Chapter 5 #2
But Alex wanted more of this Mitch, this open and real and honest one who spoke to Alex like he was a human being instead of a sex object.
Rather than sit back down, Alex picked up his messenger bag. “Want to get out of here?”
* * *
Alex didn’t mention the book. And he didn’t ask Mitch for his story.
Free tutoring in exchange for some background on his tutoree was a great idea in theory, until he found out his student was Mitch Greyson, whose walls were sky-high and made of Kevlar.
Alex had a feeling Mitch wouldn’t appreciate him digging into his personal life.
Instead they passed the five-minute drive in Alex’s rental car from campus to Mama Jean’s in awkward silence.
The change in circumstance meant Alex would be left tutoring in exchange for nothing, but he didn’t mind. He was happy to help out JP, even if Mitch wasn’t too receptive to the idea.
Only a few tables were occupied at Mama Jean’s, so they snagged a private booth at the back of the restaurant. Smells of tomato sauce and baking dough reached Alex’s nose, making his stomach rumble.
Alex dropped his bag on the bench seat and removed his wallet from the inside pocket. “I’ll go order,” he said to Mitch. “What can I get you?”
“A beer and a personal-sized Meat Eaters.” Mitch fished a twenty out of his wallet and held it out to Alex.
Alex waved it away. “It’s on me.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
Mitch continued to eye him with suspicion.
“My treat, okay? An apology for what I said to you the other day.”
Without waiting for an answer, Alex turned and headed for the order counter. He returned to the table minutes later with a beer for himself and a soft drink for Mitch.
Mitch poked at his glass. “This isn’t beer.”
“How observant of you,” Alex teased.
Mitch was unimpressed.
“Sophomore, right?” Alex said. “Which makes you, what, nineteen? Twenty?”
“Nineteen. Twenty in January.”
“I’ll buy you a beer when you’re legal.”
“I’m legal in Canada.”
Alex chuckled. “We’re not in Canada, smart-ass.” He pushed Mitch’s glass closer to him. “Stop being a brat and drink your pop.”
“My pop.” Mitch took a sip as instructed. “We call it soda, here in the great state of Vermont.”
“I’m Canadian,” Alex told Mitch. “Some habits are hard to break.”
“What other Canadianisms have you held onto?”
“All of them, I think. I still write in Canadian too.”
Mitch shook his head. “For shame. And this is after how many years of living in the U.S.?”
“Six,” Alex said, enjoying this side of easygoing Mitch. “I got dinged for it quite a bit when I first started at GH. Eventually I got with the program, but as soon as I wasn’t being graded on it anymore, I reverted right back. ‘Color’ looks wrong without the ‘u.’”
Mitch was smiling the kind of unreserved smile Alex hadn’t ever seen on his face.
It made him look boyish and charming, but with a hint of vulnerability that didn’t surprise Alex at all.
When Mitch noticed Alex watching him, he glanced away and stirred his drink with his straw, making the ice cubes clink against the glass.
“Mitch, I wanted to apologize for—”
“It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not. What I meant to say last week is that you don’t have to pretend with me, don’t have to put up a wall. I’d like to get to know you, the real you. I’m sorry if what I said hurt you. That wasn’t my intention at all.”
“You didn’t. I mean, how could you? We barely know each other.” Mitch scoffed and stirred his straw again. “Besides, how do you know that the person you say I’m pretending to be, isn’t actually who I am?”
Alex nodded slowly. “Good point. I guess I don’t. Truth is, I don’t know you well enough to say that with certainty, but I’ve always had good instincts about people.”
“Really?” Mitch crossed his arms, the smirk on his face telling Alex without words that Mitch thought he was full of shit. “And what are your instincts telling you about me?”
“That you’re scared.”
Mitch’s eyes widened and the smile slipped off his face, even as he made a sound of disbelief. “What is it you think I’m scared of?”
“I don’t know.” Alex suspected it had something to do with the reason Mitch was always “on.” “And you seem reluctant to let me get to know you, so I might never know.”
Their pizzas arrived, interrupting their stare-down. The size of Mitch’s pizza distracted him from their conversation.
“I thought you were getting me a personal-sized one.” He eyed his large pizza as if it were about to bite him. “I can’t eat all this by myself.”
“I figured you could take the leftovers home.”
“How come you didn’t get a big one?”
