Chapter Five #2
Jax shot Tom a look, his eyebrows raised and his mouth quirked.
Tom heaved a sigh and nodded. “All right. Breezy, Luca, hit the showers, and we’ll meet in the garage in ten.”
Chris hadn’t finished his workout and ought to at least cool down, or he could strain something.
But he did as he was told. He wondered what Tom would say to Luca to allay his suspicions.
Real estate was expensive in the Bay Area.
And Tom and Jax had a really big house. Maybe Luca would buy that it was a question of practicality, or he would think they were just super-close friends.
After all, Chris and Luca lived together for the same reason.
The thought sat hollow in Chris’s stomach. He hoped they were close friends and Luca didn’t simply tolerate him. He hoped Luca would want to stay friends who lived together for a long time, preferably forever.
He showered as fast as he could, intent on not leaving Luca alone with Tom for a moment. Luca was clever, and Tom was bad at lying.
“Is Mexican okay?” Tom asked when he met them in the garage.
Luca shrugged.
“Great, there’s a place a few blocks from here. Breezy, you drive.”
Tom got into the back seat, though Chris would have relegated Luca to it out of respect.
“Is that not your car over there?” Luca asked, squinting through the dark garage toward a nondescript gray sedan.
Tom hummed in agreement. “Jax usually drives these days. You can drop me here when we’re done, and he’ll take me home.”
Chris glanced to the side and saw the line on Luca’s brow furrow tighter. “Roomies!” he said, voice coming out too loud in the small space. “Like us!”
Luca’s frown deepened.
“Breezy.” Tom’s voice was quiet but commanding, the same way he sounded as Captain Tom “The Crow” Crowler, questioning a referee’s shitty call or telling Hayes off for being a dick. “It’s fine.”
Panicked laughter crawled up Chris’s throat. “Of course it’s fine. Everything’s fine. Everything is totally normal and fine. Why wouldn’t it be?”
Silence greeted his outburst. He pulled out of the garage and onto the street.
“The restaurant’s in the other direction,” Tom said.
“Here.” He held his phone out over the console with Google Maps directions open, and Luca took it.
He directed Chris until they finally made a left turn into a parking lot by a strip mall.
None of them spoke as they exited the car or as they were seated by a bored waitress.
They placed their orders—a stunning amount of food between the three of them—and when the server left them alone again, Luca leaned forward and steepled his fingers.
“So,” he said as if he were discussing a particularly dull documentary.
Luca never put on his bored voice at home or when talking to Chris one-on-one.
He might get snappish, but he never acted as if he didn’t care.
This had to be an act. Chris could tell because his shoulders hunched tight, and he balled his hand to a fist. He wondered who Luca thought he was fooling.
“Before, I wanted to ask whether perhaps you and Jax have a relationship I was unaware of, Tom. Now, I want to ask why Breezy is having a fit about it.”
“I’m so sorry,” Chris burst out. “I promise I didn’t tell him.”
“It’s okay, Breezy,” Tom said calmly.
Why was he calm? How was he calm?
“I know you didn’t,” Tom continued. “I was right there when he figured it out.”
To Luca, he said, “Jax and I are together and have been for a little under a year. We moved in together during the off-season, so yes, the house is both of ours.”
“Congratulations.” Luca raised his water glass in a toast.
They both looked to Chris.
Sweat beaded his forehead. Was it warm in this restaurant? He gulped down water.
“Breezy,” Tom prodded.
“If we do Halloween at your place, won’t everyone know?”
“We did the season opening party at Phil’s, and no one figured out about him.”
Luca’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, he and Ben are… I thought there was something odd about that arrangement.”
“You can’t out other people!” Chris knew his voice came out too loud, but he’d asked about this kind of thing, and the kids at the shelter had only agreed on one thing: outing other people was bad.
More than one of them had been outed by an interfering sibling, teacher, or friend, and look where they ended up.
“Phil is okay with the team knowing,” Tom told them. “Or he wouldn’t have hosted the barbecue in the first place. Heck, someone must have noticed something then. Ben kept touching him. And we’re okay with people finding out too.”
A world crashed down around Chris. “But…the team. Hayes. Vanderbilt.”
Tom leaned against the green vinyl booth as the waitress brought out four massive plates of food and then promised she’d return with more.
“The team managed last year, and we’ll manage this year,” he said.
“If Hayes and Vanderbilt want to be assholes, they will be. Us staying closeted for them means they win.”
Another year of fighting in the locker room, another year of trying to keep everyone’s spirits up enough to at least win games. Chris looked down at his steaming enchiladas. He couldn’t remember ever being less hungry. “What about the media?”
Tom made a face and took a large bite of his steak taco. “If we can avoid giving interviews and doing press, I would love it. But if we can’t, well. Jax thinks it could be good for people to see gay athletes being successful and happy.”
