Chapter 21 The Letter
THE LETTER
The notifications pop like popcorn, constant, a machine gun of hearts and skulls and rainbow flags exploding across my phone until the battery runs red and the screen is too hot to touch.
I set it on the window ledge and watch it vibrate in place, spinning slow on the cracked glass like a dying beetle.
"Steelhawks Legend: Gay as Balls," the first headline said, the rest just get more creative from there.
By noon my DMs are a salad bar of congratulatory memes, clumsy come-ons from men in sunglasses and anonymous egg avatars telling me they're going to break my kneecaps if I ever set foot in Montana again.
Rainbow. Rainbow. Thumbs up. Gun. Eggplant. Skull.
I try to keep up, but every reply I type comes out sounding like a hostage video.
The PR lady, who I’m ninety percent sure has never watched a hockey game in her life, texts me every fifteen minutes: “Let me know if you’re okay?” “Do not respond to trolls.” “Take time for you.”
I haven’t eaten since the Pop-Tart last night. It’s still on the coffee table, bite taken out, edges crisped from the toaster, now hard as a puck.
My car, parked downstairs in the alley, still smells like paint.
I spent an hour scrubbing the back panel with a bottle of degreaser and the steel wool from under the sink, but the outline of the word "FAGIT" is still there, a ghostly shadow over the trunk.
Not even spelled right.
I took a picture. Had to.
Posted it with the caption: "They spelled it wrong," plus a rainbow flag and the middle finger emoji.
It got three thousand likes in under ten minutes.
Bravado, Maya would call it. A shield. Or, if you asked Dr. Sharma, "an adaptive coping mechanism."
But she’s not here, and neither is Maya, and the only thing filling the air is the industrial sting of solvents and the faint, plastic note of burning electronics.
The apartment is a warehouse for all the shit I keep telling myself I’m going to use, but never do.
Weight bench, never assembled. Guitar, never tuned. A single lawn chair set up facing the window, because it’s the only way to get any light in this cave.
On the nightstand, the paperback from Darius.
Still unread, ticket stub marking a page barely past the intro. I touch the cover, run my thumb along the crease, but I can’t open it. It’s Schrodinger’s book, if I finish it, the story is over.
Every hour, I check my phone for a message from him.
Every hour, it’s just another round of “You’re a hero” and “Kill yourself.”
At six p.m., the phone vibrates so hard it falls off the ledge and lands facedown on the floor.
I don’t pick it up.
I just sit, elbows on knees, staring at the window as the day goes from gray to blue to black.
The city outside is still moving, cars, ferries, people in jackets shuffling fast to get out of the wind, but up here, it’s just me, the smell of solvent, and a half-eaten Pop-Tart.
Eventually, I get up.
I brush the crumbs off my shirt and walk to the bathroom, splash water on my face, stare at the bloodshot green eyes in the mirror and wonder if it’s possible to just will yourself invisible.
The only sound in the whole apartment is the electric whine of the fridge and the faraway thump of subwoofers from the neighbor’s Saturday party.
My hands are shaking, so I put them in my pockets.
The phone buzzes again, a flat, insectile drone against the hardwood.
I walk back, pick it up, and stare at the screen.
Still nothing from Darius.
I type his name in the search bar, just to see what comes up.
There’s a blurry photo from last season, both of us on the ice, helmets off, sweat plastering the hair to our foreheads. He’s grinning.
I’m grinning. We look like idiots.
The caption under it: “Gayer than the Olympics.”
I laugh, loud and ugly, but the sound dies before it reaches the ceiling.
I start to text him. “Hey.” “You alive?” “Miss you.”
Delete, delete, delete.
I put the phone facedown again, grab the bottle of degreaser, and go back downstairs, scrubbing the trunk until my knuckles bleed, until the word is gone, or at least hidden under a layer of new, angry scratches.
When I come back up, my phone is still silent.
And I know, because I always know, the only message I really want is the one that will never come.
But I keep checking, anyway.
Because I’m an idiot.
And because there’s nothing else left to do.
———
The stink of the locker room is a comfort, weirdly.
Not because it’s good, Jesus, it’s like if a gym sock could fart, but because it’s the only thing left in my life that hasn’t been rebranded by the internet.
Today’s practice was suicides and shooting drills, and the only thing holding my body together is tape, aspirin, and spite.
I sit at my stall, left foot propped on the metal rim, slowly unlacing my skates like a man defusing a bomb.
Across the aisle, the rookies are whispering, heads ducked, pretending not to stare. I give them a wave, waggle my tongue through the gap in my teeth, and they look away fast enough I worry about whiplash.
