Chapter 17
DECEMBER
Six months of this, and I still hadn't learned a damn thing.
Joel would show up in my phone like a brush fire.
A week of texts that made me hard just seeing his name, messages I read in the locker room bathroom with my back against the stall door.
Then nothing. Three weeks of checking my phone like some kind of twitch I couldn't shake, telling myself I wouldn't look, looking anyway.
The worst part was that I'd stopped being surprised. I just kept waiting.
Ro's couch had become my spot. I'd been there three nights that week, watching Eurovision with a guy who outweighed me by a hundred pounds and treated his pug like a firstborn child.
The woman on screen was wearing silver and hitting notes that shouldn't be legal.
Ro leaned forward like he was witnessing a miracle.
"Watch the key change," he said.
The key change happened. Ro made a sound like he'd been personally blessed.
His pug, Ukko, was burying a sock behind the cushions, little snorts of effort coming from somewhere near my hip. "Your dog is broken," I said.
"He is not broken. He is Finnish."
My phone sat on the armrest, the screen dark. I'd checked it four times since I sat down, which was better than yesterday.
"You are staring at it again," Ro said.
"No, I'm not."
"Okay." He didn't push. That was why I kept coming back.
The apartment smelled like whatever Ro had cooked for dinner, something with fish and dill that should have been weird but wasn't. Outside, Vegas was doing its December thing, the strip glowing in the distance while the desert cold crept in through the windows.
Ukko gave up on the sock and climbed onto my lap, turning three circles before collapsing with a grunt.
Around nine, Ro turned off the TV.
"Enough." He stood, and the ceiling seemed closer with him upright. "We are going out."
"I don't really—"
"You have been on my couch for three days. You check your phone every five minutes. You don't sleep." His voice was gentle, which made it land harder. "Whatever is happening, sitting here will not fix it."
I scratched behind Ukko's ears. The dog's eyes rolled back in his head.
"Where?" I asked.
The club was called Prism. I knew the name because I'd looked it up once, late at night, one of those spirals where you search for things you can never actually have.
The photos showed rainbow lights and bodies pressed together, men with their arms around other men like it was nothing.
I'd closed the tab, cleared my history, and stared at the ceiling until my alarm went off.
Now I was standing outside it with Ro, watching people disappear through the door.
"This place," I said. "Ro, this place is—"
"Fun." He was already moving toward the entrance. "Best music in the city."
"It's a gay bar."
"It is a bar where gay people go, yes." He glanced back at me. "Also, everyone else. Is this problem?"
If I said yes, I'd have to explain why. If I said no, I'd have to go inside.
"I used to go to places like this with my boyfriend," Ro said. "Back home in Helsinki."
I'd known Ro for almost a year. We'd shared a locker room, sat next to each other on flights while he showed me pictures of Ukko in various costumes: a hot dog, a reindeer, and once, inexplicably, a banana.
He'd never mentioned a boyfriend. I'd never asked because I'd figured he was like everyone else on the team.
"In Finland, this is not problem," he continued. "Is normal."
People kept walking past us into the club. Nobody looked twice at the massive Finn and the shorter guy standing frozen on the sidewalk.
"The guys," I managed. "If anyone sees—"
"Then I am the weird Finnish one who likes clubs with good music." He shrugged, and his shoulders were so big the movement looked like a geological event. "No one questions what I do. I am too big and too foreign."
He wasn't asking me to explain anything. He was just standing there in the cold, waiting for me to figure my shit out.
"Okay," I said. "Let's go."
The bass hit me before I even got through the door, a vibration that started in my feet and worked its way up through my chest. Inside, Prism was heat and bodies and lights that swept across the crowd in waves of pink and blue and gold.
The air tasted like sweat and cologne and something sweet, maybe fog machine fluid.
Ro waded in like he'd been born here. People moved out of his way automatically, not because he was scary but because he was just too damn big to ignore. I followed in his wake, and he had two beers in our hands within five minutes.
"To New Year," he said, clinking his bottle against mine.
I drank and tried to remember how my lungs worked.
This wasn't Alibi. This wasn't some dark bar in Albuquerque where I'd gone alone and desperate, counting the minutes until I could leave.
Prism was bright and loud and full of people who looked like they were actually having fun.
Two women were making out near the bathrooms, not hiding in a corner but right there where anyone could see.
A group of guys covered in glitter were taking selfies, laughing at something on one of their phones.
Nobody was looking at me. Nobody gave a shit who I was or why I was here.
Ro had already found the beat, arms up, eyes closed, hips moving in a way that should have looked stupid on a man his size. It didn't. He looked like he was having a religious experience, some kind of communion happening through the speakers that I couldn't access.
I stood there with my beer getting warm.
Then I spotted a familiar face across the dance floor and froze. Chase was there, the team's videographer, the skinny guy with glasses who always hovered in the background during warmups. He was standing near the edge of the dance floor with a drink in his hand, scanning the crowd.
My stomach went tight. He could see me. He could tell people.
But Chase's eyes found someone across the room, and his whole face changed. The nervous energy disappeared. He lit up, his shoulders dropping, his whole face breaking into an unguarded smile.
Ro. He was looking at Ro.
Ro saw him too. He flashed the biggest smile I'd ever seen on him, and he moved through the crowd like a ship through water.
When he reached Chase, he didn't stop to talk.
He just shouted something that got lost in the bass, bent down, grabbed the smaller man around the thighs, and lifted him onto his shoulders like Chase weighed nothing at all.
Chase laughed, his head thrown back, hands gripping Ro's hair for balance. Ro was dancing again with his arms up, a grown man on his shoulders, and neither of them looked like they gave a single shit who was watching.
