Chapter 22
CHAPTER 22
TAHEGIN ELLINGSWORTH
“I can’t believe we just clinched the number one seed for our division!”
“I can’t believe you have your own driver.”
My head, which is tipped back against the headrest while I grin giddily at the ceiling, rolls to face Hendrix. His blond hair is dark from a locker room shower after the game, grey eyes shadowed save for the headlights of cars passing by, and still, I can’t help but think he is outrageously handsome.
Oh, I am riding this game-winning high right now.
“It’s your first year in the NFL—how are you not ecstatic right now? Rix, you broke the season record for completed passes today. You got three touchdowns. You ran over a hundred and fifty yards this game. You were amazing, and now we get a bye week before the divisional playoffs. Yet you’re worried about Jay? Come on, man!” Grabbing his face, I give him an intense stare, shaking him a bit. “Be happy!”
His mouth quirks up on one side, though he tries to hide it.
“Don’t you want to celebrate?” I ask, voice low and smooth as I slide one hand slowly down his chest.
Hendrix looks past me to where Jay sits in the driver’s seat, studiously watching the road. He’d driven us to the game earlier, and Hendrix had spent the entire trip absolutely appalled that I didn’t always drive myself everywhere.
Hey, parking is a bitch sometimes.
Apparently, Hendrix still isn’t over it, which is proof enough when he dodges my advances. Literally swerves so my lips fall upon his cheek instead of his mouth. Hurt, I sit far back onto my side of the car again. “Rix.” I can hear the pain in my tone.
He rubs his hands over his face with a groan. “I’m sorry, T. I didn’t mean it like that. Tonight was just . . . a lot.”
It was. After the game, we had interviews upon interviews, each one asking the same questions with different wording over and over again. Hendrix and I were separated before I could even get a proper hug—much less sneak away for a more intimate celebration—and by the time we found each other again, we’d both showered and changed out of our uniforms. Aleks and I had another interview while Hendrix stood in the back, scowling at everyone because he’d long since been ready to go. Everything was just more today due to us making it into the playoffs as the number one seed.
“Your pick was great,” he says while attempting a smile. “I was so happy for you. And proud. I wanted to tell everyone, ‘That’s my Tahegin.’”
“You should have,” I tease. The ball had practically teleported into my hand in the third quarter, and I’d taken it all the way to the end zone for six points. As soon as I crossed that line, I turned and looked for Hendrix. I wanted to celebrate with him, but he was where he always was, standing at a distance from the rest of our teammates.
And that was okay. I figured we could make up for lost time once we were alone in my car, but . . .
Hendrix sighs. “Look, I’m probably just going to Uber to my apartment when we get back to yours.”
“You don’t want to stay for the party?”
“I need some time away from people.”
“From me?”
“Tahegin.” He shakes his head, breathing another heavy sigh. “It’s not like that.”
Maybe it isn’t, but it sure feels that way. He won’t kiss me, won’t stay for a party where we usually sneak off to be alone together. It’s hard not to think the worst—that he wants to call this whole thing off.
“Okay,” I agree after a moment, but the word sounds hollow between us. “But we can drop you off on the way. No reason to make you pay for a car service.”
Jay clicks on the turn signal at my words, exiting the highway as I spout off Hendrix’s address.
Hendrix quietly thanks me, and we sit in silence for the rest of the drive. It’s tense, though I try to convince myself that I’m only imagining it, that everything is fine. My hand rests on the seat between us, but Hendrix doesn’t make any move to hold it, not even to brush our fingers together.
When we get to his apartment building, Hendrix turns for the door handle. He has one foot outside when he pauses, looking first at Jay, then at me. Quick as lightning, he darts toward me and lands a haphazard peck on my lips. His cheeks are pink as he exits and walks inside, but I’m smiling even bigger than I was when we first got in the car.
He still wants me. He might be nervous around other people, but he put aside his worries to offer me the one thing he knew I wanted, and that’s enough to convince me that everything is okay for now.
? ? ?
“Ugh, what year is it?” someone groans.
“The year of the Rubies,” a half-hearted someone-else sheers weakly from across the room.