“He is not wrong.” Luca’s voice was quiet.
He hadn’t touched his food yet. At least someone understood the seriousness of this situation.
And yay, Luca wasn’t a homophobic dick. Sure, he’d been as incensed as any of them about the incident last year, but a little part of Chris had been left wondering if he cared because he’d been accused of being gay more than because he objected to homophobia.
Some guys got weird about it, as if being mistaken as part of the LGBTQIA+ community wasn’t a huge compliment.
What a relief that Luca could be normal about it.
Chris had no idea why it mattered so much to him.
He wasn’t gay. He kept collecting gay friends and teammates on accident, but he wasn’t part of the community.
He did want his friends to be treated well, which he supposed explained it.
Working up hurt and anger for other people came easier to Chris than for himself.
Getting bummed out about his latest breakup wasn’t as important as the team staying together and sticking up for people who needed it, like the kids at the shelter.
Anyway, it made him happy that Luca had responded well to the news about Tom and Jax.
He would hate to have to be angry with Luca for treating their queer friends badly.
The waitress returned and stacked the remaining three plates in the free corners of the table. “Let me know if you need anything else,” she said in the tone of someone who would be appalled if they did. They all smiled at her, Tom with his mouth full, and she disappeared into the kitchen again.
“I know representation is important,” Tom continued eating, seemingly heedless to the stakes of the conversation. “I just don’t feel successful yet, you know? Last year was the closest I’ve ever gotten to winning the Cup, and we were six wins away.”
Not successful? Chris’s worries aside, he couldn’t let that stand. “Cap, you won the Hart last year. You’re—” He scrunched up his nose, counting stats in his head. “—the eighth-oldest guy to ever get it. That’s, like, super impressive. Most players get worse after they hit thirty.”
Around a mouthful of shredded lettuce, Tom smiled bashfully. “Jax says so too. I’m learning to believe him. It’s kind of slow going.”
Luca pushed his plate forward and rested his elbows on the table.
“I am glad to hear you are learning your own worth. But I meant to say Jax is right. It would be good to see gay athletes. If I had—” He cleared his throat and looked away.
“If I had seen examples like you two, I would not have felt so alone.”
The bottom of Breezy’s stomach dropped away, and he entered free fall, blood rushing in his ears. There was no way he could say anything, and sitting on the inside of the booth with Luca blocking the way out, he couldn’t leave either.
He attacked his food, shoveling big bites into his mouth so he couldn’t be asked to speak.
“Oh,” Tom said, surprised. “You’re— But you, um… Well, you seem to meet a lot of women.”
“I call it ‘being bisexual.’ It is a brand-new concept I invented myself.” Luca picked up his silverware and began delicately cutting into his tacos, splintering the shells as he went.
Through his own mouthful, Chris couldn’t resist telling him, “They make it to fit in your hand. You don’t need cutlery.”
“If I were meant to eat food with my hands, God would not have given me a knife and fork.”
“You’re making your life harder though. So what if you get a little sauce on your hands—”
“Then I will smear it in your face.”
Chris stuck his tongue out, aware there was a nonzero amount of food sticking to it. Luca grimaced in disgust.
Tom cleared his throat. “Thank you for telling us about you, Luca. I. Um…I don’t know where to go from here. No one’s ever come out to me before. Well, except Phil, I guess, but I don’t think that counts.”
Luca shrugged fluidly. “It seemed fair to tell you. So you are looking to come out to the team?”
“If they notice on Halloween, I’m okay with it. If they don’t, honestly, it would be a little easier, but either way is all right.”
Which meant Chris still shouldn’t talk to anyone about it. Which would be fine. Hayes was great at not noticing things right in front of his face. Last year, he hadn’t noticed Mooney being Mexican and Luca not being Mexican.
And Vanderbilt also seemed oblivious to what his wife got up to at every team event she could swing it. The two of them deserved each other. Maybe the team would make it through Halloween, no worse for wear.
“—eezy? Chris?”
Chris snapped to attention. Luca never called him by his first name.
“Why are you being so strange about this? Is it a problem for you to live with me now? Should I—”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Chris said firmly. “It’s not a problem. I’m just worried about the team. Which isn’t to say I think you should stay closeted,” he added to Tom. “I don’t like when people fight, that’s all.”
Tom looked between him and Luca. “You two fight all the time.”
“No, we don’t,” Luca said at the same time as Chris said, “Not seriously.”
Their eyes met.
A spike of melancholy speared through Chris’s chest—a desire to never lose the sense of belonging he felt with Luca in the full knowledge that someday he would, because no one lived with their best friend forever.
He shoved the rest of his enchilada in his mouth so he wouldn’t say anything stupid.