Chapter 27
EVAN
That night, being the one able to ease Perry’s fears over why I was with him, and what I thought our relationship was worth, had left me feeling confident in ways I hadn’t in a long time. My life was on track. We had all the time in the world to get ready for Trials.
We had time.
However, the day I stood in the arena on the centre sheet of five, with actual stands full of people, I wondered how the weeks leading up to it had passed so fast.
I wasn’t ready.
Perry and Alan stood on either side of me, all of us in our matching black shirts, them looking so calm. I wanted to crawl out of my skin and into them and hide there. Who knew I’d be the one to freak out at the last minute, and not Perry, when confronted by all those people.
Not that this was the first time we’d been at a tournament with a crowd, but this was easily three or four times the number of people we’d ever had before.
Fair. It was a big deal, deciding who was going to represent our country on the world stage. People wanted to be there to see it.
Some of those people were there for us. Shaw and Darby and their new team were there. Michael’s folks, even my brother, Emileigh, and their kids had made the trip to watch us.
Miraculously, I found his face in all those people, and he was grinning, ear to ear, and looking so proud.
“Oh shit,” I whispered. “I think I need to hurl.”
The words were barely out of my mouth and both my guys grabbed a hand and squeezed. “Take a breath,” Alan suggested.
“We got you, babe,” Perry assured me.
I expected them to let go, then, since the announcer had begun to introduce our team, but they didn’t. There, on national television, in front of a couple thousand people in the stands, they both stood there, holding my hands, fingers laced, like this was a normal thing to do.
I had noticed a couple of other teams with couples holding hands. On one, the husband was a player and his wife was their trainer, and on a team from B.C., there was another gay couple. But the three of us? That was going to raise a few eyebrows. And questions.
Especially once people did the math and wanted to know the timing of the twins getting fired, and Perry and I joining Alan’s team.
“You don’t have to answer any questions, ever,” Alan said, because he was getting scary good at reading my mind. “If they ask me why I fired the twins, I’ll tell them the truth. If they ask why I chose you, Perry, and Robbie to replace them, I’ll tell them the truth.”
“And if they ask about this?” I asked, slightly raising our joined hands.
“I’ll tell them to go ask some other Skip who he’s sleeping with.”
Perry grinned. “I like that answer. I’m using it.”
The introductions were interesting. As each of our names were called, we stepped forward, but some variation of our hands held remained.
“Might as well have everyone be on the same page from day one, right?” Alan said. He jerked his chin across the sheets to the team on sheet one, where Jason and Cameron Darren stood, representing a curling club from Pickering. “The less ammunition we give them, the better.”
He had a point. And by that time, the rest of our guys had been introduced and the announcer had moved on to the team from B.C. that we would play first.
That game, and the rest of the week of round robin games, flew by in a blur. We only lost one game to the team from southern Ontario who had picked up the twins. Because of course.
“There’s a good chance we play them in the finals,” Alan warned after that loss.
We were in our hotel suite, demoralized, angry, and feeling like shit when he set a tray of plastic shot glasses on the table in front of where Perry, Carol, and I were sitting on the couch.
Each glass brimmed with a pale, amber liquid.
He went to the door to the adjoining room and knocked. “Robbie, Mikko, come out here, please.”
“One sec!” Robbie called back.
I glanced at Perry, who shrugged, and I wondered if I was the only one who heard the scramble in Robbie’s voice. A minute later, they emerged, only slightly dishevelled, and only if you were looking for it.
“Everyone grab a glass. I know we agreed no drinking while we’re training, but this is a bonding moment, so one shot doesn’t count.”
He was the Skip. I wasn’t about to argue with him. I grabbed a glass and handed one to Perry.
“Thanks.” He kissed my cheek, which was nice.
Alan held up his tiny cup. “To the team of my heart, and I don’t just mean Perry and Evan. I mean all of you. The men I choose to be in my life, the family I want, the people I know have what it takes to go the distance with me, no matter where that path leads us.”
“Shit, that’s good,” Carol said.
We all raised the toast and tossed back what turned out to be some very good scotch.
“Look.” Alan put his cup back on the tray.
“I know we lost today, and it stings a bit extra because of the twins. I’ll be honest, I didn’t try to build a team with them for no reason.
