Drawn to You, page 6
“I’m ready for takeoff,” he said, saluting Brandon.
“It’s Jackson’s car. I don’t drive something that looks like it could make it to space,” he said, laughing along. He got Gabe’s joke. His roommates usually got his humor, but new people didn’t always. He was used to people looking at him strangely before forcing a laugh.
“Where are we going to lunch?”
“I figured we could go to the mall and pick. There’s a bunch of stuff in and around Southdale. That’s what Ryan recommended.”
“The gay hockey husband,” Gabe said, still in awe that Ryan and Jackson were real.
“You should come meet them. They’d like you.”
“Would they?”
“They’re welcoming. Make it a point to make people feel included.”
“They make hockey players feel included.”
“They care about the queer community in the Twin Cities. They’re starting up a nonprofit to support queer kids in sports.”
“Oh,” Gabe said. “That’s cool. I’m probably too used to getting burned by people that sometimes I assume the worst.”
“I get that,” Brandon agreed quietly.
They ended up at a Mediterranean restaurant, and like Gabe hoped, Brandon bought lunch. He was surprisingly easy to talk to, but Gabe rarely had trouble connecting with people. Brandon was sweet, and not what Gabe would have expected from a hockey player.
“I bet it’s nice to live with your friends.”
“It’s the best. I know a lot of folks want to live on their own, make all the decisions, get some quiet time, whatever. But I love knowing that Parker is across the hall if I need a haircut, or Duncan is in the kitchen if I need to call him from the store and check to see if my cream cheese expired yet, you know? Wyatt has saved my ass with whatever random charging cable I need more than once, since I lose them all the time.”
“It’s nice being in Jackson and Ryan’s house. It feels a little like that. Like there’s life in the space.”
“Don’t you have a roommate in Iowa?”
“Yeah, but Skylar is almost never home. He’s usually bothering our captain or hooking up.”
“So, you’re mostly alone down there?” Some people liked living alone. Brandon didn’t seem like one of them.
“Alone a lot.” He shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal, but he couldn’t meet Gabe’s eye.
“You’ll just have to keep getting called up, then.”
That got a smile out of him.
On the way out of the restaurant, Brandon touched his arm. “Do you have twenty more minutes? I need to grab something.”
“Yeah, sure, man. I don’t have class until six.”
“Thanks,” he said, leading them through the mall, getting turned around, and having to backtrack. He wouldn’t tell Gabe what he was looking for, which wasn’t helpful. And then the Apple Store was in front of them.
“Oooh, what are you getting?” Gabe asked, enticed by new toys, even if he couldn’t even afford to breathe in that store.
“Uh, an iPad,” he said, and Gabe pushed down his jealousy. He was used to being around people with more money than he had. That was the default. It wasn’t hard to have more money than Gabe. He scrounged up some feelings of happiness for his new friend as a greeter found them a sales associate to talk to. A woman with mermaid hair and a mandala tattoo on her forearm came to help them.
“Hi, I’m Steph. I heard you’re looking for iPads.”
“Uh, yeah,” Brandon said. He was nervous. Brandon was nervous a lot. Gabe wanted to hold his hand.
“What are you looking for? How will you use it?”
“Uh, Gabe is an artist,” Brandon said, his hand back on Gabe’s arm. Gabe didn’t understand what he meant.
“What do you need it for?” Gabe asked. Why did it matter that he was an artist?
“It’s not for me,” he said. “It’s for you. You said yours doesn’t work anymore. And the pencil is broken.”
Gabe wished they weren’t having this conversation in front of Steph. He felt like a trapdoor had opened under his feet. He didn’t know what to do.
“I’ll give you a few moments to chat about this,” she said, reading his mind. “I’ll be back in five.” She kept her smile locked in, even though Gabe was sure it was awkward.
“What do you mean?” Gabe asked. “You can’t buy me an iPad.”
“Okay. But I want to. I want you to have the tools you need for your art.” If Brandon was any less interested in his art, Gabe might have called bullshit.
“This is…a lot.”
“No one is forcing me to do this. I offered.”
Gabe weighed the options in his head. He could get a free iPad or keep having to borrow Mac’s every time he needed to use Procreate. He could use it for video calls too and stop bothering Parker. Or he could be proud and refuse.
Why though?
“Are there…strings attached?” Gabe asked, seriously considering taking Brandon up on the offer. You can’t ask the universe for a sugar daddy and then turn down the iPad a rich guy is trying to buy you.
“None. I just want to do something nice. And selfishly, I want more of your art in the world.”
Gabe took a deep breath. Across the iPad display table from them was a kid diligently drawing baby Yoda. Not only was it heart-wrenchingly cute, but Gabe saw himself in that kid. He’d been the kid who took every available opportunity to draw on anything he could reach.
Plus, he was an art student. This was basically an educational expense.
“Okay,” Gabe said, eyes flicking back to Brandon.