Alex inhaled the delicious aroma of his own personal-sized pizza. “I’m not supposed to be eating pizza, so it’s better if I don’t have any at home tempting me over to the dark side.”
Mitch laughed, and it made Alex smile.
“The NHL has you on a strict diet?” Mitch asked, before taking a huge bite.
“I wouldn’t say it’s strict, per se, but pizza four times a week definitely isn’t on it.”
“Why is there green stuff on your pizza?”
“It’s avocado.”
Mitch shot him a look. “I know what it is. Why is it on your pizza?”
“I like avocado on my pizza.”
“Oh no. Tell me you’re not one of the few patrons of Mama Jean’s who orders the cauliflower crust?”
Alex took a bite of his pizza and groaned theatrically.
“First of all,” Mitch said, laughing, “that was mean. Second, ew.”
“Don’t knock it ’til you try it. Here.” Alex tore off a small piece of his pizza using a fork and the tips of his fingers sticking out of his cast and dropped it on Mitch’s plate. “Try it before you ‘ew’ it.”
Mitch poked at it dubiously, but finally popped it in his mouth. He wiggled his hand in the universal so-so gesture and said, “It doesn’t suck.”
“High praise indeed.”
Mitch laughed again.
There you are. There was the guy Alex wanted to get to know. No masks or pretense, just a laid-back guy who was easy to talk to.
“You never answered my question, you know,” Mitch said after he’d inhaled his first slice.
“What question is that?”
“About how the NHL is and isn’t what you expected.”
“You’re not going to let go, are you?”
“Nope.”
Alex finished his second slice and chased it down with a sip of beer.
“Are you hoping to get drafted?” he asked Mitch, curious about why Mitch wouldn’t let this go.
“Or is hockey simply a way for you to attend school? The partial scholarship,” he added when Mitch shot him a questioning look.
That same partial scholarship had been the only reason Alex had been able to attend GH at all.
“The scholarship is one of the reasons I chose GH,” Mitch said. He didn’t elaborate on his other reasons, and Alex didn’t ask. “But hockey’s not just a hobby. I am going to get drafted.”
He said it with so much conviction, Alex found himself believing him. Besides, Alex had seen Mitch play, so he knew how good the kid was. If he could keep that up over the next two-plus years and remain injury-free, he’d be a shoe-in.
“And your kinesiology degree?” Alex asked. “That’s for when you retire from hockey?”
“Yeah, I want to work with injured athletes. It’s why I wanted to talk to Chris Blair.”
“I’m sorry you didn’t get the chance.”
Mitch shrugged. “Not your fault.” He pushed his plate away, most of his pizza still uneaten, and averted his gaze.
“Did you, um, ask Mr. Blair about talking with me? Setting up a phone call or something?” He must’ve seen the answer on Alex’s face, because he shrugged as if it was no big deal. “It’s fine, no sweat.”
“Shit, I’m sorry, Mitch. Let me email him now.”
Mitch’s eyes went big with something like awe as Alex retrieved his phone from his bag and brought up the email app. “You can just…” Mitch waved a hand at Alex’s phone. “Email him out of the blue like that?”
“Sure. Why not? Chris has been emailing me every morning since I got here anyway. See?” Alex turned the phone toward Mitch, where this morning’s email from Chris was displayed.
It was basically the same as every email he’d sent, ever since Alex had arrived in Vermont almost two weeks ago, asking “How’s the arm? ”
Alex tapped out a quick email, slightly hobbled by his broken arm, as Mitch watched from across the table.
“What are you writing?” Mitch asked, leaning over to get a look at Alex’s screen. “What’d you say about me? Maybe don’t tell him I have a lot of questions, okay? I don’t want to scare him away.”
“He’s not likely to be scared away by an ambitious sophomore,” Alex said, completely charmed by this side of Mitch. Once done typing, Alex handed the phone to Mitch. “How’s this?”
Hi Chris. I have a friend at Glen Hill College in VT in his second year of a kinesiology degree. He wants to work with injured athletes, like you. Would you have an hour or so to spare in the next few weeks to chat with him?
Mitch was quiet when he handed Alex the phone back, but he nodded, which Alex assumed meant that he was fine with the way the email was written. Alex hit “send.”
“You called me your friend,” Mitch said quietly.
Confused, Alex blinked at him. “What else would I call you?” He slipped his phone into his bag and turned back to Mitch, who was watching Alex with a tiny smile.
