Season's Change, page 17
But he’d told someone, about Benji. The clock was still ticking and as far as he could tell, the world was still turning. It had been easier when he’d told her that he was gay: people knew that. His lawyers, Coach O, those fuckers from the Wolves. Maybe no one who mattered to him, on a personal level. But he’d had time to get his mind wrapped around the fact that people knew.
No one knew about Benji. And it needed to stay that way. There wasn’t another option, even if Olly was so lonely he could scream; even if all he wanted in his deepest most secret heart was to lean his head on Benji’s shoulder, lie down next to him on clean white sheets with the warmth of his skin close enough to touch.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Krista called. Benji thought about going for a walk while they talked, to give himself something to focus on other than the forced cheerfulness in her voice; but it was raining, or sleeting, whatever combination Canada offered in January, and he’d only made it as far as the lobby.
Krista was telling him that Rob wanted to start trying for their first kid. “Hopefully a boy,” she said, in the determinedly up-tempo voice she used when she’d already convinced herself that something was a good idea. “Rob wants a golf buddy.”
“Why can’t he golf with you?”
She laughed. Benji tightened his fingers so hard around his phone that the plastic creaked. “It’s not the same.”
Benji sighed. “Okay. Just. I hope you really—” he swallowed “—give yourself time to think about it, before you jump into it.”
“I’ve thought about it,” she said, flat. “I’ve always wanted kids.”
“I’m not saying you haven’t...”
“I was hoping you’d be supportive.”
“I’m not trying to not be supportive.”
“It feels like it,” she snapped. “Look, I’m excited. I’m happy. I wanted to share that with you.” She said those words—excited, happy—like if she repeated them enough times, they’d become true. “I’ve got to go.”
The line went dead. Benji stared at the screen, the rows of brightly colored icons for social media apps his sister and his agent wished he gave a shit about.
He gave a shit about Krista, but she ended up pissed at him no matter what he said. And he knew it wasn’t about him, really, but that didn’t make it suck less.
He shoved his phone into his pocket. It was time for his pregame nap, or close enough.
Olly got on the elevator on the second floor. He looked pretty horrible, actually. Dark circles under his eyes, skin pale. Benji wanted to be able to fix something for him, the way he’d never been able to for Krista. Make him feel better. Sit on the plane and let Olly fall asleep on his shoulder. Useless fucking impulse, because Olly didn’t want him around, either.
“What’s up,” Benji said, a little late.
Olly leaned on the back wall of the elevator. He had his iPad under his arm. “Nothing.” Then, as another floor ticked past, “Just tired.”
“Good thing it’s nap time.”
Olly shrugged one shoulder, like it was all he could manage. His hair was falling out of a messy ponytail, hanging around his face. “I guess.”
The elevator dinged for their floor. Luke and Bevvo stood in the hallway, laughing as Lukesy mimed punching Bevvo in the arm.
“Have you heard the good news?” Lukesy asked. “Has he blown up your phone? Has he gotten a, like, personal skywriter yet? Sandrine lowered her standards enough to let him convince her to be his steady girl. You remember, the Mystic? From New Year’s?”
Benji sure did. Whistled, thumped Bevvo on the back. “Way to go. She’s a rocket.”
“She’s the shit,” Bevvo said, grinning like he wasn’t even trying to play it cool. “She can squat as much weight as I can.”
“Damn, dude. Gonna have to step it up in the gym.”
“You know it.” Bevvo slapped his bicep. “Still got her on the upper body stuff, but she says she’s coming for my deadlift PR.”
They talked for a few more minutes, until Dewey stepped off the elevator and tapped his watch. “Boys.”
“Yeah, we know,” Lukesy said, rolling his eyes once Dewey was safely down the hall. “Fuckin’ Dad.”
“He’s not wrong,” Olly pointed out. He’d been hovering at Benji’s shoulder, quiet as a ghost.
“Now Mom’s disappointed in us, too.” Bevvo hadn’t quit smiling, though. “Come on. Let Lukesy get his beauty rest, god knows he fucking needs it.”
