5. Jack
5
JACK
T he next morning, I wake up with a really bad hangover. Truly horrendous. Like someone is bashing a sack of potatoes against my skull.
I can handle regular hangovers. I’m used to those. Nothing that two Advil and some Pedialyte can’t fix.
This is different. This is copious amounts of alcohol mixed with frustration, confusion, and shame.
What the fuck happened last night?
I can’t stop thinking about it. Griffin, ever so tenderly, pushed my head back, away from his crotch . It was supposed to be the other way around. Hot dick was supposed to be filling my mouth, but instead, cold air hit my face.
When a guy is on his knees blowing you, it’s hot. When a guy is on his knees and there’s no dick in his mouth, it’s not hot. He looks like a beggar. A beggar is not hot. Does he know how many guys would be begging me for sex? Being a professional hockey player turned my dick into a magnet.
That wasn’t even the weirdest part about last night.
Talking to Griffin gave me this uncomfortable flutter in my stomach like the sinking sensation when I drive over a hill just a little too fast. It was a good sinking, if that’s even possible.
It’s not like I wanted a connection with him, but it kind of seemed like we had one. And it scared me shitless. The faster we could get to hooking up, the faster all that connection and fluttering and sinking could go away. Until he pushed my head back. The record scratch to end all record scratches.
Is this the first time in recorded history a man has refused a blow job?
Last night felt like a heart-to-heart when it should’ve been a dick-to-ass.
Oh, and the shameful part of my epic hangover? That was when I got home and cranked it to Griffin to help me fall asleep. Masturbating to a guy who rejected me is a new low.
A knock at the door jolts me from my Griffin postmortem.
I sit up on my pullout couch, and my head is clocked with a fresh sack of potatoes. The big, dense ones from Idaho. I shove my hand in the gap between the bed and the couch searching for my phone.
“Yo!” Fuentes yells from the other side of the door. “I gotta take a leak.”
“Shit,” I mutter. I reach my arm down farther, fingers crawling the dirty floor until they come upon the sleek frame of my phone. “Shit,” I mutter again when I see the time displayed on the home screen.
“You need a ride to work or not?” Fuentes bangs again.
“Coming!” I yell.
I roll myself off the couch, holding onto the window to keep from falling. Standing is a new sensation that activates a new level of hangover pain in my head. I blink a few times to ease the agony. Fortunately, it's only a few steps from the edge of the pullout to the door. One of the few benefits of living in a studio apartment.
“Hey,” I say when I open the door, but Fuentes is already speeding past me into the bathroom.
“Gotta take a leak,” he says.
I stumble into my kitchen area, a nook too small to be considered a room, which is fine since I don’t cook. I rinse out my mouth with water then down two tablets of Advil from the bottle in the side drawer. Just knowing they’re in my system helps to calm the pounding in my head. Though the sinking sensation in my stomach has not abated.
What’s Griffin’s morning routine with his daughters? Probably something cute where they all sing Frozen songs as they get dressed. He probably lets the girls push down the toaster button, too.
Fuck. Griffin, get out of my head. This is why I stick to fucking my contemporaries. Nothing a twentysomething guy does could be considered cute.
“Aahhhh.” Fuentes leans against the bathroom doorway, the blissful feeling of an empty bladder lighting his face. “That was great.”
Jay Fuentes has the big smile and perfectly round brown eyes that makes people think he’s the wholesome boy next door, but they’ve never heard his locker room talk.
“Thanks for the commentary. Now move. I have to get ready.”
“Did I wake you up?” he asks as I rush past him to the bathroom. “Don’t you have work in fifteen minutes?”
“Yeah. It’s fine.”
“You’re going to stroll in late? Your dad isn’t going to like that.”
“What choice do I have?” I strip off my clothes and jump in the shower. The shock of bitingly cold water sends new crackles of pain across of skin, but it also wakes me the fuck up.
Fuentes sits on the toilet. We’ve showered and gotten dressed in front of each other in locker rooms for years, so there’s no weirdness.
“I have coffee and croissants in the car.”
The bathroom is so tiny he could rest his legs on the sink. A stray elbow in any direction could put a hole in the wall.
“Thanks.” My stomach growls at the mention of caffeine and sugar.
“When is your car going to get fixed?”
“It’s in the shop.” I wait for the water to warm up, but it’s taking its sweet time.
“It’s in your parking space downstairs.”
I curse to myself, grateful he can’t see my face through the curtain.
“Once I get my next paycheck, I’ll be able to take it to the mechanic. And did you know this water takes fucking forever to warm up? You need to get a plumber in here.”
“I put in a new water heater two years ago. It’s a cold morning. The other tenants are probably showering, too.” Without having to stand up, he flicks on the bathroom exhaust fan. “You need to run this fan whenever you shower so you don’t get mold.”
He pulls back the shower curtain to examine the ceiling and walls. Each of his apartments is like his child, and as a landlord, he can be a full-on helicopter parent at times. I put up with it since he cut me a very fair deal on rent here.
