Chapter 17 Perry #2
“Not as much as I’m probably going to have to know. But how’s this… I think you should go back out there and act like you want him, or put that behind you and get on with curling.”
“Evan wants him,” I mused, watching them.
“Go, then, and sort that out, because that’s where we have to start, yeah?”
“You make a habit of being right all the time?” I asked as I slid out of the booth.
“It makes me an excellent coach. Now go flirt or something. Let’s get on with this.”
He made it sound like it should be easy. And as I walked back out to the practice, I watched Evan make it look easy, a hand on Alan’s arm here, a wink there, an ease to the set of his shoulders he didn’t have around me these days.
I stopped in my tracks, watching them. Alan was a touchy type, always with a hand on someone’s shoulder or high-fiving people. He touched everyone, but his hands on Evan lingered longer, fingers stroking the small of his back or tucking under his collar when they stopped to discuss a shot.
It occurred to me as I watched that, over the past few months, Evan and I had stopped touching each other like that, or at least, it happened less. Touch grounded him. I’d always assumed Evan touched me to ground me. But maybe he did it for himself and now he was getting that from Alan.
“Go,” Michael whispered, nudging my back. “Stop thinking so hard about it and let yourself be happy.”
“What makes you think this will make me happy?”
“How it is going right now is making you not happy, so try something different.”
“Just like that?”
He shrugged. “I have no idea, since I’m a-everything.
Sexual, romantic—okay, well, not agender, I guess.
But relationships are easy because I don’t do them, I just observe them.
It’s like analysing a play, or a delivery, or whatever.
I look at it all from the outside, figure out what’s working, and how to change what isn’t. ”
“And you think Alan is how we fix us?”
“I think you figure out if that’s the solution, and if not, move on to the next thing.”
“I never thought this would be how I lose him.”
“You’re not losing him. You aren’t losing anything unless we count a few curling games, and that’s my concern, not your relationship.
And not because I don’t care about you and Ev together, but because I don’t think the relationship is in danger.
Is it bumpy right now? Maybe. But I’ve never met two guys so confident in the other. You just need to reconnect.”
“Right.”
“So go.”
I went, joining the practice with more trepidation than I liked.
Not only could I not see my shots, I couldn’t deliver a stone accurately to save my life.
After I threw the third or fourth shot too heavy and watched it sail straight through the house—a feat, considering how off the ice was—I felt everyone watching me, wondering.
“What’s happening?” Evan asked from halfway down the ice where he’d stopped brooming, because there had been no way that rock was going to curl on this ice. That question he normally asked more quietly, more directly, while he was holding my hand or playing with my hair.
“I don’t know,” I snapped back.
“Guys.” Robbie looked between us, eyes big.
“Perry.” Alan’s voice dug into my guts and weighted me down so I couldn’t flee when he slid over to me. “Take a breath.”
I glared at him.
“Please,” he said, quiet, like Evan got when he was trying to calm me. Alan laid a hand on my shoulder and kneaded. “Just breathe for one minute.”
“I’m breathing.”
“He was only trying to help.”
“Why is he so far away?” I peered past Alan to where Evan lingered near the hog line.
“Maybe because you snap at him every time he tries to reach out.”
I scowled. “I don’t know why I’m doing that.”
“The pressure is getting to both of you,” Alan pointed out. “Maybe we call it early today and take some time to regroup.”
“Yeah?” Robbie asked, sliding across the ice to us and hopping onto the end. He grinned. “My ride showed up early so it’d be nice if he didn’t have to wait.”
“Go,” Alan told him. “Get some rest.”
“Cool. See you all tomorrow.” He disappeared fast, as if he thought we might change our minds. His roommate collected him and whisked him off to who knew where.
Carol joined Michael in the bar and they sat down to order food, mostly ignoring us.
“You both need some stress relief,” Alan said as we pushed the stones to their resting place and gathered our equipment.
“It used to be easier.”
Evan slid for the far end to gather the stones there. If he’d heard me say that, he didn’t make any indication.
“Of course it did,” Alan said, “because you weren’t living, eating, breathing, and sleeping curling. You had other things in your lives. People who didn’t curl. Places to go that weren’t an ice rink.” His hand on the back of my neck was warm and I paused, soaking the touch into my body.
