Chapter 27
ZANE
Normally, I would never have accepted answers like the one Jakob gave me. I would’ve told him as much too, but I couldn’t. Like, it wasn’t literally that I couldn’t say so, but now I felt weak. Impotent, even.
Wait, scratch that. No sentence that includes words like impotent ever ends well.
Something was up, (Dang, back to the impotence topic.) and I had to know what.
I sat across from Jakob in a booth at Amy’s Place, a diner on Main Street.
It stood a few doors down from Parkside Candy where Jakob had duped me so, um, uh, ingeniously.
We chowed down on cheeseburgers and french fries, almost oblivious to the fact that we were out in public together and anyone could spot us. And then what the hell would we do?
Yeah, yeah, diner patrons would see us, but they were low risk.
As long as they didn’t give a shit about local college hockey, we would be safe.
Buffalo was a big city but still a damned small place all the same.
None of my teammates frequented Amy’s Place but, as they say, there’s a first time for everything.
Any kind of public appearance together posed a risk, and yet I felt unusually comfortable, as long as I had Jakob with me.
“So,” Jakob said, “what comes next?”
At least, that was what I thought he’d said. It came out sounding more like “ooh, ut oomes ext?” because he posed the question with a mouthful of cheeseburger.
You know, like the class act he is?
“Excuse me, Jakob, what the hell did you just ask me?”
“So, ut oomes—”
“Would you eat with your mouth closed, for Christ’s sake?”
“Oo-aay.”
He chewed his burger, nearly choking on it, before swallowing.
“Okay,” I said, “now, you go ahead and ask your question.”
“What comes next?”
“What do you mean?”
He shoved his plate aside, flipped over the paper place mat, and fished a pen out of his backpack. And then he started drawing something.
“Why the hell are you doodling at a time like this?” I asked.
“To help you understand the super simple question I just asked. Obviously, you need someone to draw you a diagram.”
I wanted to slap the pen out of his hand. No, wait, I wanted to take that pen and stick it up his nose. That option sounded particularly tempting, but I recognized the need for self-control.
Rather than do what would really feel good, I settled for snatching his place mat, crumpling it into a little ball, and bouncing it off his forehead.
When I scanned the diner, I noticed people at the counter glancing over their shoulders at us, so I returned my attention to Jakob.
“Have I made my point?” I asked.
“What the hell was that for?”
“For trying to draw me a diagram like I’m some kind of an idiot just because I asked for clarification.”
“Defensive much?”
“How can I not be defensive? You had the nerve to ask me what’s next?”
Okay, so maybe I was being a little defensive.
But to be fair, I had a good reason. If he was talking about our relationship, then I had good cause to object to his broaching the topic during lunch, when I just wanted to relax and not have to think about anything heavy.
Hell, the fact that he’d raised the topic while in a public place should’ve pissed me off more than anything else.
Common sense aside, it put me on the spot and also forced me to behave.
Maybe that was the point.
Still, I couldn’t look across the table at Jakob and stay mad at him for any longer than thirty seconds.
“Okay, Jakob,” I said. “Enlighten me. What do you want to know about what comes next?”
“I want to talk about what comes next for us. And don’t sound so excited.”
Okay, I nearly choked back my rage, and I’m one hundred percent sure it showed. Chalk up a moral victory for Jakob. I could’ve lunged over the table at him, but he would’ve taken that as a sexual overture. Doing so would also constitute moral victory number two for that moron.
Take a deep breath, big guy. Nice and slow, in and out.
I followed my inner voice’s advice, but couldn’t stop my fingers from curling, ready to rake across the tabletop.
“With everything’s that’s happened in just the last week,” he said, “I feel like we’ve got to at least talk about it. You can’t leave shit unaddressed because the problem will just fester.”
“And where did you hear that?”
“Dr. Phil. He still makes occasional TV appearances, you know.”
“And what did he say about us?”
“Nothing. I just remember him saying that you’ve got to address shit or the problem will fester.”
“I’m sure he said it in those words, too.”
Jakob paused. He didn’t get angry. He didn’t necessarily get even, at least not actively. In fact, Jakob Martin really was the most chill hockey player I’d ever met, but he had his limits, and it appeared I’d approached at least one of them.
“You’re stalling.” He spoke in a low tone, and I couldn’t mistake his meaning. It was one of the few sarcasm-free things I’d heard him say.
