Chapter 7 #3
It sounded like a nice future. It also sounded lightyears away from sleeping on the couch because the stairs were too tricky.
Tom rubbed a hand over his face. “Where’s Camille anyway?”
“Monaco.”
“What?”
Phil laughed ruefully. “We got divorced. Six months ago.”
Tom rifled through his brain for the right thing to say and came up empty. Instead, he blurted, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You’re my best friend, Tom. But we never talk about anything but hockey. Didn’t know how to go there.”
Right. The consequences of Tom’s actions.
Funny how those kept getting in the way of things.
He’d done his level best to keep anything personal hermetically sealed off from his hockey life in case anyone found out about him.
Found out he was gay. He ought to at least be able to think it, even if he’d only said it once.
But him not getting personal with his friends meant they treated him the same. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” Phil was so kind, so understanding, so…
A shiver of fear ran down Tom’s spine. What if he knew?
What if he’d always known? What if he’d been waiting for Tom to tell him, and Tom never had?
What if… But this was Phil. They’d known each other for a decade.
If Tom’s reticence really bothered Phil, he would have said something.
Instead, he absolved Tom of the blame for never sharing about his personal life.
“Well, that’s bullshit.”
It startled a laugh out of Phil, which was something.
“I know it’s too late now, but I’m trying to be…better.”
“Jax, huh? He brings it out in you.”
“I…” Tom flushed hot, and then cold again.
Could Phil tell, just from watching them, how attractive Tom found Jax?
It was one thing for Phil to guess Tom’s sexuality without Tom ever saying it.
They’d been friends since Tom had been drafted.
And Tom hadn’t gone on one date with a woman in all those years; it would be a reasonable conclusion.
But Phil’s insight into the indignity of Tom’s wild attraction to a teammate—a coworker years younger than him—with full knowledge that nothing would ever come of it, was far more embarrassing. “I guess.”
“I knew I liked that kid.”
“He’s not a kid.”
“I guess not. Hey, the call-up you guys got for me is looking sharp. Mazetti? Great on his edges.”
Tom forced himself to look at Phil directly. “Luca’s doing well. But don’t change the subject. What happened, Phil?”
Phil sighed. “I want kids, Tom. She doesn’t. Never has. I don’t know. I guess we both thought the other person would change their mind down the road. And I used to think I would. I used to think it would be enough to love only her for the rest of my life, but…”
“I’m so sorry. Sounds rough.” Tom couldn’t imagine how painful it must be to promise to spend your life with someone only for it not to pan out.
In part, he lacked the imagination to do so because, at over thirty, he’d never been in a relationship.
Another part of him, buried so deep it couldn’t be broken, still believed when you loved someone, really loved them, no challenge could be insurmountable.
Phil smiled weakly at him. “It is. It was. But we still talk, you know? And it’s easier now there isn’t always this…thing hanging between us.”
“And she still couldn’t come here and take care of you?”
“No way. She spent five years waiting around for me to come home from hockey. She’s done her time. I’m not asking her to nurse her ex-husband back to health.”
“Well, what about your family?”
Phil grimaced. “My mom would drive me insane in about five minutes.”
Tom could relate. Still. “You can’t be here all alone sleeping on the couch. What if something happens to you?”
“I’m an adult. I’ll be fine.”
“But—”
“So what about you, huh? If we’re talking about real stuff now?”
Real stuff? Tom tried not to seem too scared. “What about me?”
“Why no wife? Why no girlfriend? You’re rich enough, and you don’t look like a potato, which is more than I can say for some hockey guys. You even have all your teeth.”
Tom snorted. Not a potato. A damning, if accurate assessment of his appearance. He was no Jax Grant. At least Phil let him ease into this comfortably, asking about women first so Tom could have the dignity of saying it himself.
“Seriously, man. I’ve been wondering for years. Is it a married chick?”
Wait, what?
Phil read the confusion on his expression but not the cause. “It seemed like a reasonable explanation, you know? I thought maybe you fell for the GM’s wife or something, and it could never happen. Why else would a single guy as handsome and rich as you literally never get laid?”
So, Phil didn’t know. Phil had no idea Tom was gay.
It should have been a relief. Thirteen years in the league, and no one had read the truth from his behavior, not even the person closest to him.
Instead, it dismayed Tom. All at once, he realized how comforting the thought of being known so thoroughly without having to reveal himself had been, all of the reward with none of the risk.
He could tell Phil now. Own up to it, come out. It couldn’t be as hard the second time around.
In the end, all he said was “You want some lunch?”
“All right, all right, keep your secrets,” Phil said, but he seemed disappointed. Nowhere near as disappointed as Tom was, but still.
So, Tom cooked them lunch while Phil sat at the kitchen table with his leg up.
Tom was the furthest thing from a proficient cook, but he had one or two recipes he’d made often enough he could fake confidence, and his salmon spinach pasta dish was one of them.