“I don’t need other places to go.” I fought hard not to lean back against him. I just needed time. Decompression. “I don’t know what to do about it anymore,” I admitted as he let me go. I peeled the slider off my shoe and tucked it into my bag. “We’re never like this.”
“We really have to get you proper shoes,” he said, putting an anti-slider over his own foot as he stepped off the ice, all in one fluid motion. The man really was a work of art. Every motion was both economical and graceful, mesmerising me.
I snapped out of watching him when he put a hand on each of my biceps to move me to one side so he could reach his bag.
“It’s another one of the things,” I said.
“Ev says he’ll order them but keeps forgetting.
I say I’ll do it, he gets mad because to him that means I’m basically saying he’s incompetent.
No.” I yanked off my rink shoes as I spoke.
“I’m just on my computer all day so it’s simple for me to do.
It involves a bunch of steps for him that he doesn’t normally do because he’s never online, and so it gets caught up in his head in a big tangle and he plays Minecraft instead.
” I shoved my feet into my outdoor shoes.
“Or takes a nap. Or makes lunch, or whatever.”
“Talkin’ about me again?” Evan asked as he slid up to us, a huge grin on his face.
“No,” I said as Alan nodded and said, “Yes.”
“Uh-oh.” His grin widened as his gaze bounced between us. “How much trouble am I in?”
“None.” Even to myself, I sounded angry.
“Pere?” His grin faded.
“Nothing,” I assured him, picking up my bag. “Ready to jet?”
“No. What’s going on?” He dropped a hand onto my forearm and I almost whimpered from his skin on mine.
“I was just… nothing, Ev. It doesn’t matter.”
“I mentioned you two getting proper shoes,” Alan said.
“Oh. Yeah.” Evan’s cheeks pinked up and I felt instantly like a jerk and heartsore as his hand dropped away. “I keep forgetting to do that.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll order them tonight when I log on. It’s fine.”
“But I should have done it a long time ago.” He was shifting from foot to foot now, a precursor to the kind of restlessness I probably wouldn’t be able to fuck out of him completely. He got to that state easier and easier these days.
“Ev, it’s fine. I can do it in less than five minutes.”
“And it would take me forever, and you’d still probably have to help.” He glared at me.
“That isn’t what I meant. I just—”
“Let’s go,” Alan interrupted me, gripping Evan’s upper arm and nodding towards the doors with his chin. “Both of you. We need to chat.”
Talk about feeling like a chastised child.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Evan mumbled.
“No, precious, you did not,” Alan agreed, letting go of his arm, but placing a hand firmly at his back to keep him moving. “Neither did Perry. We’re going home to sort this all out.”
“Nothing to sort,” I protested, fuming at the nickname and wanting to drag Evan away from him, even as I wished some kind of nickname endearment might be tossed my way, too.
I did fall into step with them. And no, there was no sting behind my eyes when Alan took my bag as it slipped off my shoulder, put it over his own, and urged me on with the same guiding touch at my back.
“You absolutely know that is not true,” he said. “Nerves are frayed, emotions are touchy. We’re going to nip this in the bud before it starts to affect your games.”
“And what are you going to do about it?”
“What I should have done from the beginning.”
He didn’t say anything else or answer any more questions while he herded us out to his truck.
Carol and Michael waved to us, smirks on their faces, from where they’d found a table to eat some dinner before going back to the house we’d all rented in the city. From the corner of my eye, I noticed them lean their heads together and whisper.
Jerks. They were probably saying something along the lines of it was about time. And maybe it was.
The ride passed in silence.
Once we were inside, Evan did what he always did, putting away the equipment and hanging up coats while Alan sorted through a pile of mail on the nearby counter. I went straight to the oven and turned it on to preheat so we could warm up some dinner.
“So.” Evan stood by the couch, balanced on the balls of his feet. “What are we chatting about?” He started bouncing up onto his toes and I wanted to go over there and hold him down.
“How the pair of you are going to manage the pressure going forward. It’s only going to get worse and we need a plan.” Alan turned to me. “You can’t fuck his energy away every night and think that’s going to be enough to ground him forever.”