They are damn good curlers. But in the end, I made a different choice, not because I didn’t think they were good enough, but because I believe it takes more than talent to make a winning team. ”
“It takes a family,” Mikko said, almost too quiet to hear.
Robbie wrapped an arm around his waist.
“I agree.” Alan patted Mikko’s shoulder. “It takes the kind of trust that my two oldest friends showed in me to agree to rip it all down at the last minute and start over from the ground up to build what we have now.”
Michael raised his empty glass, and Carol snorted. “Hard not to, when you’re always right.”
Everyone chuckled at that.
“It takes the kinds of bonds that let us all be who we are, no questions asked, no explanations needed. I grew up in a family that supported me my whole life, and still, I’ve never known a group like this. I’m grateful every day I get to do this with all of you, no matter how far we get.”
“Well,” Carol said, putting his cup back on the tray too, “if you want to get to the Olympics, you’re going to have wrap this up so I can go soak in the hot tub, because this week is not getting any shorter.”
“Go,” Alan said. “Thanks for indulging my sentimental moment.”
Carol got up and did something that caught all of us off guard, stepping over the low table to engulf Alan in a bear hug. Given the only person he ever touched was Michael, it was startling.
For a split second, Alan stood frozen, eyes wide. He looked to Michael, who looked like he was about to tear up, but Michael nodded and Alan hugged Carol back.
“Okay,” Carol gruffed, turning the hug to a back slap before stepping away. “Good.” He flattened a hand down the front of his sweater. “Good. That was not awful.”
“So glad,” Alan deadpanned.
Carol was smiling as he walked away, though, and Michael didn’t bother to wait before he followed him up the spiral stairs to the loft room above.
“Can we?” Robbie pointed his thumbs over his shoulder to the door of the room he was sharing with Mikko.
“Yeah, of course. Thank you for coming out.”
“Guess that leaves us,” Perry said.
“I guess it does.” Alan studied us.
“What?”
“I’m just proud of the team. One loss so far is pretty damn good, and you two have really stepped up.”
“I’d say we did it for you,” Perry said, “but it wouldn’t be entirely true.”
“Oh, I know that. If you didn’t want this for yourselves, you wouldn’t be working as hard as you are.”
“That’s why the twins are going to be brutal to beat in the finals, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“They thought they had the Olympics in the bag until you fired them from the team. Now they’ve realized if they want to get there, they’ll have to work for it. It’ll make them hungry.”
I nodded, agreeing with Perry’s assessment. “Or mean.”
“That’s where my money’s going,” Alan said. “And you two, especially, need to be prepared for that. Whether we end up playing them or not, expect them to out us at the very least.”
“We already outed ourselves on the very first day.”
“Subtly, yes. They won’t be subtle. Or nice.” He looked directly at me. “Expect your past to come up.”
“I don’t care about my past.”
“People will.”
I sighed. “Curling Canada will, won’t they?”
“We need to be ready.”
“It doesn’t affect you. If they come for me, I can bow out. Robbie’s ready.”
“No,” Perry said. “Absolutely not.”
I scowled at him. “Of course he is.”
“No. I mean… Yes. He is. If we need him, he’ll be ready. But we aren’t pre-emptively letting those two assholes ruin your shot and you know Robbie would never agree to play under those circumstances anyway.” He turned to Alan. “What do you suggest?”
“Less subtlety, more us. We’ve been scrupulously proper like we never were for other tournaments. Force the questions before the twins can, and we control the narrative.”
I grinned. “So, like, be my usual not-at-all-private self?”
“Tastefully, if you can, precious.”
“Tastefully.” I nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Since there really is no way to tastefully slap my guys’ asses during a game—this wasn’t baseball, after all—I settled for proximity.
Lots of it, whenever it didn’t interfere with the games we had left.
So that by the time we had won enough games and points to be automatically moved on to the finals, the press had as many questions about the three of us as they did about the games.
We were sitting in the main room of our suite after the round robin was over, contemplating the inevitable questions, when Alan sighed. “I know it isn’t fair, Evan, but it’s going to come up. Even though it shouldn’t, and shouldn’t matter, it will, and it does.”
“I am aware how much it sucks, trust me.”
He sat on the coffee table in front of me, taking my hands.
“Talk to me, precious.”