Olly and Poiro’s room was next in line down the hallway. Benji almost followed him in on muscle memory, but Olly shut the door in his face. It took him a second to shake it off; or maybe he didn’t quite manage it, on the heels of his phone call with Krista and Bevvo’s happiness about Sandrine.
Benji wanted to be happy for Bevvo. Shit, Benji was. How could he not be? Maybe Benji wasn’t a relationship guy himself, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be happy for a good buddy locking down a quality girl.
Maybe Benji wasn’t interested in wifey-ing up one of the Mystics, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t care in other ways.
And okay, yeah, it hurt that his sister and his alleged best buddy didn’t want to hear anything he had to say. Didn’t want to tell him what the hell was really going on with them.
But it was fine, wasn’t it? Or it was going to have to be fine. They were getting on the ice in a few hours, and Toronto was on a win streak. Benji had more important things to worry about than the stupid sting of hurt that Olly was shoving him away again.
Even if Benji was kind of bummed out, Olly was going through some shit. Had been all season, but he’d seemed to be doing better. Only now he wasn’t.
Benji wanted to be able to say something funny enough to make the worried line between Olly’s eyebrows go away. Maybe try and ask what was wrong, and have Olly trust him enough to tell him, instead of shutting a hotel door in his face.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Olly didn’t believe it when he saw the puck hit the back of the net against San Jose. He was still waiting for someone to wave it off when the goal horn sounded, followed by the buzzer to end the game.
“You got a fucking hattie!” Benji bellowed into his face. Luke slammed into him from the back, knocking him into the boards. The fans were screaming, hammering on the glass.
The locker room was rowdy after the game, from the combination of a win over one of the best teams in the league, and a Friday night with nothing to do until the end of the All-Star break. Well, for everyone but Mils and Dewey, who were taking a trip to beautiful Edmonton, Alberta. Luke was pretending not to be pissed about it.
“You coming out?” Benji asked. He’d been—Olly didn’t want to say he’d been keeping his distance. They still lived in each other’s pockets, even if they were going their separate ways for the break. But he could tell that some part of Benji had pulled back, even though he was still offering Olly smoothies at the same rate.
It was what Olly had wanted—needed—to happen. Even Dr. Martinez had agreed. Well, she’d said that Olly needed to think about a way to work through his feelings. Space was the only idea he had.
“Yes, he’s coming out! He got a fucking hat trick!” Poiro yelled, and Olly realized he’d been staring at Benji’s face—sticky with sweat, helmet line across his forehead, dried blood down the side of his nose from a visor cut—without saying anything.
It was a bad idea. He was off-balance and anxious and unhappy, and he wasn’t going to be able to keep the boys from pouring hat-trick shots down his throat.
He started to say, “I don’t know,” but Poiro made whomp-whomp noises loudly enough to drown him out, and then Lukesy and Bevvo were frog-marching him into the back of an Uber. Luke produced a flask and stared at him until he took a swig.
He felt loose by the time they made it to the club. There was a Friday-night line snaking along the sidewalk; Lukesy and Bevvo strolled past it, right into a wall of noise. Poiro, Benji, Yelich, and some child up from the D-League—what the fuck was his name? Olly didn’t want to keep calling him Hotdog—were in a VIP area on a balcony.
“Shots, boys!” Lukesy yelled, and it escalated from there.
Later, Olly would remember the night in flashes: watching Benji lick salt off his hand for a tequila shot, the burn of his own shot going down his throat. Strobe lights on bodies, sweat, getting drunk enough that Benji could drag him onto the dance floor. Olly let himself be led, tethered to the pressure of Benji’s fingers around his wrist.
Luke, with his tongue down some girl’s throat. Bass rattling around in his skull, settling in the bottom of his stomach. Hotdog grinning wide enough to split his face open on his first night out as a NAHA player. Olly wished him the fucking best. He might have shouted it into his ear over the music, before Benji grabbed his collar and dragged him against his side. Olly wanted to stay there forever, and he said it out loud, mouth moving against the fabric of Benji’s T-shirt.
