by E M Lindsey
“What the fuck happened to you?”
“Bill Sanders,” Sam said, pushing back in his chair and crossing his arms. “Fucker got wasted and we took my dad’s truck. Rolled it.”
“When?” Tony demanded, like he had some right to the information.
For whatever reason, Sam didn’t hate it. In fact, it was the first time someone from his past seemed to give a shit about the situation and not how it turned Sam into this fragile subhuman. “Sophomore year, right after homecoming.”
“Fuck me,” Tony said, dragging his hand down his face. The motion drew his attention to his watch, and he groaned. “Look man, I need to get a refund since Professor Jameson decided to change his entire fucking booklist two weeks into term, and then I have class, so could you hook me up? Also give me your number because you and I are going out and I’m going to buy you at least three pitchers of beer.” He waved his hand at Sam’s wheelchair. “This seems like a three pitchers of beer conversation.”
Sam’s face swore it was going to crack in half by the way his smile spread, and he felt like a dipshit, but he didn’t care. “Yeah man. I’ll hook you up. Write your number there,” he nodded at a stack of post-its before he grabbed Tony’s first book. “I could really go for a drink.”
“Me too,” Tony said, a smile just as wide.
“You shittin’ me?” Tony asked, mouth a little full from the fries he was stuffing inside, eyes locked on Sam’s. “Your old man said that shit? That man thought the sun shone out your ass.”
Sam shrugged. “Mom too. It was…whatever. I get it. No one signed up for a kid like this.”
“What? You get it? Hell no, man,” Tony said, shaking his head, hands clenched into fists on either side of the basket of fries. “You sign up for a kid, you sign up for all the shit that comes with it. None of this, I don’t expect my kid to be this way bullshit.”
“You don’t know what it’s like,” Sam tried to defend. Half of him was crushed inside at the way his parents just sort of checked out and sat in stasis until he was so tired of living half-alive that he bailed. The other half of him tried to sympathize, because living like this wasn’t easy. “It’s not like…it’s not just having ramps in the house and driving cars with hand pedals. There’s so fucking much, dude. It’s…fuck. It’s exhausting.”
“I’m not gonna pretend like I have any idea, Sam,” Tony told him, meeting his gaze with eyes softer than anyone had looked at Sam in a while. “I don’t know jack shit about paralysis and what comes with it.”
“More than you want to know,” Sam muttered.
“Is it? Because my guess is it’s kind of shit here for you just like back in Alaska, and my guess is that you don’t have a real support system going on.”
Sam bit his lip, because Tony wasn’t lying, but Sam also wasn’t going to accept an offer for help. He’d been doing almost all his own care for years, apart from the really tough stuff which his home health aide took care of. Someone who was paid for all the gross shit his body had to go through. Like when he had a sore on his ass that got infected, and the doctors had to remove a chunk of his skin. He was on his belly for six weeks and needed someone to wipe his ass and sponge bathe him and keep the site from festering.
But apart from that—when things were normal—he’d rather not have people look at him and know everything else that came with him. Like the anal stimulation, or the catheter, or the nights when his legs would spasm and he’d be up for hours sobbing because he just couldn’t get the pain to stop. Or how his stomach would never be flat no matter how many sit-ups he managed, and how his legs would always be thin and atrophied, but his feet and ankles would always stay swollen.
He just wanted to be a regular guy, and he found that people didn’t automatically other him just because of the chair. No, it was everything else that came with it, if they were forced to think about it too long. Sort of like Caleb, who worked at Tea Leaf on campus. The guy was hot, and kind of a hipster, but didn’t seem like too much of a douche about it. He asked Sam out, found a restaurant that Sam could get in and out of easily. He didn’t bitch about how long it took for Sam to transfer in and out of his car, and he even suggested a walk after where they found a bench and held hands and made out. It was great, and they liked each other, and Sam could see the relationship actually going somewhere.
But then sex became a thing, and that was where it always went downhill. Sam was well versed in the fact that sometimes his dick would cooperate, but most of the time it wouldn’t— even when he popped a Cialis and shoved a cock-ring on. Not that his dick had enough feeling to bring him off anyway, but he liked the idea of penetrative sex. The sight of someone fucking themselves on his dick gave him enough mental stimulation. Caleb seemed into it until he got Sam out of his pants and saw everything down below. His eyes lingered on the scars marring Sam’s backside, and the way his legs were just so skinny and limp, and how his feet and ankles were puffy and a little red. He hesitated, and refused to touch below the waist, telling Sam he wanted to focus on the places that made him feel good.
It was sex, just a little different than most couples. Then, Caleb got really busy. He answered his phone at first, a smile in his voice when he told Sam that no, it was just life keeping his schedule full. And then his calls started going to voicemail, and without warning, he was no longer working at the Tea Leaf. Maybe he figured if he ghosted, Sam couldn’t call him out on it, so he didn’t have to admit to the fact that it was Sam’s body that had turned him off. Sam didn’t bother trying to reach him once he realized what was happening.
What would be the fucking point anyway?
