Season's Change, page 31
Olly swallowed. “I’m still not going to be out. I can’t. A few people in the front office know, and Coach O knows, but that’s it. So don’t...tell people.”
Poiro shook his head. “As if I’d do that, you asshole. But I think if you do want to tell a few people—they’re gonna have your back. No matter what’s going on with you and Bowie.”
That was a conversation for another day. Olly shook his head, let Poiro catch him up on Montreal, talk around the corners of Beth’s recent visit. Didn’t even chirp him for the smug, pleased little smile that he couldn’t keep off his face.
So about as far away from how things had gone with Crowder as possible. Olly had known, in his brain, that it would be different: he wasn’t giving Olly a black eye from all the way in a different time zone, to start with. But it was one thing to know that and another to live it.
That had been the easy one, though.
Chapter Forty-Six
Benji was in the gym with Andre, trading sets on the squat rack. He’d woken up tired and the only thing he was thinking about was how close he was to being done. Instead of sweating it out, every rep had ground the exhaustion in more deeply.
He didn’t want to say it was because of Olly—every goddamned thing in his life wasn’t about Olly abandoning him—but blaming it on FaceTiming with Krista the night before, for the first time since their blowup, wasn’t totally accurate, either. She’d kept it positive, kept it light. Kept it fake as hell, if Benji was being totally honest. But she hadn’t pushed him about anything, and if he hadn’t filled her in on anything deeper than how his first sessions back on the ice were going—well. However much money she was making on Instagram, there were dark circles around her eyes, visible through her perfectly applied makeup.
Benji had sat on the couch in the basement until the haze of anger faded into dull, numbed-out acceptance that there wasn’t a single thing he could do other than keep showing up in whatever way she’d let him, in whatever way he felt like he could give her. She’d apologized for the way she’d been acting, though, and that was maybe a start.
It was still more than enough to explain his bad mood. Olly had nothing to do with it.
Anyway. He could talk about it with Alise or find another therapist. Right now, he was in the gym, and he had one more set of squats before it was time to stretch.
Dre racked the bar and stepped out from under it, and Benji made the mistake of looking at his phone.
It wasn’t like everything went silent: it was loud, music over the speakers and the clang of weights, their trainer coming over to check on them. But the only thing that Benji could think about was the name on his lock screen, and a text that read, hey, can we talk?
Benji blew out a breath. Put his phone back in his pocket and finished his set.
* * *
He didn’t mention the text to Andre, or Darcy, or Alise, or Davo when they met up for dinner that night. He hadn’t answered it. He hadn’t thought about anything else, though, when there were so many things that it could mean. Things with Olly had never been clear, he was realizing: what they were doing with each other, what they meant to each other.
If it had meant anything at all.
Benji just hadn’t known. He was only twenty-one. He’d never been in love with someone before. It hadn’t occurred to him until Alise had used the L-word, and it had crashed into Benji’s brain like goddamned Brody Kellerman in Game 5; and then he’d gone back over his relationships with his buddies, wondering if that was why he’d never dated any of the large number of attractive women who’d thrown themselves at him since he became a stud athlete.
But nah. In retrospect he could see how he’d wanted to bone some dudes—Derrick from the first line in college; the road roomie who’d given him the blowies, who in retrospect had been at least as much of a significant other as his quasi-ex-girlfriend from the Q—but he’d never wanted to help them, like, manage their difficult fathers.
And women were still hot. For example, the curvy blonde two tables over. Davo saw him looking, engineered a not-that-casual look over his shoulder.
“Buddy,” Davo said. “You should talk to her.”
Maybe Benji even would have, if it weren’t for the text message sitting on his phone.
Because he could want to fuck her, even if he’d also been hooking up with a dude on the regular for the last five months. Benji had watched plenty of porn with bi chicks, and had recently spent some quality time on Google, so he was not unaware that sexuality could be a spectrum or whatever.
But here he was. Not wanting to wheel a girl who was exactly his type, because it turned out the only person who he was interested in fucking was fishing on some godforsaken mosquito-infested Minnesotan lake.
And he wanted to talk.
“What would you say,” he asked, “if someone you’d been hooking up with, and you’d like, maybe caught some feelings for, but it got kind of messy—said that they wanted to talk.”
“You caught a feeling?” Davo looked astonished.
Benji didn’t know how he felt about that. “Dude, I have feelings.”
“Yeah, but not about puck bunnies.”
“It’s not about a puck bunny.”
“So a future wifey situation.”
People had called Olly his wife enough times that Benji nodded. It wasn’t that he thought Davo wouldn’t be supportive, but he wasn’t doing the whole oh by the way I apparently bone dudes thing unless he had a reason. Right now, all he had was an extremely vague text message.
“I dunno,” Davo said, unhelpfully. “Was it, like, a positive text? Or were you getting bad vibes?”
“It said, literally, ‘hey, can we talk?’”