“What?” Benji yelled, and Olly shook his head.
He and Yelich stumbled to the bathroom at some point. When they got back, Benji had found a girl, or a girl had found Benji. She was tall, athletic-looking with curves and a dress that left strips of bare skin down the sides of her ribs. She had a tattoo on her back, some spreading floral thing.
“Your boy needs better taste,” Poiro yelled in his ear.
“Girls with tats are DTF,” was Hotdog’s contribution.
“I don’t think that’s true,” Olly tried to say, but his lungs were being carved out of his body, watching them curve into each other and him kiss her neck; so who knew if he said it at all. It was worse when he realized Benji was watching him, green eyes focused and intense. Olly wanted to run, and punch something, and kiss him, and light his entire life on fire.
He’d watched Benji pick up girls, listened to them fuck from the other side of the wall: but this right here was why he didn’t really drink anymore. It made him forget that it didn’t matter what he wanted.
The thing was: Olly had a reckless streak. He’d always been the first guy to cliff-jump into the lake; to go skinny-dipping; to steal the giant plastic M&M outside of the downtown Duluth Walgreens, and set it up on an empty plinth in Leif Erikson Park. Fine, that had been Levi’s idea, but Olly had never been the guy to pump the brakes. That was how he and Sami had ended up with bleach-blond mullets; that was how he’d broken bones.
He’d buried it ruthlessly deep after one close call too many with the Mormon in Utah. Set his shoulders to the grind of the NAHA, and never let up.
But that was how he’d blown his life to hell in Minneapolis: a surge of fuck it all, why not.
“We’re out,” Benji told him, some blurry amount of time later. He pulled Olly into his side again, dug a hand into his hair. The girl with the tats was under his other arm, and she smiled at Olly like she knew a secret.
“Bye, then.” A slower song was playing, something with a sinuous, hip-grinding beat.
“Come on. Time to go home.”
“No,” Olly said, because he’d rather crash on Poiro’s couch than hear them fucking one wall away.
“Yes,” Benji countered.
Olly couldn’t begin to explain the reasons why he wanted to stay in this stupid club he hadn’t wanted to come to in the first place. So Benji took the middle seat in the Lyft, even though his knees were up to his shoulders and he didn’t begin to fit. He and the girl—Heather—whispered and laughed, but he’d put his hand in Olly’s hair again somewhere near Logan Circle. Kept stroking his thumb up and down the tendons in the back of his neck.
“Heather thinks you’re fucking hot,” was what Benji said, when the car pulled up to their building. He was close enough that Olly could feel the wash of breath over his skin.
Olly pulled himself away from Benji’s hand in the kitchen, trying to regain some toehold in his normal routine, handing out Gatorades like he always did. But one second they were all rehydrating in the kitchen, and then the next the mood flicked like a switch, Benji kissing Heather up against the wall with one of her legs wrapped around his waist.
“You coming?” Heather asked him, from across the kitchen. Her eyes were electric blue over Benji’s shoulder, half-lidded.
Olly didn’t know what possessed him to let Heather slide down from the wall and take his wrist with one of her feminine little hands. His well-buried reckless streak raising its head; the after-image sensation of fingers on the back of his neck; the traction drag of Benji’s green eyes behind her, gone sleepy and pleased like he’d never seen them before.
Olly meant, as much as he could have meant anything at that point, to watch, to leave that one line uncrossed. And then Benji said, “Get over here, Olly,” in a lazy, authoritative voice, and God help him, Olly went: propped himself up against the headboard, watched the muscles flex in Benji’s back while he ate Heather out; let her suck on his fingers and then get her mouth on Olly’s dick, while Benji fucked her from behind.
He couldn’t keep himself from looking at Benji when he came, pinned down by his golden-green eyes.
Benji said, “Fuck, Olly.” His hips snapped forward and he reached out, grabbing for Olly’s shoulder like he couldn’t help himself.
