Chapter 18 Evan
EVAN
No one could have told me joking over how terrible I was at cutting potatoes into chunks would give me the same kind of jitter-releasing relief as Perry’s dick in my ass.
Maybe because I still had his undivided attention for much of the meal prep, and when he was distracted elsewhere, it was fascinating to watch him blush over Alan’s attention.
Fascinating, and more of a relief than I would have thought. For the first time, I realized he’d been holding back, maybe waiting for me to take the lead. Was it because I had the experience with multiple partners?
Did he even realize my experience began and ended with cocks in my holes?
I did love sex an awful lot but I’d never really connected with anyone until him.
Sharing him with anyone else had twisted me up more than I’d thought it would.
But watching Alan with him, how he touched my boyfriend, when he smiled at him, the way he cared for him, Alan was doing all the things I wanted to but didn’t always have the capacity for lately.
In the same way he’d grounded me out on the sheet, calming my vibrating nerves today when I hadn’t dared approach Perry because I would have just made his tension worse, he loosened Perry up as we worked, and seeing that let me breathe normally again too.
“Perry, you cut the onions. They have to be uniform.” Alan handed Perry the onion in question and looked over at me with a wink.
I stuck my tongue out at him and he laughed.
“That’s a good sound,” Perry whispered without looking up from peeling the onion.
“Oui!” Carol called from the couch. “C’est bon!”
“Why is he so French today?” I asked.
Michael shrugged. “He had a few beers at the club.”
“A few? You weren’t there that much longer than us.”
“Hence the French,” Michael agreed.
“Why’s he drunk?” Perry asked.
Carol said something in French and I caught “copine,” which I thought meant companion, “cretin”—self-explanatory—and “ma suppose” at the end. Didn’t sound good.
“Translate,” Alan demanded, handing me another washed potato.
“Girlfriend troubles.”
“Je suis un Olympien. Elle m’a quitté pour un chauffeur de gaz,” Carol whined.
That one I understood. “Then she doesn’t deserve you, Carol,” I said. “An Olympian for a gas station attendant is not a trade up.”
“Je devrais m’en tenir aux garcons.”
“Garcons all the way,” I agreed, because I thought he’d said he should try dating guys.
Carol flopped over to bury his face in Michael’s sweater. “Les gars sont meilleurs.”
Michael rubbed his back, gently pulling tangles out of his hair that had faded to shades of powder blue and lavender. “Guys are only better when they get their heads out of their asses.” He looked over the back of the couch at all three of us in general, and I thought Perry specifically.
“Maybe go get him to shower,” Alan suggested. “And take a nap. It’ll be a while before this is done and he’ll probably be hungry. I doubt he ate much at the club.”
“Mostly drank,” Michael agreed. “Come on, buddy. Let’s get you sorted.”
Carol mumbled in French under his breath but took Michael’s hand and followed meekly to the bathroom between their two bedrooms.
“That isn’t— They aren’t—”
“No. They’ve always been like that,” Alan said. “I suspect it’s as close as Michael cares to get to a significant other, and honestly, until Carol finds someone who gets that about them, his love life is doomed.”
“Huh.” I watched as the bathroom door closed behind them. “Guess threesomes come in all flavours.”
“If they find a third,” Alan agreed and set his spatula down. “This is what gives us the edge,” he said. “Not just personally, but as a team. Carol will be sad for a bit but he has Michael here, and you two have each other. Robbie has his guy.”
“They’re not together,” Perry piped up.
“Well.” Alan waved that away. “They are what they are. My point is, other teams have their close connections out in the world someplace. I know we all have families too, and good friends who aren’t here. But our closest, best parts are right here with us.”
“As long as we’re not fighting,” I said, looking at Perry, who was fiddling with his knife, moving the cubed onions around on the cutting board with the tip. I glanced at the board and noticed he’d pushed them into the shape of three rough hearts linked together.
“We’ll get there,” Alan said, taking the knife, setting it aside, and picking up the cutting board. “Get potato chopping over there.”
I did as I was told, glancing up often to see Perry watching me, his lips turned up in an almost-smile. He looked more relaxed than I’d seen him in weeks.
“You okay?” he asked me.
I nodded.
“Sorry I was a dick at practice today.”
“I was too. I know better. I wasn’t trying to make mistakes, but I wasn’t trying not to, either. I just wasn’t trying.”
“That doesn’t help the team,” Alan said softly.
“No, yeah, I know.” I sighed. “I owe everyone an apology for that.”
“This game isn’t just about delivering stones down a sheet of ice. It’s about how we communicate, how we conduct ourselves. When all of us are on top of our game, we might still lose if we aren’t together.”
“As a team,” I clarified.
“Yes, as a team,” he repeated, though he didn’t emphasize the word the way I had.
“Our personal issues are getting in the way of that.”
“Hey.” Alan put down his tongs and cupped a hand under my chin, making me look up from chopping.
Almost instantly, Perry gripped my wrist and eased the knife out of my hand, like he thought I might try to keep working when I couldn’t see what I was doing and slice a finger off or something.
The vibrations of him, so close next to me I could feel his body heat, sent a shiver through me.
I decided that was better than being annoyed.
“We all have baggage,” Alan said. “Personal shit that distracts us from the game. That makes us human. We aren’t machines.
We can’t ignore what we’re feeling because it’s inconvenient to curling.
I love the game but I’m not going to pretend that it’s all I care about in my life because after the ice melts, we all still have lives we’ll want to go back to. ”
“Or get on with,” Perry whispered.
“Or get on with.”
Gently, Perry pulled one of Alan’s hands away from my face so he could lean in to kiss my cheek. “Go wash up the dishes,” he instructed. “I’ll finish the potatoes.”
“I was getting better,” I protested, though I didn’t try to reclaim my knife.
Alan kissed my other cheek.
I don’t know who slapped my ass as I walked off towards the sink, but it didn’t matter. It had been so long since I felt this relaxed in my own skin, I just smiled and hummed as I started filling the sink for the bigger items that couldn’t go in the dishwasher.