“Ruthless.” He shook his head. “Yeah, bro. I have no idea.”
“Real fucking helpful.”
“Is she in DC?”
“We met there,” Benji hedged.
“It’s not that far,” Davo said. “Maybe just go there? Stuff’s shitty over text.” And then he went off about his ex. Benji didn’t know why he ever thought Davo would have something helpful to tell him about relationships.
Fortunately, Alise did. She even agreed that texts were not a great way to work things out. Benji awarded Davo an unexpected mental point and retreated to the basement to plot his next move. And also, stare at his text thread with Olly. The last text he’d gotten before hey, can we talk? was when Olly had boarded his flight in Toronto, on the way to the wedding.
That was the kind of thing you’d do if you were in a relationship, right? You’d think about the other person. Even if it was something as mundane as getting on an airplane, where it was statistically unlikely you’d die in a fiery crash but there was always that slim little chance; and you’d want one of the last things that you did to be telling your person that you were thinking about them, that you were moving one step closer to being with them.
Probably that was bullshit. Benji didn’t know how relationships worked.
Even if they weren’t going to be in one, though—and he was pretty sure they weren’t, even if he couldn’t figure out how he felt about that; whether it was disappointment or anger or, like, gratefulness, because Benji didn’t have the mental space to deal with ongoing emotional drama—Olly wasn’t wrong. They did need to talk. About where they were going to be living, because Benji wasn’t self-destructive enough to think that he could go back to living in the 505 like nothing had changed. About how they didn’t fuck up the locker room with whatever dynamic they did or didn’t bring back to DC.
He picked up his phone, and opened his contacts list, and called Olly.
Olly was a little out of breath when he answered, like he’d scrambled to get to the phone. “Hey,” he said, in his familiar voice.
“Hey,” Benji said, wondering if this was what it felt like to be dying. He didn’t get scared of much these days, but he was scared of this.
“So...” Olly trailed off. Benji heard voices in the background, the sound of a door shutting, and then it was quiet. “I thought about doing something really stupid, like flying to Pennsylvania.”
Benji didn’t know what to say. Olly wouldn’t fly all the way to Pennsylvania to tell him some new variation on I can’t do this, would he?
“I wanted to say sorry, I guess,” he continued. “I know I freaked out. Again. You must be pretty fucking sick of dealing with that.”
“I don’t like to see you hurting.”
“I really was,” Olly said quietly. “But I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I shouldn’t have left the way I did, especially with everything you’ve told me about your family. I’ve been working hard, though. On the mental stuff. And I think I’m doing better. I’m on some meds, and I can’t believe this but I’m getting one of those fucking emotional support dogs, if the team clears it.”
“That’s great, dude.”
There was another long pause. “At the wedding,” Olly said, “you said Poiro knew. About us.”
“Yeah.”
“I talked to him. I told him—I told him the truth, which is that I’m...” Benji heard him swallow. “Gay.”
Benji laughed; he couldn’t help it. “Ya think, bud?”
“You’re not, though.”
“No. I’m bi, I guess. But—” It was his turn to stop. He didn’t know if any conversation in his life had ever been this hard, not even with his mom, the last time he’d ever spoken to her, when he’d known it would be the last time and she hadn’t. “What I wanted to tell you, that night, was that I—I don’t know. I’ve never tried to do this before.”
“Do what?” Olly asked, voice quiet.
“I care about you, you asshole.”
“I know.”
“Like—really care,” Benji added.
There was a long pause. “Even after I bailed on you in Canada—”
“Always, you idiot.” He rubbed at his forehead. “I mean, probably, I guess. As long as you don’t leave me again.”
“Probably. You guess.” Olly was laughing. Benji wanted to listen to him laugh forever, watch it take over his face, wrinkle the corners of his pretty blue eyes. “Are you serious? You know I’m not talking about something, like...casual.”
“For sure, bud.”
“Bud.” Olly was gasping. “Really? You’re going to call me bud right now?”
“What the hell else should I call you? Sweetheart? Honey?”
“God, no.”
“Wifey?”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I don’t think you know what I would or wouldn’t do.” He was smiling; he hoped Olly could hear it in his voice, all the way up in Minnesota. There was something unfamiliar in his chest, like racing down fresh, clean ice on newly sharpened skates.
“When are you going back to DC?” Olly asked.
“Dunno. When are you?”
“I—” He paused. “I can leave whenever. Not for the whole rest of the summer, but...”
Benji was grinning like a fool. “Tomorrow?”
There was a pause. Benji could almost see the thoughtful wrinkle between Olly’s eyebrows, the gears turning in his stupidly impressive brain while he thought about logistics. “Yeah, okay. But it’ll be late.”
“I’ll wait all night,” Benji said. That was probably not, like, the most chill thing to say, but it was also true.
* * *
In the morning, Olly texted him—way too fucking early, Benji didn’t even want to know what the clock was reading in Central time—that he was driving to the airport. At the breakfast table, Benji asked Marc and Andre if they could help him buy a car.
