CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
C al
This is happening. This is actually happening.
I’m giving my first interview, like I always imagined, back when sports was the best thing in my life. When knowing sports stopped me from being bullied, when my fellow classmates realized we had things in common.
Sports was my salvation. There was nothing in it to hurt anyone. Every day, there was a new matchup. Every day, there were new stats to learn and memorize and focus on.
And now I’m here. On Sports Sphere.
The actual interview room is tiny, just Jason, me, Rex and Chloe, and the cameramen, but I’m conscious of the millions of people watching.
I inhale as carefully as I can and smooth my shirt as if the audience will be able to see the wild beating of my heart.
Jason sits across from me.
Calm. Confident. Oozing hotness.
I glance at my first question, even though I know it word for word. “Jason, your return from Fiji made headlines around the world. Can you take us back to that moment, when you realized help was coming?”
“You know, the big helicopter should have clued me in that we were going to be okay, but I’d been hopeful before and gotten my hopes crushed. My immediate thought was that I might be hallucinating. But then you were running to the beach, and suddenly the helicopter was landing.”
I glance at my next question.
“I’d dreamed about being rescued,” Jason says, continuing unprompted. “I didn’t expect I’d feel disappointed.”
I frown. “Disappointed?”
“I wasn’t ready to leave,” Jason admits.
I notice Rex narrowing his gaze.
“Not because I didn’t want to go back to work or anything. Not because I wanted my vacation to stretch on forever. I-I like work. I like it a lot.”
“I didn’t want to leave,” Jason says. “Because that meant we’d go back to the world. The world where I’m supposed to be... straight.” The last word is said so quickly I’m not sure if I misheard it.
But he said “straight.” Not “stoic,” not “strong,” not “serious”—he said straight. And I heard it. Everyone did.
Chloe has dropped her papers and she bends down to pick them up.
Jason’s eyes widen as if he can’t believe he really said it, that the words are actually out, that everyone knows.
This was not in my pre-interview brief.
I inhale. Is Jason coming out? To the larger public?
But I’m not going to make any assumptions.
No way.
“Jason,” I say carefully. “Are you saying your time on the island changed you?”
“I’m saying I wasn’t sure if I would get off the island alive. Not always. And now I don’t want to hide anymore.”
A slow smile spreads over my face. “Jason, you’ve been accused of homophobia by your teammates and coach. Is there anything you want to say?”
“I was homophobic,” Jason says, his cheeks pinkening. “And I apologize. Tremendously. I made my teammates uncomfortable.”
I wait.
Jason inhales. “I also want to add something. This is not an excuse for my behavior. I’ve, uh, been thinking a lot about masks lately. Not in an I-want-to-go-to-Carnival-in-Venice manner either. I—”
His eyes catch mine, and I nod.
He relaxes at once. “I’ve taken my career seriously my whole life.
Yes, I was the two-year-old on the ice playing with professional hockey players.
.. In my case, players from my dad’s old AHL team.
I didn’t know a way to live a life that wasn’t about hockey, and I pushed away everything that might get in the way.
I, uh, first started having gay thoughts in elementary school. Fourth grade.”
Rustling sounds in my earpiece. Chloe clutches onto her papers, unwilling to drop them again.
“And even then, I knew that was something I couldn’t tell anyone.
I heard the jokes. I hoped the feelings would disappear.
They didn’t. And I couldn’t, absolutely couldn’t have those feelings.
And I do like women too, and I thought it didn’t matter.
That I could stomp away that part of myself.
Put it in a box and fling it into the ocean.
Unfortunately, there’s no ocean in Minnesota.
I was sort of successful. People didn’t suspect I was anything but what I said I was, even though I lived in fear of having anyone find out my secret.
I didn’t think I could be signed on to play a high-level team sport if I said I liked men.
In fact, until the start of this season, there weren’t any examples.
My teammates were right in saying I distanced themselves from them after they came out.
But it was because I was terrified that I would be discovered.
And I was also angry at them for getting into loving relationships so easily.
At least, that’s how I perceived it. I was jealous.
I-I didn’t want anything to do, with them. I behaved poorly, and I apologize.”
The control room seems in shock. I glance at the cameramen. They appear equally stunned.
“You were suffering from internal homophobia,” I say.
“Yes.”
“How do you define yourself now?”
“I’m bisexual,” Jason says. “Technically. But I, uh, am in a relationship with a man, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life.”
I smile.
He smiles.
“I don’t know what this means for my career, but I appreciate Coach Holberg and the Blizzard’s commitment toward inclusivity, even though I spent most of the year pushing back against it,” Jason says. “But I’ve spent my whole life pretending. And the only time I felt real was with you.”
And even though I’ve read every handbook.
Even though I’ve learned guidelines on ethics.
Even though I know the difference between professional and not professional, I reach for his hand.
Jason takes it immediately.
He stares at our joined fingers, then he squeezes my hand, as if in wonder.
Finally, he looks into the camera, just like I know he was told to do, and smiles.