Chapter 8 #4
He escaped before Tom could answer. To avoid making a liar of himself, he went to the bathroom.
He pissed, washed his hands, and spent a long moment staring into the mirror, mulling the inconvenience.
He wasn’t supposed to have actual feelings for Tom.
Attraction to him was fine; Jax could ignore attraction.
But all this wanting to care for him bullshit?
Not happening. It wasn’t something Jax could have.
He’d spent enough of his life hungering for seemingly out-of-reach things to know the difference.
An NHL career? Possible if he worked hard enough and ignored all the assholes who claimed he couldn’t do it.
Giving his parents everything they could possibly want or need now he could afford it?
Possible if he did it without their knowledge so they couldn’t turn him down.
Having an active sex life while closeted in the NHL?
Possible if he was careful enough. The second he hadn’t been, he’d gotten traded.
Falling for someone, having a relationship? Not possible. He had enough self-awareness to know that when he loved someone, he couldn’t hide it for shit.
Falling for Tom? A perfect, impossible dream.
Not only would the secrecy of it kill Jax, Tom was too good for him.
Tom deserved someone who didn’t have such a hard time not fucking up by wanting too much, by hiding too poorly.
Tom deserved someone who could support him through the difficulties of being a closeted athlete, not someone who faced the exact same issues, and definitely not someone who toyed ever more seriously with the idea of coming out.
Jax ran his wrists under cold water—he wasn’t about to fuck up his hair by splashing some on his face—took a few deep breaths, and reentered the club.
The music, muffled in the bathroom, came at him too loudly, and the strobe lights were, by turns, blinding and too low. It took Jax a moment to make out Tom, even though he sat exactly where Jax had left him.
He was talking to the guy in the black T-shirt.
That…wasn’t supposed to hurt.
Jax turned away purposefully. He took a deep breath. Good. Tom would meet someone, hook up, and learn he didn’t have to deny himself everything. And Jax would learn to live with having had some small part in his opening up to pleasure.
A guy in cut-off jeans over fishnets and a tank top so tight Jax could count his ribs beckoned at Jax from the dance floor. Jax grabbed onto the distraction, and the guy, with both hands.
“Aren’t you cold?” Jax shouted over the bass.
The guy laughed, tilting his head and exposing the line of his throat. A rhinestone-studded cross on a long chain hung around his neck. “Keep me warm?” He placed his hands over Jax’s and slid them down from his waist to his hips, then twisted around so his back pressed against Jax’s front.
In an ordinary world, Jax would have been into everything about this. He liked bold guys who told him what they wanted from him. He liked people who played fast and loose with gender expression. He liked hot and sweaty and ephemeral.
Tom was precisely none of those things. Tom had no idea what he wanted and presented as heteronormatively masculine as he possibly could. If something did happen, ridiculous as the thought was, Jax would never be rid of Tom no matter how badly it went. They played on the same team.
Jax glanced over at the bar again and found Tom alone, no black T-shirt man in sight.
“Your friend struck out, huh?” the guy in Jax’s arms yelled in his ear.
“Seems so.”
“You wanna go comfort him, or do you wanna come home with me?”
Jax watched as Tom turned to the bartender and signaled for the bill. He was giving up. He’d tried all of once and immediately called it quits. He’d return to the hotel, put his head in the sand, and spend another fifteen years “taking care of it himself.”
Jax pulled away from his dance partner. “I’m sorry.”
The guy shrugged and gave him a rueful smile. “Worth a shot. You should tell him how you feel.”
“What?” Jax said. “I don’t… No, that’s not… I’ve got to go. Your eyeliner is awesome, by the way.”
“Thanks.” The guy gave him a bemused smile and a little wave, and then Jax had to hightail it out of the club. Tom was already gone.
Jax found him a block and a half away, walking way too fast for a man who’d been to hockey practice, witnessed the implosion of his hockey team, and played a full game all in one day.
“Tom!”
“You shouldn’t be out here,” Tom said without turning around. “You were having a good time.”
Panting, Jax drew even. “We were there to get you to have a good time.”
“We were there because you, and I quote, ‘needed to suck someone’s dick.’”
Oh, right. Jax had said that. Unfortunately, in the meantime, he’d been forced to accept he only wanted to suck one dick, and it was Tom’s. “Yeah, well, maybe it was more of a want than a need.”
“The guy you were dancing with looked like he wanted you.”
“Plenty of fish in the sea. Which is why we should both go back so you can try again.”
Finally, Tom turned to face him with an utterly anguished expression. “I can’t do it.”
Jax swallowed heavily. Had his stupid plan to get Tom out there somehow made everything worse for Tom? Had the man in the black T-shirt put him off sex for life? “What did black T-shirt guy do to you?”
“He asked me to dance.”
Blinking, Jax tried to find the problem.
Tom continued, heedless of Jax’s confusion. “I don’t know how to dance with a guy. And even if I managed, what if he wanted to kiss me? I haven’t kissed anyone since I was a teenager. I’ll be terrible at it. I’ve given one blow job in my entire life. I’ve missed the boat. I can’t do this.”
He tried to stop himself, really, he did, but Jax couldn’t help it. He burst out laughing.
Tom turned away, ready to keep power walking toward the hotel.
“No, no, Tom! I’m sorry. But…do you only ever do things you’re good at?”
“All I do is play hockey or talk about playing hockey.”
Good God, this man. Didn’t he cook meals or do his laundry? Or had he performed some crazy leap of logic to make believe he only cooked meals as fuel for hockey and did his laundry so he’d have clothes to wear to hockey?
“So firstly,” Jax said, “you’re lying. I’ve seen you play cards, listen to music, and watch the news. Secondly, were you born with a magnificent slapshot?”
“No.”
“How did you get good at it?”
Tom crossed his arms like a petulant child in the body of a very large hockey player. “I practiced.”
“And what does that tell you?”
“I can’t just…practice kissing on some guy.”
Practice on me! Jax wanted to shout. He didn’t because he was an adult with self-preservation instincts.
“Actually,” Tom said, peering at Jax under the light of a digital display panel at a bus stop, “could I practice with you?”
Jax opened his mouth to turn Tom down flat. It was a terrible idea. He’d only realized he’d romantically fixated on the man five minutes ago; practice kisses would be a handy exercise in self-flagellation. Which was much more Tom’s deal than Jax’s, whose MO trended toward avoiding pain at all cost.
“It’s perfect,” Tom said before Jax could so much as get to the n of no way. “You know what you’re doing. You can teach me. Neither of us runs any risk of being outed, and you’re not into hockey players, so it can’t get messy.”
Tom had said so many incorrect things in a row Jax didn’t know where to start.
To begin with, no one had ever accused him of knowing what he was doing except for maybe the NHL.
As further evidence for this claim, when Tom stepped in close to him and ducked in for a kiss, Jax did absolutely nothing to stop him.