“Like you would know anything about it, or him.” And like I didn’t already know that, but I wasn’t about to admit it. Especially not to him.
“I know enough to know his flirting is so blatant it’s almost painful.”
“Hey!” Evan scowled at Alan.
I should not have found the sight either endearing, or a relief, but it was both.
“Have I been complaining?” Alan asked Evan, then rounded on me. “But you’ve left him out there hanging, trying to hold everything together, keep the option open while he waits for you to catch up.”
“The option? You, you mean? Exactly what indication have you given that you’re still interested?”
“He’s given me plenty,” Evan said.
“Well yeah, he has, because you, he wants to fuck,” I said, feeling the meanness of the statement so deep in my soul I felt it shrivel.
Evan looked like I’d gut punched him.
Alan glared at me. “In fact,” he said, voice low and ominous, “from where I’m standing, you’re the one who needs a good fucking.”
Evan gasped.
My mouth went instantly too dry for speech and my cock twitched.
Thank god he hadn’t said that in a more private setting because I didn’t know if I would have challenged him or bent over for him.
As it was, I could not break away from his gaze and the fall into his dark eyes was beginning to seem endless and terrifying.
“Don’t talk to him like that.” Evan’s voice shook, but his grip on Alan’s arm was hard enough to turn him away from me, releasing me from the man’s galvanizing focus.
As he always did, he slotted himself between me and the entire world.
Alan let out a huffed breath. “You have to get a handle on your spiral, Perry. You’re trying to be everything to everybody. It’s impossible, but you pretend you don’t need any help.”
“He’s—”
“And you.” Alan turned on Evan, cutting him off. “You can’t disappear into video games and pretend you’re fine when we can all see you’re not.”
“I’m—”
“Not okay, Ev,” I said quietly, exhausted beyond the capacity to even argue.
He sighed. “Well, neither are you.”
“No.”
“So what do we do?”
“Don’t suppose it ever occurred to either of you knuckleheads to ask for help?”
Neither of us responded.
“Well, I’m not going to impose myself on you.” He tucked a strand of Evan’s hair behind his ear. “But you have to realize that sooner or later, one of you is going to break and I would certainly hope we figure this out before then.”
I saw Evan try his signature grin but it only flashed, weak and fleeting, before he was swallowing hard enough I heard it from where I stood behind him. I made a move to touch him but Alan held up a hand, stalling me, without actually taking his eyes off Evan.
I watched them stare at each other before Alan finally nodded and broke the tension with a fast, hard kiss that Evan barely had a chance to respond to before it was over and Alan was out of his reach.
“Wait—”
“Not today,” Alan said softly. “Not when we’re all angry and scared.
We’ve been playing together for months but not pausing long enough to actually get to know each other.
” He faced me, a hand on the side of my face.
“I want that. With you, especially, because you keep yourself out of reach and that sucks. I want to change that before I want to do anything else.”
“Yeah,” I rasped.
His smile was amused, probably because his touch and attention left me with barely enough breath for a single word.
“Let’s cook,” Evan blurted.
We both blinked and looked over at him.
“Well, not me, because…” He shuddered. “Yeah, no. But I can cheer and slice things.”
“He can do that,” I agreed.
Evan smiled on me, loosening something in my chest that had slowly tightened over time without my noticing.
Fast, I was on him, grabbing him and kissing the air out of him.
His grunt morphed into a groan and he clutched at me.
Maybe we would have stripped down right there, if the door hadn’t opened, admitting Carol, looking slightly wild-haired and tipsy, and Michael looking exasperated, in a blast of cold air and noise.
Carol said something very French, and Michael laughed as Evan and I parted.
“Cooking,” I whispered, tucking that stupid bit of his hair back behind his ear.
“Cooking.” He took my hand and tossed a kiss onto Alan’s cheek as we passed.
Okay. We were going there. Publicly.
Kissing him wasn’t quite where I was at. I patted his chest as I walked by him. Instead of laughing at my awkwardness, he grabbed my hand and kissed my knuckles.
Evan snorted. “This is going to take some time,” he mumbled.
If I did this at my pace, instead of his, then yes, it was going to take time. I hoped he could be patient with me.