by A. E. Wasp
“Yeah, I get it. I felt the same way about Bryce.”
“Oh, my God,” James said, eyes wide. “Did you see what he did?”
“I was there, at the game,” Robbie admitted.
“Was it awesome?”
“It was epic.” Robbie shared a grin with him.
“Thank you,” Janey said sincerely. “I know that wasn’t easy. But it meant the world to him. And don’t worry, we won’t tell anyone.”
Robbie shook his head. “I know you won’t. But I’m going to tell everyone. Just give me a little while to figure out what I have to do.” He spoke directly to Janey now, James almost forgotten between them.
“Really?” Janey asked. “You’re going to do it?”
Robbie’s stomach lurched. Maybe he shouldn’t have had that third cup of coffee. “Yes?” he said tentatively.
James squeaked, and Robbie looked at him. He looked like he’d gotten everything he’d ever wanted for every Christmas of his life. His eyes shone, and his hands were clasped together tightly in front of his chest.
“Yes,” Robbie said definitely. “I’m going to do it. I’m going to come out in a press conference.” Holy shit.
Janey squeaked and threw her arms around him. “I’m so proud of you!”
It felt so motherly, Robbie almost cried. He hugged her back. “So, would you want to be there when I do? At the press conference I imagine they’ll want to do? If there is one? Would you be there?” Damn, his words wouldn’t come out right.
James clapped once, then clasped his hands together.
“We’d love to,” Janey said. “Just let us know.”
“Okay.”
They quickly exchanged contact info, James staring at him with stars in his eyes the entire time. Robbie promised to get in touch as soon as he had anything to say.
“Just keep it to yourself a little longer,” he told James. “But if you have any questions about hockey or about anything, you email me, okay?”
James could only nod.
“Thank you,” Janey said pushing James gently towards the van.
“Thank you,” Robbie said sincerely. “For giving me a kick in the ass…I mean butt. Shit.”
Janey laughed. “It’s okay. Good luck. You call me if you need anything, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He watched as they drove out of the parking lot, then headed for the water taxi with a thousand thoughts twirling around in his head. Looked like he had a lot of phone calls to make.
The hardest one would be the one to Paul. If it wasn’t already dead, this would be the final nail in the coffin of their relationship for sure.
34
Paul
The first thing he’d done was turn his phone off. He didn’t want to hear what anybody had to say to him about anything. Then he’d stripped the bed, shoving the dirty sheets into the washing machine. Emotionally wiped out, he crashed onto the bare mattress, and pulled the comforter over him.
He drifted in and out of sleep most of the day. When he was awake, Paul measured time passing by watching the shadows on his bedroom walls shrink away towards noon, then lengthen throughout the afternoon, and finally disappear as the short winter day came to an end.
Finally, the room was full dark, and Paul was starving. He’d moved past his initial shock, and now he was angry. Angry at Pastor Ruebens, at his father, at Robbie. At everyone in the whole damn world who felt they had a stake in who he was and what he did with his life.
He just wanted to live and be happy. Was that so much to ask? He was a good person. He didn’t lie, cheat, or steal. He was polite and kind. He was a damn good hockey player and loyal friend. Why wasn’t that enough?
Hauling himself out of bed, he stumbled to the bathroom. His stomach was growling, but he needed a shower more than he needed food.
Before he got under the hot water, he turned his phone back on. He listened to it bing its electronic brain out, and almost vibrate off the counter as the phone calls, texts, and notifications he’d been avoiding all day caught up with him.
While he waited for his dinner to heat up, he scrolled through the missed phone calls. There were plenty from his father, of course. One more from Pastor Ruebens. He deleted all those voicemails without listening to him.
Sissy had texted a couple of time. He’d read those later when he felt more like dealing with it.
To his surprise, Robbie had texted a few times over the day.
Don’t forget to eat
I’m done at the gym, just thought you’d want to know
How are you feeling? Are you okay?
I’m going to stop bothering you now. I’ll see you tomorrow.
And a last one, two hours after that one.
About tomorrow. Can we pretend everything is okay? I don’t want to deal with shit from the guys.
Paul stared at the phone. Where they okay? What did okay even look like? They hadn’t officially broken up, had they? Paul didn’t have a lot of experience, but that seemed like the kind of thing you had to talk about. So, what were they?
His fingers hovered over the keyboard. I’m eating. Business as usual tomorrow. He hit send.
Biting his lip, he debated saying more. He might as well. It wasn’t as if they could avoid each other. He typed and retyped his message a couple of times before sending it.
I’m sorry. I just need some time to think.
Me too Robbie sent back almost immediately.
They did okay the next day, he thought. At least no one said anything to him. He caught Sergei giving them searching looks, but he never asked anything.
On the ice, they were as good as ever, maybe better as they were laser-focused on the game. They joked around less, keeping their communication strictly about strategy.
Paul always knew where Robbie was and, more importantly, where he was going to be. During the second period, a miracle occurred, and Paul just knew the ice between him and the Blue Jackets’ goal was going to be empty in two seconds.