“What I really want to know,” Tony said, bringing Sam back to the present, “is what the fuck you’re doing here. I mean, I know your mom and dad had big plans for you, but clearly you told them to fuck off.”
“Something like that,” Sam said with a half-grin. He didn’t bother to say that his parents gave up on him at fifteen and the fact that he lived successfully on his own was enough of an excuse for them to write him off.
“Okay, so what’s your plan? I mean, what are you doing once you get out of this place?”
Sam bit his lip, because he wasn’t even sure yet. He was a sophomore and still a little lost. All his core credits were done, and he was enrolled in general studies, but the only thing he was actually any good at was the throw-away art class he took because someone had told him it was an easy A. Before that, Sam had no idea he could draw. He doodled on tests and homework and the occasional note to a friend back in his senior English class, but nothing with any substance.
The day he sat in the little art studio, picked up a block of charcoal, and began to sketch out on the blank canvas, something erupted in him, like a roaring fire doused in gasoline. He spent all his time doing that now, creating image after image and no idea what the fuck was supposed to come of it.
“Art, I guess,” he finally answered. “I think I want to do something with art.”
For some reason, that made Tony light up like a house on fire. “Really? Because man, I’ve got an idea for you, and I really want you to hear me out.”
If someone had told Sam that nineteen years later he’d be co-running a tattoo shop with a man he never expected to see again, and getting ready to adopt a little girl who called him dada and thought the sun rose and set in his arms, he wouldn’t have believed them. But here he was, happy and settled, and finally feeling like his life was exactly the way it was meant to be.
If only it would have lasted.
Chapter Two
“Niko Pagonis. How does it feel to go from a tiny little fishing village in Greece to one of the top prospects of the NHL?”
His laugh was light and free, hair a mess from his bucket, palms sweating under his gloves. “Amazing. Unheard of, maybe? I don’t know. I think more than anything, I just want to make my dad proud…”
Niko flicked the TV off, his hand shaking as he threw the remote on the coffee table and swapped it for the be
er he wasn’t supposed to be drinking. In all honesty, it was better than the pills they had him on. He was on the verge of getting addicted, and they were making him itch all over. He felt like all the muscle he’d spent years working at was melting away to nothing as he lay there, unable to move much on his own. The immobilizer on his knee was making him ache, and he just wanted to rip it all off and maybe hack his leg off if he could manage the thought without passing out.
He’d always been made fun of for his squeamishness. Every team he’d played for had chirped him mercilessly for his habit of fainting at the sight of blood. His nickname was the Fainting Goat because at least once per game, he’d be on his side at the sight of red on the ice, and half the time it was his own tooth getting bashed out of his face.
But it was amazing. It was family. Hockey had been his solace—his therapy, in a way—when his dad died. His dad, who hadn’t ever missed a single game when he’d been recruited straight out of high school for the junior league in Quebec. He’d managed passable French by the time he was done, and he was the number six pick for the draft. He was picked up by Florida, and went straight to the farm, which he was fine with. He wanted to earn his keep, and he was getting noticed with his baby-face and his ability to make a slap-shot even with some massive Swede right up in his grill. He had four hat tricks by his first season, and seven by his second.
That was when owners started taking notice, and his name was being tossed around, and his agent was making daily phone calls and telling him to brush up on his contract reading skills because things were about to get good. Prospecting was everything, and for fuck’s sake, he was going to break some records once he finally got onto NHL ice.
And he did break a record. The shortest time in an NHL game before he was officially retired. He didn’t know why they lifted his jersey—what was the fucking point when he hadn’t done anything for the team to earn it? Two minutes and nineteen seconds before his faulty padding on his left leg allowed a skate blade to slice right through and destroy the tendons in his knee. Six surgeries and nine months in a fucking knee immobilizer and the doctors said he’d walk again. Hell, he’d even run again, and be fine during leg day, and have plenty of time to figure out a new career because he was only twenty-one after all.
But he wouldn’t skate again. Not on professional ice. His dream was set on fire at the hands of a manufacturing error which settled six million in his bank account, and then told him the world would never remember his name.
He told himself it was better this way. And hell, at least he could be out of the closet now. He wouldn’t have to keep his romantic trysts to sucking dicks behind broom closet doors and pretending there was only ever anything friendly between him and the hot bartender. He’d once come to terms with the fact that he could never be a gay man in sports if he wanted a career. Having the freedom to be himself now without having to choose between one or the other or face retribution did matter. He’d take that as a win.
But sometimes it was too much. It killed him, watching those old interviews of himself fresh-faced, his eyes bright without the fog of opiates and insomnia, promise in his voice of future greatness that should have been his. The bitterness nearly choked him.
He swallowed down most of the beer and let his head fall back against the sofa cushions. He had an email sitting in his inbox, something about how he was good at math and might want to consider the MBA program in Denver. Good jobs there to be had, and it was a place no one would recognize him for his epic failure. He stared down at his toes poking out of his boot and wriggled them. They were still kind of purple and ugly, and he’d have the damndest time trying to fit them in his skate, but it didn’t matter anymore. He didn’t need skates. He was retired.
He was fucking retired, whether he wanted it or not.