I chuckle, disturbing something heavy on my stomach. Peeking out of blurry contacts, I spy a messy mop of purple and recall Micah passing out on me sometime during karaoke last night.
The rest of the room looks as chaotic as I remember it being before I ultimately fell asleep, too. Several of my teammates are scattered about the game room in varying stages of unconscious to almost awake. Aleks is beside me, scrolling on his phone. He didn’t drink as much as usual, so it makes sense he’s up earlier than everyone else. Currently, he is googling how to recover from a sore back, and, shifting my body on the floor, yeah, that tracks.
“Mornin’,” I mumble in his direction.
My best friend seems way too awake when he looks at me, and I am immediately on edge. “Hey,” he grunts, sounding distracted. His eyes flicker to Micah, still passed out on my stomach, with a guarded expression.
I raise my hands, careful not to disturb the sleeping man on me. “Nothing happened,” I insist. “I promise I didn’t try anything on your man.”
“No, I know,” Aleks agrees, though he still seems off. “It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
He struggles with his words for a moment, then whispers so no one can overhear. “Last night . . . Well, everyone got pretty drunk, you know? And Micah, he . . . You saw him give me that lap dance, right? I didn’t know he could move like that, but damn, am I glad I do now.”
Brows furrowed, I nod along, waiting for the problem.
“And then Tank made that joke about Micah giving him one.”
“Uh-huh.” I think I can see where this is going. It’s cute, Aleks wanting to settle down and be all monogamous with Micah.
“And then he did . Micah went over there and . . .”
“You got jealous,” I guess.
“I—” He clears his throat, soft so as not to disturb anyone around us. “No, I . . . the opposite.”
My body unconsciously jerks in surprise as I exclaim a little too loudly. “The opposite ?”
With a snort, Micah jolts awake, the crown of his head nearly taking out my nose. “I’m up!”
I pat his shoulder and scoot away as he blinks blearily at us. “False alarm, buddy. Go back to sleep.”
He collapses without question, this time not on me, so I shimmy a little further away. Gesturing to the doorway, I silently instruct Aleks to follow me out of the room. He does, and we sidestep teammates all the way up to my bedroom. Once there, we lock ourselves inside, I turn to him, and?—
His panic unleashes.
I freeze, back to the door as Aleks begins pacing with his hands buried in his hair. “What is wrong with me?” he asks in a normal volume, sounding disturbed. “I like Micah, obviously. We’ve been keeping it casual because I’m such a playboy, and he’s . . . well, I don’t know why, but he agreed to the casual thing, too. Have I thought about asking him for something more serious? Yes, but I have been stalling because I like the excitement and the flirting. And, apparently , I like watching him give other guys lap dances! What does that mean?”
Rubbing at my dry eyes, I almost wish I had a drink right about now. Aleks’ nerves are so electric that they are frying mine by proximity. “Okay, wait. Hold on. I can’t think when I can’t see.” He makes an impatient noise as I cross to the bathroom, so I leave the door open as I enter. Aleks, of course, follows right on in. “So,” I say, leaning close to the mirror and preparing to extract my sticky contact. “You?—”
A loud and satisfied ahhh cuts me off, along with the sound of Aleks’ trying to crack my porcelain toilet in half with his jet stream of piss.
I roll my eyes, then make quick work of disposing of my contacts, putting some drops in my dry eyes, and donning my glasses. Once he’s finished, I take my turn at the toilet while he plants his ass on my counter. “So, you weren’t jealous at all?” Shuffling to my cabinet, I grab my pill bottles to count out my morning dose.
“No, I . . .” He shakes his head in disbelief. “I think— I think I liked it?”
“Liked it?”
“It was exciting.”
“Exciting?”
“It . . . made me want him more.”
“Really?”
“Does that sound crazy?”
I gulp down my pills with a whole glass of water. “Does it?”
“See, that’s—” He pauses midsentence, hands frozen in the air. “Gin, why aren’t you saying anything? Don’t you have an opinion on this?”
“Yeah.” Exiting the bathroom, I head to the closet and change into something not rumpled with sleep, offering Aleks clothes as well from the stash he’s left here over the years. We change as I elaborate. “I think you’re making it entirely too complicated. Just do what feels right. If you like seeing him dance on other guys but you still want to call him your boyfriend, then tell him that. Communication, Kiss.” I clap him on the shoulder. “You should try it.”