Leaving his position, he took off down the ice as quickly as he could. Just as he passed the Blue Jackets’ last defenseman in the neutral zone, he looked to his left right in time to catch the puck as it banked off the boards to land almost gently in the curve of his stick.
“Go!” he heard Robbie yell over the roar of the crowd.
His vision narrowed until all he could see was the goalie and the net. Skating full out, just short of the net he faked a shot, pirouetted, and then shot behind his back, sending the puck into wide open glove-side of the net.
With a whoop, Paul allowed himself a knee-sliding fist-pumping skate of victory. Robbie was the first one in the congratulatory hug pile.
So far, so good.
Rooming together for the next road game was as awkward as Paul expected it to be. There wasn’t a way for them to room separately without drawing way too much attention to themselves.
They’d been moving around each other silently, only saying the bare minimum, until Paul came out of the bathroom, and Robbie said, “We have to talk.”
Robbie sat cross-legged on his bed in a pair of shorts and nothing else.
To Paul’s eye, he looked a little skinnier than he had been a few months ago. Paul knew he was staring, but he couldn’t help it. He’d missed the freedom to look at Robbie’s body. Definitely missed touching it. Robbie was still wearing Paul’s necklace. That had to be a good sign, right?
“I think we do, too,” Paul said, sitting on his bed and facing Robbie.
Robbie didn’t say anything, but he fiddled with the necklace, rubbing it between his fingers almost unconsciously while he stared at Paul.
“I’ll start,” Paul said.
Robbie nodded and looked like he was bracing himself against whatever it was Paul was going to say.
“I don’t know how to say this without sounding stupid, so I’m just going to say it.” He took a deep breath. “Are you breaking up with me?”
Robbie jerked back, blinking as if he wasn’t sure he’d hea
rd correctly. “What?”
“Are we broken up?” It was a question Paul never envisioned himself asking. You’d think you would know.
“I…,” Robbie took a deep breath. “I think that’s up to you. But there’s something you need to know, first.”
Paul listened, his heart breaking with every word, as Robbie told him about his decision to come out publicly. There would be a press conference next week, after the All-Star weekend.
It wasn’t fair, dammit! Robbie was just so far ahead of him here; he would never catch up. He could never be the out and proud boyfriend Robbie needed, that he deserved.
But he couldn’t let Robbie’s schedule dictate his own, any more than he could let Pastor Ruebens or his father dictate his life anymore.
“This is how I can make a difference,” Robbie was saying. “This is my Doctors Without Borders. If you could have seen that kid’s face when I told him I wasn’t gay. I felt like I’d kicked a puppy. Hard. I could practically see his dreams crumbling.” Robbie clutched his heart like he was in actual pain. His eyes pleaded for Paul to understand.
“Don’t hate me,” he begged.
“I could never, ever hate you,” Paul said. “I’m proud of you.”
“Yeah?” He sounded surprised. “Really?”
“Really.” And he was. He was so proud of Robbie for being so brave.
“I’m kind of nervous.” Robbie pulled the necklace up to his mouth, tapping it against his teeth. He pulled it back out again. “I’m scared.”
Giving in to the urge he’d been fighting since he’d come out of the bathroom, Paul went over and sat down next to Robbie. He wrapped an arm around him and pulled him in for a side hug.
Robbie went willingly, resting his head on Paul’s shoulder.
“It’s going to be great,” Paul said. “You’re going to be amazing. And you’ll make life so much easier for so many little kids, and not so little kids. Maybe even for someone like me.”
“After I do this,” Robbie said, “we won’t be able to fly under the radar anymore. Even if we do breakup, if you hang out with me so much, people are going to make assumptions.”
“I know.”
“So?” Robbie lifted his head but didn’t pull out from under Paul’s arm.
“I don’t know. How many days do we have?”
“Five.”
“Okay. I guess we’ll find out in five days.”
Robbie sighed and rested his head back on Paul’s shoulder. He felt so good there; Paul wanted to cry. He turned his head, burying his nose in Robbie’s hair. He’d missed the scent of him, missed everything.
Robbie raised his head again, looking directly into Paul’s eyes. “Can I kiss you?” he asked, and Paul heard the echo of their first night together in what felt like another lifetime.
Slipping his finger under the chain of the necklace, Paul pulled Robbie close and kissed him softly, barely a whisper of pressure against Robbie’s lips. He pulled away, then leaned in for a second, longer kiss.
Robbie grabbed his arm.
Paul broke the kiss. “I do love you,” he said.
“I know. I love you, too. But.” He hesitated, searching for the words. “But I have to be able to love myself first. And, lately, I haven’t really even liked myself. Do you know what I mean?”
Paul’s laugh sounded a little hysterical even to him. “Yeah. I think I do.”
Robbie laughed bitterly. “I thought love was all we needed?”
“That’s what the songs say.”
“The songs are wrong then.” Robbie sagged back on the bed, the necklace sliding through Paul’s fingers. Robbie lifted it off his chest, holding it out. “Do you—”
“No.” Paul cut him off. “Keep it. Please.”
Robbie nodded. “I’m tired,” he said, though it was barely ten p.m. They’d had a travel day and had arrived at the hotel at a reasonable hour.