Nobody else was staring. That was the thing. Nobody cared that the biggest guy in the room had just hoisted the team videographer onto his shoulders like they did this every weekend. A few people cheered. Someone gave Ro a thumbs up. Then everyone went back to their own business.
Ro's hands were steady on Chase's thighs. Chase was moving with the music now, matching Ro's rhythm from three feet higher. They looked comfortable together, easy in a way that came from doing this before and knowing they'd do it again.
I finished my beer and headed for the back door.
The cold was sharp enough to cut through the bass still ringing in my ears. I leaned against the brick wall and let my breath turn to vapor under the streetlights.
My phone was in my pocket. I'd stopped counting the days since Joel's last text, which was its own kind of progress.
The door opened behind me and Ro stepped out, flushed and grinning, his hair coming loose from whatever he'd done to slick it back.
"You are okay?" he asked.
"Yeah. Just needed a minute."
He leaned against the wall beside me. For a while we just stood there, watching cars pass on the street, breath fogging in the cold. The muffled thump of the music leaked through the walls.
"Chase," I said finally. "You and Chase."
"Ja." He didn't elaborate or make excuses. Just confirmed it like it was the most normal thing in the world.
"How long?"
"Not long." He glanced at me. "He is very shy. I am very..." He gestured at himself, all six-foot-seven of bearded Finnish giant. "It takes time."
"Yeah," I said. "It takes time."
Ro put a hand on my shoulder, big and warm even through my jacket. "The person you check your phone for. They are worth it?"
The question caught me off guard. I'd been so busy tallying all the ways Joel wasn't what I needed that I'd forgotten to ask myself if he was what I wanted.
"I don't know," I said. It was more honest than anything I'd told myself in months.
"Then you find out." He squeezed once and let go. "Come inside. It's almost midnight."
The countdown started at 11:58. The whole club pressed toward the front, everyone facing the big screen where the numbers ticked down. Ro had found Chase again, and the smaller man was tucked against his side like he'd been designed to fit there.
I stood a few feet away with a fresh drink I wasn't tasting.
The clock showed thirty seconds, then twenty. The crowd started chanting.
Ten, nine, eight.
I pulled out my phone.
Seven, six, five.
The screen was dark. Three days since his last text, which was better than the three weeks I'd gotten used to, but still.
Four, three, two.
I typed two words and hit send before I could talk myself out of it.
Miss you.
One.
The club exploded. Confetti fell from somewhere in the ceiling. People were kissing, hugging, screaming. Ro had lifted Chase off the ground entirely and was spinning him in slow circles while Chase laughed and held on.
My phone buzzed.
It wasn't a promise. It wasn't an apology for the weeks of silence or a guarantee that he wouldn't disappear again by January 2nd. It was just Joel, reaching out on a night that mattered, in the only way he seemed to know how.
I sent a kiss emoji back.
Three dots appeared on the screen. Then they disappeared. Then nothing.
I stood there in the middle of the confetti with my phone in my hand, watching people celebrate around me. Ro was still holding Chase, but they'd stopped spinning. They were just standing there now, foreheads pressed together, swaying to music that had shifted into something slower.
Joel had texted back. After everything I'd just realized about us, after watching Ro and Chase and understanding what I couldn't have with him, Joel had texted back.
It didn't change anything. He was still going to disappear. He was still going to run hot and cold and leave me checking my phone like an idiot. Knowing that didn't make the wanting go away.
Ro caught my eye across the dance floor. He raised his eyebrows in a question, and I gave him a thumbs up that probably looked as unconvincing as it felt. He nodded anyway and went back to swaying with Chase.
The club was starting to thin out. Couples were leaving in pairs, heading home to do whatever people did after midnight on New Year's Eve. I finished my drink and set the empty glass on a table already crowded with empties.
My phone buzzed again.
The drive home was quiet. Ro had offered to drop me off since I'd had a few beers and he'd stuck to water after his first one. Chase was in the back seat, already half asleep against the window.
"Good night?" Ro asked.
"Yeah." The neon blurred past, the strip still glowing even at two in the morning. "Thanks for dragging me out."
"You needed it."
He wasn't wrong. I'd needed to see Ro and Chase together. I'd needed to understand what I was actually missing, and why.
The problem was that understanding didn't make wanting go away. I could know that Joel was bad for me and still feel my pulse pick up every time his name showed up on my phone. I could watch Ro spin Chase on the dance floor and still want the guy who couldn't give me that.
Ro pulled up outside my building and put the car in park.
“Thank you,” he said.
I frowned. “What for?”
He glanced back at Chase, who was asleep in the back seat. “Discretion,” Ro said simply. “You understand, yes?”
“Yeah, man. I understand.” I got out of the car and I stood on the sidewalk watching until his taillights disappeared around the corner.
My apartment was cold and dark. I turned on the heat and stood by the window, looking out at the city. The strip glittered in the distance, all that light pollution turning the sky a dull orange. Somewhere out there, Joel was probably doing the same thing.
Or maybe he wasn't. Maybe he was already asleep, or at a party, or with someone else. I didn't know what his life looked like when he wasn't texting me.
I pulled out my phone and looked at our conversation. Two texts from him. Two texts from me. The most we'd talked in weeks, and it barely added up to a sentence.
I thought about deleting his number. I'd thought about it a hundred times before, usually around three in the morning when I couldn't sleep and the silence was too loud.
I never did it. I probably never would.
I plugged in my phone and got into bed. Maybe this year would be different. Maybe Joel would figure his shit out, or I would figure mine out, or we'd both just keep doing this dance until one of us got tired enough to stop.