I try to take a step out of the closet, but Aleks stops me with a hand planted firmly on the center of my chest. “Okay, so let’s talk then, Gin.” He stares at me in all seriousness, and I shuffle nervously. Like a switch that has been flipped, he seems to have completely forgotten his panic, his focus now solely on something else.
Me.
“What is going on with you and Hendrix?”
If my skin wasn’t so bronze, he’d be able to see the way all the blood rushes from my face. “W-what do you mean?”
He gives me a look that says, “Don’t even try,” and begins to tally his points on his fingers. “All of a sudden, you two are the bestest friends again, you dipped the New Year’s party with him—yeah, don’t think I didn’t notice—and Micah finally broke and told me everything he knows about the almost-kissing incident.”
“Oh.”
“Mhm.” His hands find purchase on his hips as he continues to stare me down. “So?”
“So . . .”
“Get on with it, man.”
“I . . .” I worry my bottom lip, wondering what the fuck I’m supposed to say. Eventually, I settle with, “I can’t tell you?—”
“Gin!”
“—yet.”
He stops a half second away from yelling at me, carefully considering my words. “You can’t tell me . . . yet,” he repeats slowly.
I nod.
“So, then when?”
“Umm. After . . . more?” I say, but it sounds like more of a question because I’m trying to keep my promise to Hendrix.
Aleks, thankfully, knows me well enough to listen between the words and, after a quick internal deliberation, makes a sound of eureka. “Oooh. I get it. You’re waiting to see if he’s down for the whole gay?—”
“Bi—”
“ Dick and balls and ass thing,” he corrects sarcastically.
“Actually, he’s familiar with anal.”
He quirks a brow. “I assume you mean topping? Or has Sour been doing some self-exploration?”
My cheeks heat at that mental image. “Only the first,” I mutter, then pause. “I think.”
“I’m sure Micah can give him some tips.”
“Kiss!”
“Oh, he did that, too.”
“Excuse me?”
He gasps. “How does it feel knowing Micah and I both kissed your man before you did?”
“What?”
Aleks waves me off as if it’s no big deal. “Micah said that when Sour wasn’t sure if he wanted you specifically or a man in general, he asked Micah to kiss him.”
I think back to the night of the New Year’s party and recall Hendrix saying something about Micah and him kissing. I guess I forgot about it in the tsunami of newness and awe that followed our first kiss. Now, though, I’m curious. “And?”
“They kissed, and neither felt anything. Hey, that’s kind of hot, though, don’t you think?”
“Nope,” I declare with finality. “I don’t think that is my kink, man. Were you supposed to tell me about that? Was Micah supposed to tell you about that? God, are there any secrets between the four of us?”
“I can probably think of some,” he muses, and the lascivious glint in his eyes tells me that I definitely do not want to know.
“Nuh-uh. No. No, thank you. Keep those secrets to yourself, please.” I push past him, cheeks on-fucking-fire, and his laughter follows me out of the room. No amount of pressing my cooler hands to my face seems to help either.
Downstairs, there is no staff hard at work making breakfast or cleaning, so I put several pans of frozen cinnamon rolls in both of my ovens before grabbing a trash bag and walking through each room, throwing away countless discarded cups of alcohol. Aleks, for once, actually helps, which is a pleasant surprise. Usually, he is against all activity that isn’t football or sex-related, but recently, I have noticed Micah—adorably—chastising him for his laziness. It’s a cute sight: a hundred-pound-when-wet man, hands on his hips, staring at a big professional athlete with sassy disapproval.
Micah is good for him—if only either of them would communicate that to the other already!
“Does Sour’s agent think he will get signed with us again next season?” Aleks asks out of nowhere.
I shush him quickly. “Dude, you can’t talk about next season yet! We still have the playoffs and . . .” The Bowl, if we’re lucky enough to make it , I think but don’t dare say aloud. Everyone knows you don’t talk about the end of your season before it is actually over. That’s like asking to go out early.