“Okay, maybe I am stalling, it’s just… I don’t want to analyze whatever we’ve got going on here—”
“We’re boyfriends.”
“Right, uh…”
He used that word. Fuck. Yeah, we’d already agreed that we were in some sort of relationship, even if we’d largely avoided labels, but something about that word felt so strange to me.
Significant other, maybe real good friend, or even steady piece of ass would’ve worked just fine, though I wouldn’t say that right now.
Jakob held too many cards in this conversation for dissent.
“After that last game,” he said, “something became really clear to me.”
“What became clear?”
His eyes shifted towards the entrance like he was expecting someone to join us and then sighed. It seemed like he knew what he wanted to say but couldn’t articulate it. Worse, he seemed to lack the power to push the words past his lips.
“You can go ahead and say whatever it is you want to say,” I told him.
He sucked in a deep breath and then forced it out.
“For starters,” he said, “I know we’re going to be in this thing for the long haul. I didn’t know what to think when we first got into this. It was as weird for me as it was for you. But I went with the flow and listened to what my heart told me. I’m still listening to my heart now.”
That last sentence stabbed me with a thousand tiny needles.
He’d listened to his heart? Yeah, you could say I’d done the same thing (in addition to listening to far more sensitive body parts), but I wouldn’t have described my decision in those words.
Hockey players don’t follow their hearts.
They might do what they think is right. They definitely listen to their guts. But their hearts?
Fuck that shit.
“Okay,” I said, “what do you mean by long haul?”
“It means this isn’t short term. It’s not a fling.
I can’t predict the future any more than you can.
I’m just saying that we’re together, and it’s a permanent thing, even if we’ve never said so in quite that way.
That’s why we’ve got to figure out what our lives our going to look like from here on out. ”
Jakob was right. Please, for the love of God, don’t tell him I said that. Bad enough he’d backed me into a corner during that conversation. I didn’t need him getting a big head, too.
“Think about it,” he said, “my saving your ass from Levi is the latest symptom of the fact that our relationship isn’t a nothing burger.”
“You didn’t save my ass from anyone. I could’ve handled that meathead just fine, you know.”
“Maybe, but the fact that I felt the overwhelming compulsion to pull him off of you said more than words ever could. And the fact that you barely touched me in that game when your teammates were trying to take my head off says plenty about how you feel about me.”
I could’ve struck back saying that no one had tried to take his head off, but that wouldn’t have been true.
He had a point. They’d targeted him and I’d known it all along.
A tinge of nausea seeped into my gut when I realized I should’ve done more to save him from the rest of the Riptides.
After all, what they’d tried to do exceeded simply playing hockey.
But that wasn’t all. Sitting across from Jakob and gazing at his face, told me he’d been right about this “long haul” business.
Denying it would take me nowhere. At first, I’d felt like I’d indulged Jakob with this whole relationship business.
I’d felt confused, but also horny as fuck, truth be told.
No need to rehash how I never would’ve expected a guy to drive me to a sexual frenzy. That’s been done to death.
I would’ve expected it to have ended by now.
Look, I know how bad that sounds, but look at it from my point of view.
I’d been through this a hundred times before.
Never with a guy, and definitely not with a bitter rival, but who cares?
Point is, you get into these things, you have your fun, and then you get out.
Simple. Only what I had going with Jakob defied fundamentals.
And, of course, I couldn’t share those thoughts with him in a million years, because that would obliterate any point I wanted to make.
Then, as if erecting an emotional wall between us, I said, “You know we’re only going to fall into this deeper, don’t you?”
“The thought has occurred to me, yeah.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
He shrugged, dipping a couple of fries into a puddle of ketchup.
“I don’t think we have a choice,” he said.
“Of course we have a choice. We’re human beings, aren’t we? We’ve got free will.”
“Free will applies to most areas of life, but there are exceptions.”
“Come on, Jakob, you’re saying we have no control over our own lives?”
“It’s not as bad as you’re making it sound, but you’re definitely getting there.”
“Great.”
He might as well have pronounced our relationship a freight train that no one could stop. Not even Superman or The Flash. Had he actually said it, I would’ve found something much bigger than a wadded-up paper place mat to bounce off his head.
I also couldn’t deny that I too had felt something I badly wanted to tell him, even if I couldn’t clearly articulate it or push the words past my lips. Worse, if I said it, there would be no turning back.