman with kind eyes. She got Laurent some water, processed his copay, and didn’t seem to mind that he probably had the worst case of resting bitchface of any other patients she’d seen that week. He couldn’t help the shortness of his tone or the way he was probably glaring, and he reminded himself that he’d promised Isaac, and people didn’t want to help you if you were mean to them.

  Except Isaac, apparently.

  “Isaac told me he’d been here,” Laurent said by way of a greeting as Liz closed the door and sat down across from him. While he wasn’t comfortable, by any means, something about the office eased his tension a little. Maybe it was knowing that Isaac had talked to her first. “So you don’t have to pretend or anything.”

  “All right,” she said and smiled. “It’s nice to meet you, Laurent. You two make quite an attractive couple.”

  Laurent flushed. “Yeah. Well. Trust me, I’m only pretty on the outside.”

  She flashed him an honest-to-God smile. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

  It was, but arguing probably wasn’t a good way to start off.

  “Why don’t you tell me why you’re here,” she asked as she settled back.

  My boyfriend is a meddling asshole. “Isaac said he was worried about me, and I should talk to you.”

  Liz nodded. “He was very worried about you. I’m glad to see you listened to him and responded to his concerns.”