“I can’t help wondering how it will be received. We know my sluttiness is going to come up. The twins will never let it not come up. So how will my brother feel? He’ll be in his hotel room watching with his wife and kids, and he’ll find all this out, and how will he feel?”
“You want to call him first?”
“No.”
“Maybe you should. Ev,” Perry said. “If he’s going to find out stuff he doesn’t already know, maybe he should hear it from you personally and not be blindsided, like you say, with his kids in the room.”
“Perry’s right.”
I knew he was. I knew I had to do that.
“We’re all right here with you,” Michael said from the love seat.
I wasn’t worried about them hearing. I had long since bared all my secrets, that weren’t actually secrets, and told them all about it so they knew how to handle any weird questions if I wasn’t there. But I’d never actually confessed all to my big brother.
“Fine,” I muttered, and pulled out my phone, dialling Jacob before I could talk myself out of it.
“Hey, kid,” he said, so cheerful I teared up. “Can you even believe this?”
“I have to tell you some things, J.”
“Woah. What happened?”
“No, nothing. Everything is fine and yeah, this is amazing. Hard to believe.”
“Then why do you sound like your puppy died?”
“Look, I need you to know something and I have to just say it, and you’re not going to be pleased.”
“Don’t tell me how I’m going to feel about something. Just say it. Did you get kicked off the team? Well, fuck them.”
“No, god, no. But there’s going to be a lot of press, right? I mean, I guess there already has been and—”
“If this is about you and Perry hooking up with that Alan guy, I obviously know.” I could hear the grin in his voice. “I knew a long time ago you trend away from monogamy so this is not really a surprise for me. None of you have been exactly subtle.”
“No, I know. That’s been on purpose so it can’t be used against us like we were trying to keep it secret.”
“Smart.”
“But this is not that.”
“What, then?” he asked. “Ev, whatever it is, I know you well enough to know it’s not going to be something so bad it changes how I feel about my baby brother.”
“It might.”
“Not possible.”
“It’s about before I met Perry, okay? So you know, none of this ever happened after the night I met him at a party.”
“Oh.” There was a tiny breath of silence, then he said, “That.”
“That?”
“I don’t want details, bro. I do not need to know how many guys you’ve been with.
I know it was a lot. You were young and I know you took risks, which I hated, just so that’s on record, but I also know nothing I might have said back then would have changed your behaviour so I just did my best to make sure you knew you had me, always, and to make sure you were as safe as I could make you. We don’t have to talk about it.”
I don’t know if I was relieved or shocked.
He said it all so matter-of-factly, like we were talking about his taxes.
“It’s going to come up. The Darren twins won’t let it not come up, because they’re assholes.
so if we beat them, they’ll try to turn it into a reason not to let me represent. They’ll out me for spite.”
“So you’re going to bring it up before they can.”
“I have to. But I wanted to tell you first.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Clearly.” I let out a long breath. “The press conference might get dicey. So we thought it would be best to warn you beforehand, in case you were watching with the kids and Em.”
“Don’t be mad at me but Em knows.”
“Of course I’m not mad. I always know anything I tell you, or tell her, it’s telling you both so if you know, she knows. That’s cool.”
“Ev?”
“Yeah?”
“Like I said, this doesn’t change a thing.
I am so damn proud of you and mom and dad would be too.
You do what you need to about this bullshit and remember that your team, your guys, and your family, we all have your back.
Also, I’d better get to meet Alan soon. He seems like a good guy but I need to know he’s good enough for you. ”
The minute I chuckled over that, a sharp sob escaped.
Perry shimmied close and curled around my back. “Okay?” he whispered.
I nodded. “Yeah. It’s good. J’s awesome.”
“Damn right I am,” Jacob said. “Give Pere the phone, please.”
I handed my phone to Perry and accepted the tissue box Michael pushed across the table.
I knew Jacob was saying all the same things to Perry that he’d said to me, about how our private lives didn’t matter to him, he loved us, was proud of us, and he had to meet Alan to make sure he was good enough for us.
“Everyone should have a brother like him,” Perry said, giving my phone back.
“Not wrong,” I agreed. “J?”
“Yeah, Ev.”
“Thank you.”
“Dude. Go curl. Be awesome. I love you.”
“Love you too.”
After I hung up, we took some time to strategize over food, before everyone broke into their little groups to decompress. The morning conference was going to be a trial, but we had a plan so that was good.