Tommy Biel, built like a bomb shelter and about as communicative, ambles over.
He drops a brand-new roll of white tape onto my bench, thunk. It’s not subtle. He stares at me until I look up.
“You need anything,” he says, voice low and flat, “you come to me. That’s it.”
He walks off before I can reply. Most words he’s said to me in two years. I want to laugh, or cry, or throw the tape at his retreating back, but instead I tuck it into my bag like it’s a medal.
Kai’s next.
He’s vibrating so hard I can hear the mesh in his jersey rustle. He plops down beside me, butt-to-bench, and leans in like we’re about to talk trades.
“So, like,” he says, “when did you know?”
I take a breath. “Dude.”
He ignores it, grinning. “I mean, was it always guys? Or was there a moment? And is it the goalie?”
He says “goalie” like it’s a code word for sex, or drugs, or both at once.
I palm my face, but I’m smiling. “Kai, I’ll make you a deal. If you stop asking, I’ll let you buy me a beer after the next win.”
He snorts. “Easy. I was just curious, man.” He slaps my shoulder, then is up and gone, already chirping at the next stall down.
He posts a selfie with me five minutes later, both of us flashing peace signs, the caption: “Love wins, motherfuckers.”
The comments are split fifty-fifty between “hell yeah” and “who’s the top?”
Across the room, Marcus Reed, alternate captain and accidental dad, is watching all of this from the corridor to the showers.
He’s got that look, like he’s prepping for a big talk, running the script in his head but not sure it’s gonna land.
He catches my eye and nods toward the tiled hallway.
I follow, towel around my waist, skin still sticky with sweat and adrenaline.
He waits until we’re out of earshot, then leans against the wall, arms crossed. “I don’t…I mean, I’ve never had a friend who was—look, I’m probably going to say something stupid at some point, and I want you to tell me when I do.”
I stare at him. “Okay.”
He looks miserable, which is weird, because Marcus could bench-press a Vespa and not break a sweat. “That’s it,” he says. “Just…don’t let me be an asshole by accident.”
I want to make a joke. I want to say something that cuts the tension. But I just nod, because it’s the only honest thing left.
He claps my arm, the weight of his hand solid as a pledge, and heads into the showers.
Back in the locker room, it’s a zoo. Guys in towels, guys half-naked, someone blasting Beyoncé from a Bluetooth speaker.
At the far end, one of the defensemen is quietly packing up his gear, every move deliberate. He doesn’t say goodbye.
Doesn’t make a scene. Just zips up his bag, tugs the duffel over his shoulder, and leaves.
Nobody stops him. Nobody looks up.
His stall is empty by the time I sit down again.
I wonder if he’ll come back.
Probably not.
I start to pull my shirt on, arms barely working, when I see it: the empty space next to my stall. Darius’s spot.
Neat, orderly, untouched since the last game. No tape, no loose laces, no wet towel thrown haphazard on the bench.
He’s been showering after everyone else leaves. Avoiding the room. Avoiding me.
I’m supposed to feel grateful. The team, the league, even the assholes online, nobody’s run me out of town yet. Instead, it just feels hollow. Like everyone agreed to play along, but nobody wants to look too close at the details.
I sit there for a long time, staring at the empty stall next to mine, wondering if the guy who used to fill it will ever walk in and take his place again.
Because that’s the only apology I really want.
And I don’t think I’m ever going to get it.
———
Dr. Sharma’s office smells like cardamom and Wite-Out. She'd offered to refer me to a colleague once things with Darius became whatever they are, "ethical boundaries," she said, but I asked her to stay on.
She agreed, on the condition that she'd never discuss one of us with the other. I trusted that more than starting over with a stranger.
Every surface is beige or tan or the color of an uncooked biscuit.
There’s a little desk clock that ticks so quietly it’s like the threat of a ticking, and a row of degrees in matching frames, Stanford and Johns Hopkins and some place in Mumbai I can’t pronounce.
I sit on the couch, knees wide, hands busy untwisting the hem of my t-shirt.
I’ve already spotted the camera in the fake smoke detector, which means I’m probably on some therapist TikTok right now, “Watch this gay hockey player dissociate for forty-five minutes, no cuts.”
She waits, always. Lets me fill the air.
So I do.
“Did you see what they did to my car?” I say, because starting at the surface is always safer than going for the artery. “They spelled it wrong, which, I don’t know, is that better or worse?”
She just nods, eyebrows up, no judgment. “Did it hurt you?”
The question is so gentle I almost laugh. “Everything hurts, Doc. That’s the gig.”
She gives a half-smile. “Does that make it easier, to expect pain?”