They talked about the power play and Coach Trout—“I should sue that guy; he broke my knee for good,” Phil said, only half-kidding—and then Tom left.
He sat in the front seat of his car for fifteen minutes, debating whether or not to go back in and tell Phil the truth.
He didn’t.
Instead, at practice the next morning, he pulled Coach Morris aside and told him Phil was living alone and sleeping on the couch because he couldn’t do the stairs.
“I think the team needs to send someone by to help him,” Tom said.
Coach Morris frowned. Since Tom had never seen him make any other expression, he couldn’t gauge Morris’s reaction. “I don’t know. If Easton doesn’t want—”
“He’s thinking about suing,” Tom blurted out.
Morris stopped dead.
“We all know his contract’s not getting renewed. And if Trout hadn’t been running the defensemen ragged, he might have—”
“Ah, fuck.” Morris dragged a hand through his red-blond hair. “Thanks for telling me, Crowler.”
Worry overcame Tom instantly about whether he’d made the wrong choice. He didn’t know Morris well, and so far, his coaching had been inconsistent at best. Had telling him really been the right choice? “Will you—he won’t—I mean, if he wants to sue, it would be his right.”
“Oh, believe me, I know.” Morris sounded grim, even more so than usual. “I’ll take care of him. Of it.”
He stalked off to his office, leaving the team in the less-than-capable hands of the assistant coaches.
Trout, scenting opportunity for the first time in two weeks, brought out one of his most heinous drills, a full ice reverse drill for engaging with breakouts that left the defensemen gasping for air as they raced across the rink.
Luca, the quickest of the six, was out of breath by the time they were halfway through.
Their thighs had to be burning from the way Trout kept them crouching low half the time.
“Stop watching the others. Concentrate!” Coach Edwards encouraged.
He used the scant free section of ice Trout had left him on either side of the playing field to practice passing across the entire rink.
Tom thought Edwards would be too distracted trying to improve Howie’s stance and Mooney’s aim to pay attention to him, but apparently not.
“Coach?” Tom ventured to Edwards when Trout started yelling at Hayesie, calling him a waste of space who should be ashamed of the cap hit his contract caused the team. “Don’t you think Coach Trout is…taking it a little far?”
Edwards peered over at the other group. Hayesie, a man with both the tact and the physical proportions of a tank, looked about twenty seconds away from decking Trout right in the face.
Breezy intervened, asking Trout a banal question about the drill, which meant Trout screamed at him for being an idiot instead.
Tom breathed a sigh of relief. While he could be sensitive when the team chirped his taste in clothes, hairstyles, and women, Breezy remained impervious to yelling.
It only made him double down and try harder.
Tom made a mental note to thank him for taking the heat.
The last thing they needed was for Trout to bench Hayes.
“I think they’re doing fine,” Edwards said.
“Um,” Howie said, the closest he’d ever come to commenting on anything during practice.
Edward’s statement was so ridiculous that “um” counted as a reasonable response.
Trout treated NHL players like a bunch of hungover college students, and he had done so for months, totally unchecked.
He hadn’t been this brazen last year. Why had no one intervened?
Why was Morris ignoring it? Had he been the same with his own college players before he joined an NHL staff?
Tom couldn’t picture it. Everything about his manner spoke of a mild, polite, if grumpy man who wore authority poorly.
Still, he was the head coach. So why hadn’t he talked to the GM about how one of his team had been treating the players?
If the players themselves had to intervene and suggest plays and lines, surely Morris saw that something was amiss.
He might be new to the big leagues, but he’d been playing or coaching hockey for most of his life, so he had to know this wasn’t normal.
Unless Morris didn’t want the GM to know. Unless— No, Tom was being ridiculous. There might be a lot of money at play in the NHL, but not enough to make some sort of conspiracy lucrative. Coaches were just dicks sometimes.
Afterward, in the locker room, Jax fell into his spot beside Tom heavily. “You tried,” he said.
“It’s my fault. I should have waited to talk to Morris until practice ended.”
“It’s fucked up if Morris isn’t paying attention to what his own staff is doing.”
“True.”
“What were you talking to him about anyway?”
“I…” Tom trailed off, wondering if he could tell Jax about Phil and his empty house and the comforter on his couch and the contract extension he’d already given up hope on.
Tom wanted to. He wanted to tell Jax about all of it, especially the brief flicker of hope that Phil had known about him all along, how it had sparked to life a desire to be seen that had guttered and died so fast Tom couldn’t enjoy it.
Jax would probably say something flippant and funny, and then he would feel bad about it and say something else earnest and heartfelt, and Tom would feel so much better afterward.
But Tom couldn’t put all his feelings on Jax. Even if Jax didn’t mind carrying the load, it was definitely too much to unravel in the locker room. So, Tom said, “I’m worried about Phil.”
Jax nudged their shoulders together. “Hey, want to get lunch and talk about the PK?”
It was almost as good.