If Alex didn’t know better, he’d say a few more of Mitch’s walls had come down, though Alex had no idea what he’d said or done to cause them to fall. “Should we go over your assignment?”
“Oh.” Mitch blinked and shook his head forcefully, curls bouncing every which way. “Right.” He pulled his assignment out of his backpack and set it between them on the table.
An hour, two more soft drinks, and a whole lot of explanation later, Mitch’s eyes were starting to cross, so Alex called it a day.
He picked Mitch’s pen up off the table and handed it to him, then dictated his own email address and phone number for Mitch to jot down.
With his broken right arm, Alex was left without a writing hand.
“Once you’ve made the revisions we talked about,” he said to Mitch, “send it to me and I’ll look it over before you submit it to JP, okay?”
“JP?”
“Sorry. John, your TA.”
Mitch put his assignment away. “How come you call him JP?”
“His name’s John Patrick, but he’s been JP to me since we met in first year hockey practice.”
“He played for the Mountaineers too?”
Alex nodded. He motioned to Mitch’s leftover pizza. “Let me get you a box for that.”
He got a box from the order counter and waited for Mitch to pack up his food before placing his bag over his shoulder and leading Mitch out of Mama Jean’s. They fell into step on the sidewalk, the early evening air cooling Alex’s skin, overheated from the restaurant.
Mitch shot him a cheeky grin. “So, when are we going on date number two?”
Alex couldn’t help but laugh. “Excuse me? When was date number one?”
Mitch jerked his head in the direction of the restaurant. “We just had it. You invited me, you paid. Ergo, we had a date.”
Alex wasn’t sure about that logic, but he let the kid have his point.
“So,” Mitch continued, “when’s date number two? Unless, um…” He scratched his head and paused on the sidewalk. “Do asexuals date? I’m afraid I’m embarrassingly ignorant about that.”
“What makes you think I’m asexual?”
Mitch regarded him with unsure eyes. “Um, you? You said you don’t jump into bed with people you don’t know, or even people you do.”
“Well, I imagine all asexuals are different, but I’m not ace. I’m demi.”
“Demi…”
“Demisexual. It means—”
“No, I know what it means. That one I’m familiar with.
” Mitch looked away, but he didn’t appear to see the small bookstore on the other side of the street, or the students sitting on the small patio of the coffee shop, or the dog walker who maneuvered around them.
Finally, he nodded. “My question stands. When’s date number two? ”
“Mitch—”
“Demis only feel sexual attraction for someone they have an emotional connection to, right?”
Alex nodded.
“And you said we were friends.”
Alex nodded again.
Mitch’s eyes lit with triumph. “If we’re friends, it means you already have an emotional connection to me. So, if we keep seeing each other, maybe sexual attraction will develop.”
Had this conversation happened even just a few days ago, Alex would’ve accused Mitch of wanting in his pants simply because of who he was—a pro hockey player.
However, things appeared to have changed between them in the past few hours.
Alex suspected that Mitch putting himself out there by asking Alex out on a date—or assuming there was going to be a second date, as the case was—was really fucking hard for him.
“It might,” Alex acknowledged. “But it also might not, Mitch. It isn’t that black and white and I don’t want to set you up to be disappointed.”
Mitch inhaled deeply and let his breath out slowly, pizza box held in front of him. “Even if you never feel anything for me beyond friendship, we’ll still be friends, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay. So date number two? Friday?”
“You’re persistent, I’ll give you that,” Alex said, chuckling. He got them moving toward the parking lot again. “Also, you have a game on Friday.”
“Shit, yeah. On Saturday, too. Wait.” Mitch stopped in the middle of the parking lot. “I’m going the wrong way. Home’s that way.”
Taking Mitch’s arm, Alex guided him to his rental car. “I’ll take you home.”
“I can walk. It’s only twenty minutes.”
Jesus, the guy didn’t like to accept help, did he?
Alex opened the passenger door. “Just get in.”
Mitch did as told without further argument.
Once they were on their way with Mitch navigating, Alex kept his eyes on the road but he could feel Mitch’s stare piercing the side of his head. When Alex chanced a glance at him, Mitch looked away and bit his lip.
“How about next Monday for date number two?” Alex asked.
Mitch smiled at him, happy and sincere, and Alex made himself a mental promise to tread carefully where Mitch was concerned. The kid came across as invincible and confident, but Alex suspected there was a very fragile soul underneath the layer of impenetrability Mitch had created around himself.