Chapter Thirteen #3
There had been an optional skate in the morning, and Tom hadn’t attended.
After trying multiple times to start a real conversation with Ben over the last day and a half, Phil had failed every time because he had no clue what he wanted to say.
He’d hoped to catch Tom after practice and beg for advice, only to find that Tom had chosen to skip practice for the first time in his tenure as captain.
Knowing his best friend, it meant Tom had either contracted a deadly virus or chosen to stay home because of some emotional catastrophe.
He hadn’t answered his phone, and Phil had to knock for three minutes, which lent credence to Tom being either dead or not in the mood for visitors.
This was urgent though. Phil couldn’t let something as basic as politeness stop him.
“I’m coming, I’m coming.” Tom’s voice sounded far away, which meant he’d definitely been in bed given the size of his apartment (modest, for the team’s star player).
When the door finally opened, Tom stood before him in his off-hours uniform of threadbare sweatpants and bare feet. The sweater looked new though.
“Phil? Something the matter?”
“I need to go fishing.”
Tom sighed heavily. “Why don’t you come inside first?”
Tom called fishing a boring, uncomfortable exercise in animal cruelty and regularly complained about Phil’s favorite hobby.
Nonetheless, Phil usually managed to talk him into it once or twice a summer, when they were the only team members around and there was no game schedule keeping them busy.
To be fair, that was in July when he had nothing better to do and spending a full day outdoors seemed like a pleasant prospect.
The same could not be said for mid-December.
But Phil needed to think, to sort out a whole tangle of messed up wires in his head. He only knew two ways to do that: skating and fishing. Since skating for all of five minutes two days ago made his knee sore enough that he could still feel it, Phil was running low on options.
He followed Tom into the apartment. The living room appeared darker than usual, the drizzle outside clinging to the massive windows and the gray skies compounding the oppressive feeling.
“Hi, Phil.” Jax waved from the couch, a beige monstrosity that took up half the floor space in the room.
Phil had never liked how deeply the sofa forced him to recline.
As a tall guy, he wasn’t used to furniture being so vast he couldn’t have his feet on the floor and his back against the backrest at the same time.
Jax had no such compunction, lying flat on his back with his legs up on the cushions.
Similarly to Tom, he wore sweats. His hair was a mess, blond strands flying everywhere.
He and Tom had made up, then.
“Do you want a drink?” Tom asked.
“Whiskey?”
Jax crunched upright to examine Phil. “Shit, East, what’s wrong? Is it the knee?”
Phil toed out of his shoes. He’d been wearing slip-ons so he wouldn’t need to bend over too much, purely for balance reasons, but it was starting to get too cold. “No. Sort of. I don’t know.”
“Sit down,” Tom said. “I’m making you some tea, and if you still want to, we can break into the whiskey after.”
“Bossy,” Phil grumbled. “You didn’t used to tell me what to do.”
“You didn’t used to demand I go fishing on my day off. Which we’re not doing. It’s raining, and it’s bad for your knee.”
With a sigh, Phil made himself as comfortable as possible on the couch.
“Why did you have to be a good influence on him?” he asked Jax.
Jax grinned and scrambled around to sit right side up. “So. Your knee?”
“Oh.” Phil looked down. He didn’t need crutches anymore, and the brace was more to be on the safe side.
His latest doctor’s visit left him cautiously optimistic that he could avoid surgery.
But he couldn’t skate yet, and he doubted he’d ever be as fast as he once was.
“It’s okay. As good as can be expected.”
“Mm-hm.”
“I’m still going to retire.”
“Oh fuck. That…that sucks.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Phil said instantly. “Or, well. It does and doesn’t?”
In the kitchen, the kettle boiled, and Phil heard the clink of mugs as Tom made tea.
He came out holding two by the handles in one hand and set them down very carefully on the coffee table before crawling onto the couch to sit beside Jax.
They smiled at each other, warm and intimate, for just a moment before their attention reverted to Phil.
Happiness at seeing his friend like this warred with a deep, dark envy in the pit of Phil’s stomach.
“I could make it a few more years,” Phil admitted.
He tracked the progress of the raindrops flowing down the windows, searching for words.
“But I would probably get hurt again, and the Sea Lions would definitely trade me or shortchange me on the contract. And even if I come back as strong as before, I’d probably fuck up the other knee.