“Awesome,” he said, his excitement sounding like he was the one getting a new iPad.
They had to wait a couple more minutes for Steph to come back over to them, and she helped Gabe pick out an iPad Pro, an Apple Pencil, and Brandon made sure he had a regular case and the case that had a keyboard on it—because he was a student—and Gabe nearly threw up when Steph told them the total.
Holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck.
That was more than a few months’ rent. Should he have negotiated for rent instead? Gotten something he needed instead of something that was awesome but not mission critical? Like food?
Steph put it all in a white bag with a cute little logo on it and handed it over to Gabe. He took it, surprised by how heavy it was and feeling like he shouldn’t be allowed to hold this.
Brandon thanked Steph for all their help, and the two of them headed out of the store, back toward the parking lot.
“I am having a difficult time grasping reality right now,” Gabe said. The weight of the bag he held was the only indication to him that any of this was really happening.
“I’m excited to see what you draw,” Brandon said, smiling at him. Brandon was reserved but always so genuine. By now they had chatted a bit over text, and Gabe liked the way he talked about the people close to him. His sister and his parents. His teammates. Even his roommate, who he mostly complained about. He was still kind about it. I know he’s annoying because he’s impatient, but he is genuinely a great player who is going to make it. The way someone talked about the people they cared about said a lot about them, and what it said to Gabe was that Brandon wanted to get to know him better. Gabe felt the same way.
On the car ride home, he brainstormed what he could do for Brandon to say thank you, and by the time Brandon dropped him off at his front door, he’d decided.
NINE
BRANDON
Brandon would remember this game for the rest of his life. He was three games into his stint in the NHL, with not a lot to show for it so far. With a line shuffle, he found himself on the third line, battling for the puck against the boards in the offensive zone. A kid sitting rinkside pounded on the plexiglass between them, and the puck wiggled free. He caught a green jersey in the corner of his eye and tried tossing the puck toward whoever it was—Andy Davis, he realized when he stopped getting elbowed in the ribs—and in a split second, the goal horn blared. Every green jersey on the ice rushed Davo, and then the celebration converged on him.
“First point, Rando!” Davo shouted. First point. First point. His first point in an NHL game. An assist.
Davo scooped the puck up from the opposing team’s goalie and made Brandon go through the fly-by handshake line first. They lined up for puck drop at center ice, but lines changed quickly, and he was back on the bench, coach DeVries patting him on the shoulder.
“Good awareness out there, kid. That’s what I like to see.”
The equipment manager who had helped get him set up with all of his Northern Lights gear when he first got to Minnesota wrapped stick tape around the circumference of the puck and took a marker out of his pocket to write the details of Brandon’s point on it.
Brandon floated through the rest of the game. Things felt lighter, and his play reflected it. He didn’t rack up any more points, but while he’d felt murky about his first few games in the big league, this one finally felt good. Like he knew what he was doing.
His puck was waiting for him in his stall when they got back to the locker room, and he turned it over in his hands, already knowing he’d send it home to Ashley.
Like after every game, he checked his phone immediately to make sure no emergency medical events happened while he was on the ice. He was relieved that the family group text was filled only with congratulations. He would respond on the car ride home.
In the locker room, the Northern Lights had a hard hat that the guy who worked the hardest out on the ice that night received, and since Jackson got it the game before, he was the one who handed it over to Brandon. There was a stripe of rainbow stick tape going across the back of it, and suddenly the joy of the situation was tinged with having to acknowledge that he wasn’t out. And he wanted to be. Jackson had created this locker room full of acceptance, and he ruled it with an iron fist. Brandon wanted to be part of that. An active part.
He had a bubble of a crush on Jackson. Not a real crush. Just…fondness. A deep understanding of why Ryan was so obsessed with him. He made being gay look so…easy.
Jackson’s hand gripped his bicep as they left the locker room and met up with Ryan in the family room, and then they headed back to the car together. Ryan had dropped them off in the afternoon and come back for the game in the evening, so they were in Ryan’s black Porsche SUV. Sometimes the two of them acted so fucking normal he forgot that they were millionaires.
And sometimes he was in Ryan’s Porsche.
After the first couple of games, they’d learned that Brandon liked to have space to decompress after a game, and the two of them chatted about the game quietly while Brandon checked his texts. He responded in his family group chat and sent a photo of his puck before skimming his other notifications: A few people he played youth hockey with. The Iowa Stars group chat. And then Gabe.
Gabe
Congrats!! Holy shit that was awesome!
Gabe didn’t watch hockey. Brandon expected his family to have watched and for his friends to be paying attention, but he didn’t expect Gabe to know anything about hockey that Brandon didn’t tell him.
Brandon
Did you watch?
Gabe
Parker set up notifications on my phone for you, so when you score or get an assist, the NHL app tells me. I watched the clip.
