Chapter 17
NIKOLAI
The telling happens on a Thursday night in November, after a home win against Montreal, in bed, in the dark, with Eli's head on my chest and his hand drawing idle circles on my stomach.
The circles are the trigger. The circles are absent and rhythmic and warm and the warmth is the safety and the safety is the thing that makes the telling possible, because the telling requires safety the way surgery requires anesthesia: without it, the procedure would be unbearable.
"I want to tell you about Alexei," I say.
Eli's hand stills. The stilling lasts one second. Then the circles resume. The resuming says: I'm here. The pace hasn't changed. The hand hasn't left. Continue.
"Three years ago. A different team. He was a forward.
Russian. My age. We met at a league event and the meeting was unremarkable except that it was not, because the meeting produced the thing that the meeting produced, which was attraction, and the attraction was mutual, and the mutuality was the beginning. "
I speak in the dark because the dark is the room where the telling can happen.
The dark is the absence of his face, which I cannot watch while I say this, because watching his face would require seeing his reaction, and seeing his reaction would trigger the assessment, and the assessment would trigger the management, and the management is the thing I am trying not to do.
"We were together for eight months. Secret.
He was closeted. I was not, but I was private, and the privacy accommodated his closet, and the accommodation felt like patience and was actually enabling.
I enabled his hiding because his hiding protected me.
If nobody knew about us, nobody could use the knowing.
The secrecy was mutual protection. This is what I told myself. "
The circles on my stomach continue. Eli's breathing is steady. The steady is the listening. Eli, who fills every room, who talks to manage silence, who deploys the grin as a shield against quiet, is quiet. The quiet is the gift.
"I let him in. This is the fact that matters.
I let him past the... I let him see the person I am when nobody is watching.
The person who cooks at ten-thirty and reads Bulgakov and whose mother calls at six AM.
The person who is not the player. I showed him that person because I believed the showing was safe. "
My voice is steady. The steadiness is not the discipline. The steadiness is the decision to speak without managing the speech, to let the words arrive in whatever order they arrive, without the checkpoint, without the assessment.
"He panicked. The panic was not immediate. The panic was gradual, the way panic is gradual when a closeted man realizes that the thing he is doing is real and the real cannot be managed the way the secret could be managed. He pulled back. Then he did worse than pull back."
Eli's hand presses flat against my stomach. The flat-pressing is the steadying. The hand says: I'm here. The surface beneath you is solid.
"He told teammates I was obsessed with him. He laughed when he said it. Too intense, too much. I remember the laugh more than the words, which is the part I hate admitting." I pause. "He framed the relationship as my imposition on his life. He denied everything. He requested a trade. He left."
The sentences are short now. The shortness is the telling at its most expensive. Each sentence costs something. Each sentence is a brick removed from the wall that has been standing for three years, and the removing is not painless, and the pain is visible in the shortness.
"The betrayal was not the denial. People deny.
People panic and deny and the denying is survivable.
The betrayal was that I had been seen. The real Nikolai.
The underneath. And the seeing was converted into a weapon.
'Too intense.' 'Too much.' The words he used to describe me to others were the words that described the thing I had shown him in private.
The private became the ammunition. The trust became the damage. "
The dark is quiet. The city hums. Eli's hand is on my stomach, flat and warm.
"I rebuilt. It took a year. The rebuild produced the apartment, the routine, the reading glasses, the distance.
It produced a man who does not let people in, because the last person who was let in used the access to destroy the thing he accessed.
The rebuild was successful. The rebuild was also the loneliness.
The loneliness was the cost. I accepted the cost because the cost was less than the alternative. "
"And then I showed up," Eli says.
"And then you showed up. With a coffee stain. And a grin. And the absolute inability to respect a boundary that was clearly marked."
"In my defense, your boundaries look a lot like invitations when you're cooking pasta at ten-thirty."
I almost smile. The almost-smile in the dark, after the telling, is the evidence that the telling did not destroy the room.
The room is intact. Eli is intact. The hand is on my stomach and the circles have resumed and the telling is done and the done is the thing I was most afraid of, because the done means the information is outside the wall, in the hands of another person, and the hands are Eli's, and Eli's hands have never once in our time together been anything other than careful with the things I've given them.
"He sounds like a coward," Eli says. "Who couldn't handle being loved by someone as intense as you."
The sentence is the same sentence Eli might have said if he'd known the story from the beginning. It reframes the wound. The problem was not my intensity. The problem was Alexei's capacity, which was insufficient. His failure, not mine.
"Mars said something similar," I say.
"Mars is usually right."
"Do not tell him that. His confidence does not need reinforcement."
Eli shifts. His body moves from beside me to on top of me, his weight settling, his face above mine in the dark.
I cannot see his features clearly but I can feel his breath and the breath is warm and close and the closeness is the thing the telling was designed to prevent and the closeness is the thing the telling has produced.
"I am not Alexei," Eli says. "I am never going to use the seeing against you. The seeing is the thing I came for. The seeing is the whole point."
He kisses me. The kiss is not the elevator (force), not the kitchen (hunger), not the lamp-night (play).
The kiss is tender. The tenderness is the fourth language, after force and hunger and play, and the tenderness is the most dangerous because the tenderness is the one that reaches the deepest, past the wall and the model and the discipline and the prison, to the place where the wound lives, and the tenderness touches the wound and the touching does not hurt.
The sex is slow. The sex is face-to-face.
My hands are on his face and his hands are on mine and we are looking at each other in the dark and the looking is the seeing and the seeing is the thing Alexei weaponized and that Eli is holding gently and the holding is the proof that the seeing can be safe.
I am underneath. Not physically (though physically also).
Emotionally. The underneath that I showed Alexei and that Alexei used.
The underneath is showing again and the showing is terrifying and the terror is not stopping me because the person above me is not Alexei.
The person above me said "including me" in a media room and "the word is bisexual" at a team dinner and "sort of" to a nine-year-old and every one of those moments was Eli choosing honesty over safety, and if Eli can choose honesty over safety then I can choose trust over protection.
The choosing is the variable. Not the pace. Not the position. The choosing. The active, deliberate, eyes-open decision to be vulnerable with a person who has earned it.
Afterward, Eli holds me. The holding is the inversion of every previous holding: usually I hold him.
Usually my arm goes around him on the couch, in bed, the arm of the larger man around the smaller one.
Tonight Eli holds me. His arms around my shoulders, my face against his chest, the reversal quiet and enormous.
The smaller man holding the larger one. The chaos holding the order. The noise holding the silence.
"Thank you," he says.
"For what?"
"For telling me. I know what that cost."
"The cost was less than I expected."
"That's how it works. Wes told me that. The alone part is what kills you. The telling is always less expensive than the carrying."
Wes. The bread. The enforcer who baked at 2 AM because his hands shook. The carrying. The alone part. The sentence has traveled from Wes to Eli to this bed in this dark room, and the traveling is the culture itself - the team, the building where people carry each other's weight without being asked.
"Nikolai."
"Yes."
"The intensity is not the problem. The intensity is the thing I love most about you."
The word. Love. Said in the dark, after the telling, by the man whose hand was on my stomach and whose patience was the gift and whose chaos is the medicine.
I close my eyes. His arms are around me. The room is dark. The telling is done. The wall has a door in it now, a real door, not the cracks and deviations and fractures. A door. Built deliberately. Opened deliberately. For the person who earned the opening.
The door is open. Eli is on the other side.
The other side is warm.