” He’d already noticed before he’d gotten reinjured how he babied the bad knee and overtaxed the good one.
His body was a long-term investment, and he didn’t want to wear himself out before he hit forty in a fruitless search for a trophy.
“Or worse, get hooked on pain meds to manage it. Either way, in the long run, I think it’s a good time. Quit while you’re ahead, right?”
Or quit in disgust when you found out your coach had conspired to get you injured. Either worked.
“Are we ahead?”
Phil’s gaze snapped to Tom. “We’re not on the guilt train about how you personally sabotaged our Stanley Cup chances by being gay again, right?”
“No,” Tom said. “But I always wanted us to win together.”
“Well, you better keep winning then. If I can swing it, I’ll be in these playoffs.”
“Noted.”
Phil picked up his tea. It was too hot to drink and probably not done steeping, but he enjoyed the warmth between his palms.
“So what are you actually here about?” Tom asked.
“Tom,” Jax said in an undertone.
“What? He told me he was probably retiring a few days ago. Must be something else.”
“You can’t just—”
“No, he can,” Phil said. “I’m gonna ask something really stupid, okay?”
“Okay.” Tom smiled encouragingly.
Phil couldn’t look him in the eye when he asked this. “You know how in Juniors, sometimes you would give other guys a hand on the road?”
“No,” Tom said.
“Yes,” Jax said.
Phil looked between them. “Okay, does that count? Does that make you…not-straight, or did everyone do it?”
Tom pursed his lips. “Well, I didn’t, and I’m still gay.”
“I did and same,” Jax said.
This was not helping Phil at all.
“Okay,” Jax said. “So you’re questioning some of your past experiences. Is this about Tom coming out to you? Are you worried he had feelings—”
“No, what the fuck? I’m not a dick.”
“Just checking.” Jax held his hands up placatingly. “You never know what goes on in straight people’s heads. One day, you think everything is normal, the next they’re like, oh, you know what would be a fun time? Fishing in December.”
“This would be so much easier if we were fishing,” Phil muttered.
Then his hands would be busy, and he wouldn’t have to look at either of them.
Also, Jax wouldn’t be there, which meant he would be left with Tom, whose conversational abilities when it came to tough topics ran more along the “I’m sorry to hear that” vein.
“If it helps, the only person I gave handies to in Juniors was my ex,” Jax said. “Or, well, we weren’t officially dating, I guess. But we definitely both ended up being queer.”
It did not help.
It left Phil with a second, bigger question. “Is thirty-four too old for a sexuality crisis?”
Tom squinted at him. “You’re sure this isn’t about me coming out to you?”
Technically, Phil had sex with Ben immediately following Tom coming out to him, but he hadn’t been thinking about Tom.
He shook his head. “I…I’ve had some confusing stuff going on recently.
With being injured, I’ve had a lot of time to think and to reprioritize things, I guess.
And…” He couldn’t tell them about Ben because they thought Ben was Coach Morris.
They didn’t know about Charlie, or the betting, or even about Ben being gay.
And Phil couldn’t tell them any part of it without telling them all of it or making Ben look really bad.
So much for asking for advice.
“I guess I’ve been thinking about what I want,” he said lamely. “And how different it is from what I had with Camille.”
“How so?”
Phil shrugged uncomfortably. “With her, things were always… I don’t know…
Everything looked picture-perfect. The house, the outfits, the sex.
She’s a visual person. I guess I always thought my role was to give her the right look, you know?
Give her the image and appreciate what she gave me in return. ”
“You sound…not upset about that?” Jax ventured.
“I’m not,” Phil said. “It was what I wanted then.”
“And now?”
Phil stared down into his tea. “I didn’t know how many ways I could want things, I guess.
” Words couldn’t express how he’d felt with the weight of Ben’s body pressing him into the tub, so he gave up on trying.
He needed more. If he got more of Ben’s solid body and warm hands and wry smile, he could figure out what he wanted.
He could find the words to explain what he was feeling.
He could figure out the magic formula to make Ben stay.
Maybe Ben had a point, and he ought to stop and think this through, consider the consequences before he got them both caught up with more than they could handle.
But the thought of Ben leaving only made Phil more desperate to race ahead to the courthouse and get the whole deal signed and sealed before Ben could cut and run.