Gabe set up notifications for him? The way thinking about Gabe made him feel was very different from the way he’d felt in the locker room, watching Jackson be confident and happy and out. Maybe that wasn’t a crush at all. Maybe it was envy. Jealousy. Hero worship.
“Hey, Rando, what are you smiling about?” Jackson asked him, smirking at him from the passenger seat. “Texting someone cute?”
Brandon didn’t make a conscious decision in that moment. He was high on his first point, and high on the desire to be like Jackson, and high on the way Gabe was making him feel.
“I’m texting my boyfriend.” As soon as he said it, he wanted to take it back. Couldn’t he have come out like a normal person? Where did my boyfriend come from?
“Brandon,” Jackson said, full-naming him, his voice so full of happiness and pride that Brandon wanted to tuck and roll out of the car that instant, right onto I-394. “Are you for real?”
“That’s so awesome, man. Invite him over for dinner,” Ryan said, catching Brandon’s eye in the rearview.
“Is it your friend you went to see right when you got called up?”
Brandon didn’t know how to walk it back.
“Yeah.”
“Oh my god, this is incredible. Get him tickets! He can sit with Ryan. Invite him over. How long have you been together?”
“It’s new. We met in class.”
“And love sparked in the air,” Jackson said, reaching for Ryan’s hand to give it a squeeze, his wedding band glinting in the glow of the dim streetlights.
“More like sparked on the Zoom call.”
“Modern love,” Ryan mused. “What’s his favorite meal? I’ll make it.”
“I’m not sure.”
“He’s welcome over any time. Usually we discourage call-ups from bringing hookups back to the house, but your boyfriend is welcome to stay the night. What’s his name?”
“Gabe.”
“Gabe and Brandon. Cute,” Jackson said, finally sitting in his seat properly, facing forward for a split second before he turned back around to look at Brandon. “We’re proud of you. Coming out is a big thing. Thanks for trusting us. I know that moment can be difficult.”
Brandon took a slow breath in, trying not to cry.
“So far the only people who know are Gabe and you two. I figured you were safe options.”
“So safe,” Jackson agreed. “And if you’re ready to tell anyone else, I’ll be right behind you. Even if you’re back in Iowa. Or if you’re on a different team years down the line. Call me up if you need advice or to get hyped up.”
Brandon cried finally, a couple little tears. He didn’t trust his voice not to crack, so he stayed quiet. But Jackson reached back and patted his shin, sensing that Brandon needed to be done with the conversation for the time being.
But all the talk of dinner was making him hungry.
Brandon
Did you eat dinner yet?
Gabe
Just getting home from night class. Might eat some ramen.
Brandon
Ramen has no nutritional value.
Gabe’s typing dots popped up, and Brandon swiped out of his messages and opened Venmo. He sent Gabe sixty bucks, along with a message.
Brandon
Grab some DoorDash or something. Something with protein. And a vegetable.
Gabe
Fuck, dude. Thank you. But you don’t have to do that.
Brandon
I only do what I want to do.
Brandon was happy, and he wanted to share the happiness. Buying Gabe a new iPad had been the best feeling outside of hockey that he’d had in years. After playing a few NHL games, he’d be receiving a bigger-than-normal check. He drove an old truck, had an old phone. He didn’t need to spend this money on himself. It was much more fun to spend it on Gabe.
He got group hugged by Jackson and Ryan and Lola when they made it back to the house, and he ate a snack before heading up to his room. His body was tired, but his brain wasn’t at all. He settled into bed with his laptop and got three more sentences on his story before another text came in. A photo message. Gabe sent a selfie of him holding a burger that looked insane.
Brandon
Thank you for taking my advice.
Gabe
Thank you for buying me dinner. As my patron of the arts, do you want to see what I’ve been working on lately?
Brandon
Yes, please
A few minutes passed, and Brandon didn’t take his eyes off his phone screen. He didn’t know if he’d be seeing Gabe’s homework or Gabe’s…other work.
When the images finally came, it was thoroughly extracurricular. His work was so erotic, even though it was motionless and silent. In the first one, the figure he’d drawn was on his back, easing a dildo into himself. He had his other hand wrapped around his hard cock. It was drawn like Brandon was watching from the ceiling.
Fuck.
The second drawing had one man sitting in the V of another man’s legs, getting jerked off, all of the pleasure in the situation clear on both of their faces.
Aside from making him horny, they were beautiful. The point of a toe, the dusting of hair across a chest, the soft indents where fingertips pressed into skin.
Brandon
That iPad was worth every penny. How are you so good at this?
Gabe
I heard once that if you want to become good at an art form, you should become some kind of pervert, haha.
Brandon
Thank god for your particular perversions, then
Gabe
This burger is really fucking good. I used to always get one on payday, but recently even payday hasn’t been a good enough excuse. So thank you.
Can I change the art subject away from anything sexy and send you something else I’ve been working on?
