Chapter 17
IZZY
When I reach the lobby of the hotel, I pull the hat lower on my head to try and head off any of the guys at the bar recognizing me.
In my rush to get to my friend for support, I forgot that the entire team that my team just crushed a few hours ago is staying in this hotel.
My anxiety ratchets up a few more notches when Triton Jeffries makes a crude joke loud enough for the people at the concierge desk to scowl in his direction while I’m getting the extra key card that Eric set up for me.
Luck is finally on my side when I see that the asshole is engrossed with a couple of puck bunnies that have already made their rounds through the single men on the Axes this season.
I’ve been fortunate enough to avoid them so far since I don’t drink and I do the fan meet and greets with the families.
The wait for the elevator is probably the most stress I’ve felt in years.
All I need is for one of those asshats to recognize me, and my career would be over with the resultant brawl they would likely start.
When the doors finally close and the lift starts to rise, I finally start to feel like I can breathe.
When I exit the elevator, I hold my phone at an angle where it can read the signs to me without it being obvious to the casual onlooker.
Between the ear buds and the fact that society is usually so engrossed in their phones, hardly anyone pays attention to me when I’m using the assistive app in public anymore – not like when I was a teenager and had to struggle to read everything.
Being a loud and friendly goof helped to mask my shame, but it never went away.
Without fail, as soon as my friends found out that I can’t read words or numbers easily, I went from being buddy to bullied.
Add in being gay, and I had a bit of a rough time until I found some true friends in Juniors and in college.
“Stop staring at the door and get in here,” Jones calls from inside the room while I’m still debating if this is a good idea. “Just remember if you chicken out, you gotta go past the drunk pussy hunters again.”
In my rush to get out of the hallway, I practically fall on my face tripping over Eric’s shoes that he left haphazardly just inside the door. Bracing against the wall, I look up to level him with a glare. His response? A fucking shrug and a swig from his bottle of beer.
Dropping my backpack against the wall, I remove my shoes and line them up – along with the jackass’s shoes – next the bag and out of the way of the path someone would have to walk to the door.
“It seriously took only a month for you to turn back into a total slob?”
He chuckles and flops onto the couch to put his feet up on the small coffee table before waving me over to the queen size bed set up across from him.
Scowling, I gingerly sit down on the edge.
After some of the accommodations I’ve experienced so far this season, I don’t trust the rooms that the teams set up.
In my limited experience, and from stories some of the veterans down in Baltimore told, it’s luck of the draw for who gets the busted bed, faulty shower, or mystery stains in the carpet.
So far, the Pickaxes have been decent with the rooms, but the Bruisers put us up in some interesting places.
“How the hell did you manage a room to yourself?” I ask when I’m certain I’m not about to need a trip to the hospital for a tetanus shot from a busted spring.
“I paid to upgrade and get away from the dipshit drunks myself. Now tell me why you were so upset that you needed to run away to my hotel room when by all plans you are supposed to be in a plane over the Rocky Mountains.”
I flop onto my back and put my right forearm over my eyes. I finally stopped feeling like shit about it, and now he wants to rip the band aid right off again.
“You remember how the team was putting me up with one of the staff members until I can find a place, right? Well, instead of a wrinkly old man like what we had in Baltimore, the equipment manager here in Harrisburg is built like a damn Greek god.”
Eric chuckles and tosses me a bottle of beer when I lift my head to glare at him.
“I’m well aware of how those whose sexual compass points true-dick view Sam Talbot,” he says while I sit up and twist the top off the bottle.
“I’ve been waiting for the call from you bemoaning his overwhelmingly hetero-status, but it never came.
I figured he wasn’t your type, but I’m guessing that’s not the situation here. ”
I scoff in his direction before taking a swig of the alcohol.
I don’t particularly like drinking, but a few beers with one of my few friends is nice every once in a while – especially when I have to pour my heart out.
Dad always warned me that drunk people speak the truth, so I’m sure the opposite is true as well.
Speaking the truth makes people want to drink.
“Not so hetero considering I saw my ultimate fantasy on his knees sucking Mr. Talbot off.”
He drops his feet to the floor and leans forward with interest, so I tell him about my issues at the airport, coming home to hearing sounds in the kitchen, and ultimately what I witnessed before things went to shit.
“If it had been anyone but Mr. Kinsey, I think I wouldn’t have run like that.”