“You want to buy a car,” Dre said, eyebrows doing something that was, frankly, offensive. “Bowie. You know they cost money.”
“I spend money on shit.”
“Yeah, but like, you want to spend money on a car.”
“Is there another way to get one?” Maybe there was more professional-athlete wizardry he didn’t know about.
“You love your busted truck.”
“I’m not getting rid of the truck. I’m just driving back to DC and I honestly don’t know if the truck will make it.”
“We’d be happy to help,” Marc said, shooting Dre a shut-it look.
So Benji bought his first car. Well, a truck. It wasn’t like, a fancy make or anything, not on the NAHA scale—but he liked the way it handled and it had plenty of legroom, plus enough space in the back for two people’s hockey gear. And it could pull a boat.
Dre said he was disgusted by Benji’s lack of vision; Marc said it was a sensible choice. “You can park the old truck here as long as you want,” he added.
* * *
As promised, Olly wasn’t getting into DC until late, so Benji got back to the 505 with time to kill. He cranked up the AC to get the air circulating; he went to Whole Foods; he put clean sheets on his bed. Tucked in the corners and thought about what Olly would look like spread on top of them.
It was strange to be acknowledging things. Exciting. Scary, kind of.
Like, he didn’t want to fuck things up. He didn’t want to assume anything. But they were probably having sex, right?
Benji felt a hum of anticipation under his skin. Time was passing so slowly. It was too hot to go outside, and he couldn’t get his mind to settle on Netflix or yoga or anything other than a loop of Olly-Olly-Olly. In a few hours, he’d be here: sitting on his end of the couch, beating Benji at Pro Hockey, or maybe they’d be in bed. He didn’t know. He didn’t think Olly would either, since as far as Benji knew, neither of them had been in a relationship before.
Unless you counted—well, everything that they’d been doing since the beginning of the season. Only with fewer shitty parts and more blow jobs.
He wasn’t just in it for the blow jobs, though. Benji could get a blow job from lots of people, especially now that he had opened his third eye to some additional genders. But he only wanted to get blow jobs from Olly, because they were extremely good blow jobs, and also, because the lady from his high school health class had been right when she said sex was better when you attached feelings to it.
Benji hadn’t known. Benji had never found someone he wanted to have sex-with-feelings with before.
So he should probably do his best not to fuck it up. Because Benji had always known to hang on to good things, and Olly was complicated and sharp-edged and Jesus, it wasn’t like Benji thought any part of it was going to be easy; but aside from hockey, Olly was the best thing he’d found in his entire life. Maybe Benji didn’t know how to be a boyfriend, exactly, or whatever Olly was going to require long-term; maybe he hadn’t grown up with a, like, stable parental relationship to learn from...but he was a fast learner when it mattered.
He could do it.
They could do it.
* * *
Olly’s flight was arriving at Reagan, which was a lot closer than Dulles. Benji parked his shiny new truck in the garage; pulled his old Frozen Four snapback low over his eyes; and headed into the terminal.
He had that flying-down-the-ice feeling again. It crescendoed when he saw Olly’s familiar shoulders walking out of the arrivals corridor. He was wearing an anonymizing hat, with his hair curling out from underneath it, and he looked so good, scanning the waiting area until he saw Benji and his face fell into the easy, open smile that Benji wanted to see every minute of every day for the rest of his life.
Benji held up his hand for a fist bump. He was smiling, too. “Want to go home?”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Olly didn’t know how to act when they got back to the 505. Everything in the airport, in the truck—which was unbelievable, Benji looking bashful when he hit the unlock button, mumbling about installing a tow hitch—and in the hallway outside their front door. It felt bright-edged and unreal, like one wrong move and it was going to pop.
But here they were, Benji unlocking the door and walking inside, the same way Olly had seen him do a thousand times before; Olly following, smelling like airplanes, an overnight bag weighing down his shoulder.
“Do you want dinner?” Benji asked. He tossed his keys onto the counter. Olly watched the muscles in his back move under his T-shirt.
“Okay.”
He turned around. “Or do you want to—”
“Yeah.” Olly would agree to anything Benji wanted to do.
Benji grinned down at him, backed him up against the door. Olly’s bag dropped to the floor with a thump. “You don’t know what I was going to say.”
“I had a guess.”
“Was it this?” And then they were kissing, Olly’s arms going around his neck. He hadn’t forgotten how big Benji was, but there was remembering and then there was feeling it: the spread of his shoulders, how he got a hand under Olly’s ass and lifted him up so they were eye to eye, like he weighed nothing at all.
“I missed you,” Olly said into his mouth.
Benji pulled back far enough that Olly could see him properly: his eyelashes, the bump in his nose. His eyes looked huge and green. “Then don’t leave me again.”
“I won’t.” Olly slipped a hand down from the back of Benji’s neck, letting it tiptoe across his collarbone. “Pinky promise?”
