Page 56 of Poetry On Ice
It likes it so much that the room around me swims, and when he burrows his knee between mine, I not only let him, but I squeeze his leg gently under the table as a peace offering.
“D’you think they’d mind?” I ask.
“My family? Nah, no way. They’re not like that at all. They’re woke as fuck. They didn’t raise us with set expectations about our sexual orientation at all. Quite the opposite. They were so open-minded aboutit that when Beth was thirteen, she felt the need to come out to them as straight.” He chuckles softly. “It was kind of the best because they took it so seriously. We were all sitting in the living room, upright and formal, and my mom said, ‘Well, sweetie, I hope you know that we love and support you no matter what. The only thing that matters to us is that the person you date is kind and treats you well. Their gender is neither here nor there.’ So, yeah, they’d never be upset about me being with a guy. Knowing them, they’d probably just treat it as a reason to add some flair to what they already do to celebrate Pride each year.”
I’m stunned into silence. I’ve never heard of a straight person coming out to their family. I didn’t know it was a thing.
I didn’t know I wanted it to be a thing, but from the way my heart’s beating right now, I do. I really do.
“What about your family? Do they know about you?”
“Yeah, they know. I told them I was gay when I was sixteen.”
“Were they okay with it?”
“Yeah, honestly, I’m not sure how much they cared. My mom said she had a feeling I was. It was kind of annoying, to be honest. It was probably dumb, but at the time, it felt like she was stealing my thunder. I wasnervous to tell them, and I was like, just let me have my moment to talk about this without minimizing it, you know?”
I’ve said more than I intended to, so I take a sip of my hot chocolate and hope like hell he’ll change the subject.
No luck there.
“And your dad?”
“Oh, him. He was fine. He just said, ‘Oh.’” McGuire is listening to me in a way that makes me feel unsteady. Wobbly inside. Loose from my lungs, up my throat, and all the way up to my tongue. “He came to my room later that night and said, ‘It’s fine to be gay, Anthony, just don’t tell anyone.’”
McGuire’s head jerks back in shock and he floods me with a stream of sympathy. A river. An ocean of it.
I fucking hate it.
“It’s not like that. They aren’t homophobic. Well, they aren’t majorly homophobic. They care about what people think, that’s all. They care about me too, I guess, or at least, they care a fuck-load about my career. My dad mainly, but my mom does too. They’ve never wanted anything to get in the way of me going pro.”
“Is that why you’ve never come out? Because of your career? Do you really think it would make a big difference if people knew you were gay?”
Oh, that’s priceless. “Yeah, baby bi boy, I really do. How many out and proud gay men do you see in the NHL?”
He twists his mouth to one side and looks off into the distance. “Umm,” he says when he finally lands on the information he’s looking for. “There was that defense player for the Rockies a few years back…”
“Noah Adams? Yeah, I remember him. Nice kid. Most people don’t remember him, though, ’cause guess what—he went nowhere fast. Got signed, hardly saw any ice time, and retired early.”
“I didn’t know that,” he says quietly.
“That’s the thing. It’s not a big deal. All you have to do as a queer player in the league is understand that you don’t talk about it. It is what it is, and I don’t care. I’m fine with the way things are. The last thing I need is people up in my business anyway.”
“Is that why you don’t think you’re a relationship guy? Because you’re in the closet?”
“No.”Yes. “I’m not a relationship guy becauseI’mnot a relationship guy. Told you. I don’t catch feelings, and I only do casual. That’s how I roll.”
He gives me a devilish grin and scoots around to my side of the booth. He sits so close to me that we’re almost touching and the heat of his body burns the side of myface like I’m sitting too close to a furnace. “That’s how youusedto roll.”
“Stop it!” I hiss, panicked by his sudden proximity. He spreads his legs so his thigh presses against mine. My hiss fizzles and fades, doing a one-eighty, changing from something urgent and breathy into something that gurgles out of me and makes my shoulders shake as it leaves me. “Stop.” He ignores me and moves closer, grinning like a fucking Cheshire cat. “Sta-ah-p!” It comes out in three distinct syllables, each sounding a little more unhinged than the last. He puts a hand under the table and gropes my inner thigh. I bat him away. It does nothing to deter him. He goes in for a jab on my side, hitting me right where I’m ticklish. I’m left slapping at his hand, wriggling wildly to escape his grip. “What’s wrong with you?” I giggle like a schoolgirl. Exactly like a schoolgirl. “You’resounserious, Robbie.”
I say his name like Alessia did. Like that, but worse. I draw it out longer than she did, keeping it in my mouth and tasting it for as long as possible.
He doesn’t miss it.
He stops moving.
“That’s the first time in a really long time you’ve said my name, Ant.” One of his hands is stretched out on the table, curling loosely around his hot chocolate, and the other rests in his lap. His fingers are relaxed. His palm is faced up and open. It’s such a sudden shift from the ridiculousness of the hand slapping and giggling that it makes me stop moving too. Stop laughing. Stop breathing. For all I know, it makes the whole fucking world stop turning. “Say it again,” he says.