“You and your superstitions,” he scoffs, not at all concerned. “This is serious. What if the team doesn’t sign him again? How would you two work around him being on another team—or worse, if he can’t get signed anywhere else?”
“Of course he would be able to sign somewhere else. He’s amazing.” I’m perhaps a little quick to defend him.
Aleks chuckles at my unintentional hostility. “I’m just saying.”
“Well, don’t.”
“But he does have an agent, right?”
I’m not sure how to answer that because— “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“We haven’t talked about it.”
He stops what he is doing, dropping the full trash bag on the floor, where it spills with a loud rattle of beer cans.
I gesture half-heartedly at the new mess. “Dude.”
“You’re telling me,” he begins, stalking toward me. “That you, a seasoned player, haven’t been showing your boyfriend, a walk-on rookie, the ropes of this sport? He needs to do events, commercials, advertisements, charity auctions—and he needs an agent . Who is his manager? Who runs his socials? Who is putting his name out there?”
Fumbling my words, I try to explain myself but end up digging a deeper hole. “I don’t know, Kiss. I forgot all that stuff even exists. Like, I got my draft contract, and my parents already had people hired. I’ve never had to think about it. I’ve always just . . . assumed that stuff works itself out somehow.”
Aleks just stares at me with incredulity before erupting, hands flailing in the air. “That’s some privileged shit if I’ve ever heard it.”
“Hey!”
“Don’t ‘hey’ me, Gin. ‘Hey’ your boyfriend—which you didn’t deny, by the way—and tell him to get an agent ASAP. I want him on the team next year.”
“Me too,” I mutter under my breath as I resume cleaning.
It’ll be fine, right? Technically, the season cut-off is in March, so there is still plenty of time to get him an agent. Assuming he doesn’t already have one, that is. Maybe he does. He hasn’t said anything to me about it.
God, spending the summer as a free agent is probably one of the scariest things I can imagine. From the end of season in March to the September roster deadline, it would be hell not knowing if I was playing in the next season or not. I can’t imagine?—
“Holy shit.”
My head snaps up to look at Aleks. He’s standing in the same place, gaping at his cell phone.
“ Holy. Shit ,” he repeats.
The sheer disbelief in his voice makes me abandon my trash bag and walk over to him. “What? What is it?”
He scrolls some more, speed-reading before finally dragging his eyes away to look at me. “Dude.”
“ What ?”
“Kane fucking Kennedy,” he exclaims as if I will magically know what he means based on the Miami Pirates’ tight end’s name alone.
“What about him?”
“He’s gay—or bi, maybe.”
I let out a curious hum at that. “No shit? Good for him.”
“No, because get this.” He points aggressively at his phone screen, where an article is displayed. “He came out during the Miami game yesterday.”
“ During the game?”
Aleks nods with stilted movements. “So, apparently, the long snapper completely bailed on a play, their kicker got fucking wrecked, and Kennedy ran out on the field and told everyone they’re engaged.”
My eyebrows hit my hairline. “Shit, for real? Is the kicker okay?” I can’t remember his name for the life of me. Pretty sure he’s a rookie this season. “Who is it?”
He searches, having also forgotten the name. “Laken Berry,” he reads off. “Neither were out before this, but there was already some speculation about Berry from college. The latest update says he is in the hospital with a concussion. All things considered, he is lucky. Look at this.” Turning the phone to face me, he plays a clip of the hit and?—
“Ouch! Why the fuck did Adams let that defender through?” I demand. It’s clear as day that he sabotaged the play. What was he thinking? Adams has been in the game a long time, so it is surprising he would do something like that.
“Should we reach out?” he asks, ignoring me. “I should reach out, right? They probably need some support.”
I place a reassuring hand on his shoulder because he is clearly very concerned. Considering Aleks was blindsided by a news article outing him before he was ready, I understand his distress. He knows how badly it can hurt. “Yeah, man. We’ll reach out, okay? Send them a request to join that Facebook group you’ve got going,” I suggest. There are only a few of us on it, but he created it for league players who are queer to have a place to chat or plan get-togethers. Which he plans to do more of since the party with the Treasures’ allies went well enough. “We’ll be here for them,” I promise.
The tension in his shoulders doesn’t let up.