For as long as I’ve known him, Fuentes was adamant about not having to wear a tie as an adult. After graduating from high school, while I went pro, he lived at home and ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to save up a down payment on a dilapidated house. He fixed it up and rented out the other bedrooms, then used that money to buy another house to rent out, then another, and then this apartment building. He has a mini empire in the Hudson Valley region. And I have yet to ever see him in a tie.
Fuentes holds his hand under the shower. “It’s warming up.”
The water goes from freezing cold to scorching hot in a second. I hop away from the spray, turning the dial to the center quickly without burning off my skin. Finally, the water finds a middle ground. It’s the first moment of peace since I’ve woken up.
“Did you have a wilder night than usual?” Fuentes rests his feet on the sink. “You never oversleep when you’re hungover.”
Fuentes is one of my oldest friends. He was one of the first people I came out to. If I can’t share this with him, then who can I?
“Have you ever met a guy—or a girl in your case—and you’re flirting, and things are going well, and they leave the bar with you, and they go with you to a rooftop, and…then they turn you down?” I scrub shampoo through my hair as I try to make sense of where the night derailed.
“They did all that and then they said no?” Fuentes gives me a double take.
“They pushed my head away from their crotch, which was very visibly tented with a boner.”
“Shit. Are you serious?”
“Oh, and then they said, ‘I appreciate it.’”
“That’s…huh. Never had a girl say that to me.”
My hands scrawl through my hair, water mixing with the foamy shampoo as anger rises inside me. “I’m all about consent. He said no, I backed off. But we were having a good night. Everything was going great. I took him to my rooftop.”
“Which rooftop?”
“The one for the building at the end of Maple.”
“That’s my rooftop,” he interjects. “I better not find any used condoms or else I’m evicting you.”
“You won’t. He’s the only guy I’ve brought up there.”
“Oh.” Fuentes’s voice has a very curious tone to it. “Jack’s in love.”
“I’m not in love. Fuck off. It was a nice night out. I wanted to seal the deal.”
“You’ve sealed the deal with plenty of guys. You never brought any of them to the special rooftop.”
“It’s not special.”
“That’s what you called it. I’m just using your words. You said it was your favorite place to think, that the view always cheered you up.”
I shut off the shower, my jaw tight. I can’t believe I took Griffin to my rooftop where he made me feel feelings then rejected me. “Hand me a towel.”
Fuentes grabs the one hanging off the back of the door and tosses it my way.
“Sounds like you’re into him,” he says.
“Well, he wasn’t into me.”
“And there were no signs that maybe he didn’t want to hook up? Maybe you missed them?”
“I wouldn’t have missed a red flag like that. He was the one who held my hand. He kissed me . On my special rooftop.” I rub myself dry. I toss Fuentes my towel. He hangs it back up while I give myself a rushed toothbrushing.
“Damn, that’s cold.” Fuentes shakes his head. “Fuck him, right?”
“Right. Why do I keep forcing myself to learn this lesson? People can turn on a dime. They care about you until they don’t.” I wash out my mouth and storm into the main room. I grab clothes from the overstuffed dresser that barely fits along the wall. It’s one of the few remaining items from my old, pro-athlete life, and I didn’t want to part with it.
Fuck Griffin. He cracked open a door within me that had been nailed shut years ago. I was off my game and nearly let him in. He got me talking about things that I never wanted to talk about, like my dad. Thank goodness I didn’t share anything about my mom. Last night was amazing and incredible and never should’ve happened but it did…and then he pushed me away.
“Fuck. Him.” I slam the dresser drawers shut. I turn to Fuentes for a style check. The man wears a T-shirt and jeans every day since he’s his own boss. I get to as well, but I also have to wear a purple apron, which kills any kind of power vibe.
Fuentes gives me a thumbs up and tosses me the apron, bunched up at the foot of the pullout couch.
“You seem pissed. You know a good place to take out that aggression? The hockey rink.” He takes a flyer from his pocket and hands it over.
The bold letters at the top scream Hudson Valley Adult Hockey League. That was all I needed to read to know I wasn’t interested.
“I can see your eyes glazing over,” Fuentes says, opening the front door. We shuttle out and hustle down the stairs. “It’s a fun, recreational league for guys who used to play hockey. Miller and I formed a team. We want you on it.”
“I haven’t played hockey since I left the NHL.” I scurry down another staircase, Fuentes right behind me.
“That was only two years ago. You’re still sharp. Hell, I hear there’re guys who haven’t played in decades who are suiting up.”
I laugh at the idea of playing middle-aged dads.
“It’s one game per week on Sunday mornings. Not like you’re going to church.” Fuentes unlocks his car, a brand-new, gleaming black truck. He claims he needs the space to haul supplies for maintenance. I think he just wanted a big fucking truck. “Don’t you miss playing?”
It was the same question Griffin asked me last night. Again, I freeze up in response.
“Those days are behind me.”
“It’d be so baller to have a former pro hockey player on our team.”
“Having me on there isn’t the flex you think it is,” I say. I shove the flyer in my pocket before buckling up. “I’ll think about it. Now drive like the wind.”