I sit the empty bottle on the nightstand while Eric gets up to grab two more bottles from the mini-fridge. When he hands one to me, I notice it’s barely less than room temperature – found the issue with this room, then.
“But if it wasn’t your Mr. Kinsey, would you have even stayed to watch?”
The question catches me off guard and I freeze with the bottle to my lips.
Would I? At the club back in Wrenshaw, I enjoyed the shows people put on, but I never felt such all consuming arousal like I did today.
Even with guys I was involved with doing a scene, I was never in danger of coming untouched.
“I don’t think I would have done more than peek if it was anyone else with Mr. Talbot.
In fact, I thought he had brought a woman home and I was curious about her because he never leaves the house except to go to work.
He’s always on his phone when he thinks I’m not around, so I always assumed he was on the hookup apps. ”
Eric lets out a full-on belly laugh before plopping next to me on the bed.
“Why do you call him Mr. Talbot?” he asks with a poke to my cheek. “Sam Talbot is closer to your age than mine, and you never had a problem calling me by my first name. And don’t feed me some bullshit that it’s because he’s staff cuz you never had an issue calling the old man Swifty.”
I take a heavy swallow of beer before admitting out loud what I’ve only ever told myself in my head.
“Because if I call him Sam it’s going to hurt that much worse when he rejects me.”
Not that it helped at all earlier tonight. He played with me in a way that I never imagined possible, but then I ruined it. It doesn’t matter what I call him now.
“I think you might be in for a surprise if you would just open yourself up to the possibility that not everyone is going to be an asshole about your disabilities, Kid. From everything Bray has told me about the guy, Sam Talbot is more likely to shank a granny than he is to belittle someone for something they can’t control. ”
“My dyslexia hadn’t crossed my mind yet tonight, so thanks for that, Asshole.”
Eric throws his arm around my shoulder and pulls me close for a side hug.
“That’s not your only disability and you know it,” he says softly.
“The people who matter aren’t going to give a shit that you use an app so that it doesn’t take you an hour to do tasks that take them five minutes.
They aren’t going to care that you need the cereal boxes and canned goods in rainbow colored order from right to left or else you have to run an extra mile to burn off the anxiety until the next time you think about it.
“They won’t make life harder for you, Isaiah.”
Burying my face in his shoulder, I let the tears fall again.
I shouldn’t have anything left in me at this point, but try telling that to my dumb brain and its inability to process emotions correctly.
Okay, so maybe my brain isn’t screwed up when it comes to emotions, but I still don’t want to be crying right now.
Through it all, Eric holds me like I imagine a big brother would.
Growing up as an only child of moderately well-off parents was a lonely existence, so I revel in the close connections when I find them.
It takes about a half an hour for me to settle down again, but when Eric opens his mouth, all I can do is laugh.
“Now that we’ve maybe solved the Sam Talbot issue, what’s the sitch on this Mr. Kinsey? Is he the sexy silver fox you told me stars in all of your fantasies?”
For the next hour, I tell him all about the man who stole the heart of a sixteen year old kid without ever knowing and how much the thought of his approval or disapproval has shaped my actions since leaving Juniors.
“And then he saw me standing there, having just creamed my pants from watching him blow my landlord.”
Eric has tears in his eyes by the time he’s finished laughing.
At the time, I was mortified by the situation.
But he’s right to laugh. It’s a fucking awkward and hilarious situation happening to someone else.
Unfortunately, it happened to me and now I have to figure out what the fuck to do about it.
“Okay, Little Prince,” he gasps out while attempting to stop the laughter. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Tonight, you’re crashing here. You get the pull out couch cuz I’m older and you owe me.”
I smack him on the shoulder and he rolls off the edge of the bed to grab a couple of bottles of water from the mini-fridge.
“Tomorrow, we’ll get your two misters over here to talk and we’ll see what happens. If things are sorted out, you go back home with Sam. If things aren’t, you can come with me down to Baltimore to meet up with the guys and waste the holiday partying at the Inner Harbor.”
The water is colder than the beer was, but I know I’ll regret not drinking it when I wake up with a headache from dehydration tomorrow.
I reluctantly nod at my friend before heading into the bathroom to get changed for bed.
When I come out, Eric is snoring on the pullout with the covers turned down on the bed for me.
I don’t deserve to have a friend like him.