* * *
Olly woke up the next morning on his stomach, arms wrapped around a pillow. He didn’t know where he was. That wasn’t unusual, given how much time he spent waking up in hotel rooms across North America.
But he was naked, and there was a hand on his lower back, hot as a brand.
Every muscle in Olly’s body went tense at the exact same moment. He opened his eyes slowly, hoping with no real sense of hope that things would be different. They weren’t. He was only a couple of inches away from Benji: he lay on his side, curled toward Olly, with his lashes making dark crescents against his cheeks. His lips were soft, halfway parted.
Lips Olly had not kissed, he remembered, through the rising tide of panic. In his drunk mind, that had made a difference.
Carefully, carefully, he eased himself out from under Benji’s hand. He made a sleepy, displeased noise as the bed shifted, but didn’t open his eyes.
Olly made it to his bathroom before he started throwing up. Barely, but he made it.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Heather wanted to get breakfast. Benji wanted her gone, the way he always wanted his hookups gone. But more intensely. Watching her sit at the breakfast bar made his teeth hurt, made him want to check over his shoulder for the play developing on the other side of the ice.
She caught on eventually, making a face and kissing his cheek. “At least I crossed ‘threesome with professional athletes’ off the bucket list.”
“You’re welcome,” Benji said, summoning up what he knew was a charming smile.
He wasn’t an asshole. He gave her a travel mug of coffee, a sweatshirt to throw over her dress, and an Uber.
He could hear Olly’s shower running, white noise through the wall. It went on and on, while Benji started the coffee machine, made himself an egg-and-avocado sandwich. He was less hungover than he should have been, probably. He’d been plenty drunk, and his bottle of Gatorade was sitting, only halfway gone, on the counter. He’d been a little too busy to finish it.
Benji made a face. He had the feeling that last night had been a mistake. He couldn’t have said why, exactly. He was no stranger to sharing a girl with a buddy, and it had only gotten weird one time, way back in Michigan when he’d been too young and dumb to know what he was doing.
Maybe because it was Olly, who was so particular about being touched, who had never mentioned a girlfriend in the five months they’d been living together. Olly, who’d told him in so many words that he wanted space.
Yeah, a threesome was probably the opposite.
Shit.
Benji didn’t have anything to distract himself with. No practice, no games for a whole week. He should pack, maybe, for his flight tomorrow—Jamaica with a couple of guys from the NHTC. Poiro and some of his buddies were staying one resort over.
Olly was going to Minnesota, which was the opposite of vacation as far as Benji could tell. He was going to give a straight no thank you to any plans centered on an ice-fishing hut.
But right, space.
“Fuck,” he said to his sandwich. A glop of avocado oozed out the side and landed on his sweatpants.
The shower cut off eventually, but there was no sign of Olly. Benji couldn’t focus on Call of Duty, couldn’t fall back asleep, couldn’t force his brain in line with his meditation app. He felt twitchy and nervous and shitty, and then he was pouring Olly a mug full of coffee. He’d brought it back at Christmas: some fancy handmade thing, with curves that felt perfect in his hand.
He tapped his knuckles against Olly’s door. He’d never knocked on it; had always accepted it as a sign to leave him the fuck alone.
There was a long pause. He shut his eyes until he heard footsteps.
Olly opened the door. His hair was dripping over the shoulder of an ancient gray sweatshirt. Olly only wore ratty sweatshirts with holes in the cuffs when he was down. Sure enough, his eyes looked punched-out and miserable.
“I brought you coffee,” Benji said, like the fucking idiot he was.
Olly took the cup. Didn’t drink.
“And, um.” He stopped. “Sorry if things got out of hand last night.”
Olly twitched one shoulder. “It’s fine.”
It was clearly not fine. “I was pretty fucked up.”
“Me too.”
“Still.” Benji tried not to fidget. “I, uh.” His default post-drunken-threesome script—a fist bump and a fuck yeah, bro—didn’t seem appropriate. Didn’t seem like it was in the same universe as appropriate.