Reaching for his phone, Niko opened up the email from his old buddy and read the rest of it. A house with two other roommates in a little town called Fairfield, just a twenty-minute drive on the freeway to campus. He had enough cash to cover his tuition if he really wanted this, and hell, what could it hurt?
His finger hovered over the call button, his mom’s name sitting there, and he wondered what she’d say. She’d probably just laugh and tell him, “Matia mou, whatever makes you happy makes me happy.”
Part of him wanted to run back to Jersey and just be with her and let himself rot away—let her spend his cash and retreat back to his childhood. And part of her would love it. She wanted to feel needed, especially after his father’s death. But his sister, Sophia, and her husband and two kids were there, and it was enough for his mom to feel content. She didn’t need her grown-ass son leeching off her like a pathetic waste. Besides, it had been a struggle enough to let him pay off her house which only had a couple grand left as it was. Even if he did show up to sleep on her sofa and eat Doritos for the rest of his life, she wouldn’t touch a cent.
But maybe he didn’t have to feel useless. Maybe he could be better, do something better.
Dan,
Count me in. I’m going to fill out the app tonight. Save a room for me. Talk soon.
-Nik
He didn’t need a roommate, but maybe having a couple of people around to hold him accountable and make him work for it would be good for him. After all, what he was good at before was now out of reach. Forever. So, it was time to see if he could bring anything else to the table.
Niko expected to graduate, of course. He didn’t expect to graduate with honors, but somehow, he ended up being good at academics. Numbers and math spoke to him the same way that his blades on the ice did. They were like a new language, and somehow, it just made the world make sense again. He also didn’t expect to find a hidden passion in cooking—a throw-away class he’d taken because his roommate was always bitching about how no one in the house could make anything more complicated than ramen. So, he did that too, as he earned his accounting degree. His mother and sister were both there to see him walk, and again a few years later when he finished his MBA. And somehow, life in Fairfield seemed to settle down in a way he never anticipated.
The town was insular and small. A handful of hockey fans over the years recognized him as that guy who got taken out two minutes into his first game, but mostly he was just Niko. He was just the gym-rat accountant who was kind of a nerd, but also a fitness buff, and weirdly fit in to a world he never expected to. And the most surprising thing of all was how much he didn’t hate it. How much it all sort of made him feel like Fairfield could become his home if he let it. It hadn’t felt that way yet. He bought a condo and set up shop in an accounting firm. He had gym buddies and drinking buddies, but he still didn’t feel part of the town the way others did. He never let anyone close.
Part of him wondered if it was some latent feeling left over from being dragged from his home-country at the age of four, but if he was being realistic, he didn’t really remember much about Rethymno apart from sitting on a low stone wall and watching his dad pull fishing nets onto a small boat. He remembered the smell of dead fish and he remembered humidity and wanting to jump in the water even though his mother would never let him.
He remembered leaving more than staying. He remembered his parents using English at home as soon as they got their shitty little apartment in Jersey, and still not having a good grasp of it when he started kindergarten a year later. He remembered being made fun of by the kids in his class because his accent was funny. He remembered giving a boy named Jake in first grade a bloody nose when he mimicked the way Niko spoke, but also how damn much that moment had made him want to fit in and belong.
By the time he got to high school, he was a different person entirely. He was a Jersey boy—kind of shitty with a popped collar and salmon shorts and his eyes set on the Stanley Cup and it was almost—almost—attainable. And yet, even when it was unceremoniously ripped from his grasp, he never felt homesick for it. Crushed by a lost dream, maybe, but never like he was missing a piece of himself.
He thought he might feel that
way now if, somehow, he lost everything in Fairfield. He never thought of himself as a small-town kind of guy, but here he was.
“Dude, you should open up your own gym or some shit,” Cale said to his right.
Niko looked over at his buddy—at his too-bleached hair, which was slick with sweat, his skin glowing rosy from the strain of the weight he was pushing. “Why the hell would I do that?”
“Because you basically live here?” Sage offered. Sage was a strange juxtaposition to both him and Cale. He was massive, at least six-four with brown hair, gauged ears, a lip ring, and both arms sleeved with tattoos. Sage was the most private out of the three of them. He wasn’t the kind of guy who ever talked about his personal life, and he never, ever offered to hang with them beyond gym time.
The only reason Niko knew Sage had a fiancé that died was the night he’d run into him after what looked like a vicious pub-crawl and he’d been very obviously crying. Niko had managed to get Sage’s address out of him and see him to his bed. Just before he stepped out of the room, Sage murmured very softly, “Why’d you die on me, Ted. You stupid fuck. We were getting married.”
Niko never asked about it. Ever. And Sage never offered, which was fine. Objectively, he was one of the hottest guys Niko had ever laid eyes on, and he had majored in physics and mathematics at the University. He was a late-start kind of guy and had a rough past, and he was terrifyingly smart. But the similarities between them ended there. In fact, they’d almost come to blows once about whether or not a tomato was a fruit. Niko knew that technically it was, but it didn’t fucking count, and that was a deal-breaker.
Still, he was a great work-out buddy and Niko wasn’t about to look that kind of gift-horse in the mouth.