2. Maddox #2
“I'm asking, philosophically,” I say, and I wave my glove at the ceiling like the ceiling has been polled, “whether there is a single hockey system in the North American pro leagues that has been used continuously since before I was born, and whether the systems that are still used are used because they work or because they got there first.”
Grayson snorts from his stall and unbuckles a shoulder pad.
“You are asking to get benched again tomorrow.”
“I am asking,” I say, sweetly, “out of a deep personal love of the sport.”
The room laughs. The room laughs because the room agrees. The system is a system they'll run because he's the coach, and they'll resent, because they're players, and the thing I'm doing is the thing half of them wish they could do.
I strip the rest of the way down. I catch Theo out of the corner of my eye at his stall.
He is doing his gear in his order, which is a careful order, pad to pad, each piece where it's supposed to go.
He hasn't looked up. He hasn't looked up since water break, which means he's still thinking about what I said, which means what I said worked, which means I've got him.
That is how I frame it to myself. That is the frame I take into the shower. That is the frame I take home.
I shower alone. The stall he used yesterday is two down from mine, which I notice, which I would have sworn I wasn't going to notice.
I use the cold tap for the last thirty seconds the way I always do and towel off hard before getting dressed.
I don't say goodbye to anyone because I don't do goodbyes.
The drive back to the apartment is twelve minutes.
I take the turns too fast and hit three lights red and I arrive at the underground garage with a feeling I can't place and don't try to.
I pull into my spot and sit in the truck for a minute with my hands on the wheel because my apartment is gray and the vehicle isn't.
I get out. I go up.
My apartment is the one the team gives me. It's in a mid-rise six blocks from the rink. It's gray inside the way men's apartments are gray when nobody has loved them yet. There are two couches. I bought one of them. I don't remember buying the other one.
I pour a whiskey. Two fingers, not three. I am not going to drink tonight. I am going to pour a whiskey and look at it.
I put on a shirt because I don't like being shirtless when I'm thinking. I sit on the couch I remember buying.
Here is the thing.
The thing I've been doing all day, the whispering and the spot and the chirp, that's a joke. That's pro-level heckling. That's me getting under Paul Laurent's skin in the way I know how to get under a coach's skin without crossing a line that would let him cut me.
A joke is a thing you do for a while and then you stop. A joke is a low-stakes running bit.
I put the whiskey down.
I think about Theo’s face in the shower yesterday.
Not the flinch. The second before the flinch, where his whole body said yes and his whole face said please don't make me admit it.
I thought about that image this morning.
I thought about it at the squat rack. I thought about it while I was spotting him.
I thought about it while I was eating a sandwich at noon that I do not remember eating.
I thought about it when Coach was yelling at me on the ice.
I have been thinking about it for twenty-six hours.
I am not a man who thinks about one thing for twenty-six hours.
I pick the whiskey back up, drink half of it, and put it down.
Here is the decision. I make it out loud in an empty apartment because that is how I know I've actually made it and I'm not just riffing.
“I'm going to take his fucking virginity.”
The apartment doesn't say anything back. The apartment is with me.
I sit with it. I let it be a decision. I run through it like I'd run through a play.
Setup, middle, finish. He's a virgin, which means he is a kid who has been told his whole life that his body is an instrument, and which means the first hand that takes him apart will take him apart.
If I do it right, and I will do it right, he will go home to his father's house after, and his father will look at him, and his father will not know.
But Theo will know. And eventually, not yet, not for a while, Theo will want me again, and Theo will ask for a thing he doesn't know how to name yet, and Paul Laurent will figure out that his golden son is not his anymore and has never been.
I can do that. I can do that to Paul Laurent. I can do that to Paul Laurent with his son's consent.
I stand up.
I pace the apartment once, which is a thing I do when a plan is getting its legs. I go to the window. The city is gray. Frosthaven in October is gray everywhere until the snow comes and makes it white.
I'm hard again.
I stand there and I let myself think about it specifically.
His mouth. The line of his throat in the shower.
How still he went when I said sweetheart.
The clean, bare span of his ribs under the long-sleeve at the bench.
The fact that he has never. That nobody has touched him.
That I will be the one. The first hand. The first mouth.
The first anything. I think about his face when he comes.
I don't know what his face will do. I want to know what his face will do more than I've wanted to know anything in a year.
I get myself off right there at the window with one hand on the glass.
It takes no time at all.
I come harder than I have any right to come standing up alone with my hand on a window, and my knees go a little, and I lean my forehead against the cold glass and breathe.
I am telling myself this is about Paul.
I am telling myself that is what this is about.
Out loud, again, because out loud is the only way I trust myself.
“This is about Paul.”
The apartment agrees. The apartment knows.
I wipe my hand on my shirt. I finish the whiskey. I strip the shirt off too, because the smell on it is mine and I am abruptly done with it. I throw it toward the laundry basket in the bedroom. I miss and don't pick it up.
I brush my teeth. I stand at the bathroom sink and look at my face in the mirror. My mouth has decided one thing. My eyes have decided another.
“About Paul,” I tell the mirror.
The mirror doesn't believe me either.
I go to bed with my whole body still running hot, and I don't dream of anyone.
I don't have to.