“Me, too,” Paul said. It wasn’t a lie; he felt like he could sleep for a week. He got up and went over to his bed. Sliding under the covers, he turned off the light. “Good night.”
“Night.”
What else was there to say?
The next morning, Robbie got a call from Georgia that changed everything.
As soon as Robbie finished relaying Georgia’s information, Paul was on the phone with his father.
He didn’t respond as his father got out everything he’d been dying to say over the past week that Paul had been ignoring his calls and text. Paul let it wash over him in a rush of words and bullshit.
“Are you done?” he asked when Stoney’s tirade petered out.
“That’s all you have to say to me?” Stoney asked, irate.
“No. I just wanted to make sure you were finished yelling at me. Are you?”
“Yelling at you? Son, I am only—”
“So that’s a no then?”
“What has gotten into you? I knew that Rhodes boy was a bad influence.”
Paul rolled his eyes. “We need to talk. In person. Can you come out here? Bring Sissy, too, if she can come.”
Stoney sputtered and blustered until Paul interrupted him again. “It’s about Skippy.”
Dead silence, except for Stoney’s heavy breathing. “Dad?”
“Where did you hear that name?” he asked quietly.
“Just come to Seattle. I don’t want to do this over the phone. I’ll buy you both tickets.”
“Fine. I’ll have your sister call you to make plans.” He cut the call.
“Is he coming out?” Robbie asked.
Paul nodded.
“That talk is…going be interesting.”
Paul barked a laugh. “That’s one word for it.”
35
Paul
Once again, Paul found himself in Queenie and headed north out of the city. He was in the same car and traveling the same roads he had traveled with Robbie months ago, but this time he was with his father. This trip promised to be not nearly as much fun as the first one.
The mountain roads they’d taken were closed for the season now. He planned to take the highway out of town and cut over to the coast as soon as he could.
The only way he was going to be able to have this talk with his father was if he didn’t have to make eye contact. Driving helped with that. Also, driving prevented his father from simply walking away when he didn’t want to hear what Paul had to say.
Stoney was trapped. He had to listen, but they could avoid all the awkward eye contact. And if Stoney was going to lose his shit, at least no one else would hear him.
Driving the Stingray also made Paul feel like he had a part of Eubee with him.
God, poor Eubee. Paul wished with all his heart he could talk to Eubee one more time. That they could laugh and cry together and finally say all the things that had gone unsaid and unrecognized because they had been children.
He hadn’t even been able to say goodbye.
Would it have made a difference if he and Eubee had known and labeled what they were to each other? Or would it have ended in tragedy anyway?
Paul blinked back the tears and spared a quick glance at Stoney who looked as tense and uncomfortable as you could in the front seat of a Corvette.
Maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference, but Paul was angry that the choice had been taken from them before they’d known it existed.
They were forty-five minutes out of the city, and Stoney had yet to say anything. He’d gone quiet when he’d seen the Stingray and realized they would be driving in her. He looks like he’s seen a ghost, Paul thought.
“This Eubee’s car?” he’d asked as if mint-condition, forest-green seventy-six Stingrays were thick on the ground and he couldn’t be sure this was the one he was thinking of.
“Pops Franklin left it to me, remember?” Paul asked, knowing full well his father remembered.
Stoney nodded. “I didn’t know you still had her, that’s all.” He reached out but let his hand drop before touching the curved edges of th
e car. Shoving his hands into his pants pockets, he looked away.
Paul couldn’t remember seeing his father look unsure about anything before. Stoney had always been the ultimate authority on everything, one step below God and on equal footing (in Paul’s eyes) with the pastors of the church. Stoney was older, wiser, and his father. His word was law. Paul hadn’t questioned it.
Now he was starting to realize that his father was just a man trying to figure out his way in the world, trying to find a way to make the pain and hard times mean something, to make the suffering have been worth it somehow.
Human, and like Paul, and like Pastor Ruebens, and Robbie and everyone else, answerable only to himself and God in the end. Whatever we conceive Him to be. Paul wondered what his mother had conceived God to be at the end when He took her from her husband and children.
Whatever it had been, she’d been at peace with it. That much Paul knew for sure.
He reached around his father and opened the passenger’s door. “Come on, Dad. Let’s go for a ride.”
It was just the two of them. Sissy had tests she couldn’t miss. She was going to fly out later and meet them right before Robbie’s press conference. Assuming Paul’s father hadn’t disowned him and flown home and out of Paul’s life forever.
Contemplating that possibility made Paul nauseous, but the weight that lifted from his shoulders at finally getting everything out in the open more than compensated.
If only he could figure out how to start the conversation. The silence stretched awkwardly, painfully. Stoney coughed, Paul hoped it was an opening, but his father kept staring out the window.
“Dad,” Paul said, clearing his throat. “I need to talk to you.”
“That’s what you said, that’s why I’m here.”
Paul did have to give him credit for that. Stoney had to know what this conversation was about. He had to know the skeletons Paul was going to dig up, and the confessions he was going to make. And yet he had still come out. Had flown across the entire country to be with Paul and talk with him semi-face-to-face.