Chapter 10 #3
It occurred to Jax later how stupid a question that was given they were staying at the same hotel, riding the same team bus, and getting on the same flight.
At the time, his heart had skipped a beat in joy that Tom wanted to see him later.
After a reasonably healthy breakfast of fruit, yogurt, and shredded oats—Jax could not face the thought of more reconstituted scrambled eggs—and enough coffee to replace at least part of his bloodstream, he regained the ability to think rationally.
So he’d had another make-out session with the Crow, and they’d slept in the same bed.
Weirder things had happened. Probably. Somewhere.
So he wanted to go home with Tom, continue where they’d left off, and take him out to dinner during a nice weekend on the coast. It was probably nothing more than a crush.
Jax had a thing about taking care of people, and Tom needed taking care of.
Jax had let his instincts run away with him a little, but he could keep it together and be professional about this.
Tom did not need or want some guy panting after him at work.
Breakfast eaten, Jax sipped his second coffee and distracted himself by scrolling through Instagram on his phone, which was at 12 percent battery after lying in the sheets all night instead of charging like good little phones were supposed to.
Vanessa’s interior design channel still showed at the top of his feed.
Since Breezy had dumped her for being in the mob or something, Jax could probably unfollow.
He did find something about the room transformations she posted hypnotizing.
Every time, she’d start with a perfectly livable room and end with a place where Jax would be scared to sit down on anything in case his butt left a print.
The official NHL channel had posted an interview with the captain of the Magpies and tagged him in it.
He dug an earbud out of his pocket, prayed it was still charged, and pressed Play on the interview.
“Yeah,” Tyson said on the tiny little video.
(They used to keep a tally in the Magpies locker room of how often he said “yeah” in interviews.
When he did it more than ten times, he bought the team a round at the sports bar they frequented.) He was sweaty, his hair the rat king of cowlicks, so this must have been postgame, probably before his shower.
“I mean, as far as I knew, Jax asked for the trade? He didn’t really talk to me about it. ”
Jax closed his eyes. Definitely postgame if they asked him about what Jax had said in his own interview last night.
“He’s not the best at impulse control. Maybe he regrets it now or something.”
The feed cut out then, replaced by the NHL’s blue-and-white logo.
Jax googled the full clip before the audio ended.
There wasn’t much more to it, though, just some talking points about the Magpie’s new second-line center, who couldn’t hold a candle to Jax.
Tyson must have realized immediately after that he shouldn’t gossip about former teammates to the media.
So much for impulse control.
Appetite gone, Jax went back to his hotel room to gather his things before the bus left. He kicked the door shut a bit too loudly, which took some doing as it was one of those doors that fell shut automatically and resisted when he tried to slam it. Poor impulse control. Ugh.
One glance around the hotel room showed the rumpled sheets where Tom had slept, the charger by the bed where Jax hadn’t plugged his phone in last night (because Tom had been here). The beer he’d taken with him to the shower, now empty. The room was a monument to his shitty impulse control.
Couldn’t a man have faults? Sure, he was a bit impetuous, but it had never gotten him in real trouble.
Sometimes, he put his foot in it with the media or spent too much money on something stupid, but he played hockey for a living.
They might as well put those in the job description.
None of that was why he’d left Philly. He’d left Philly because some asshole wanted to blackmail him with pictures of his dick, and once they’d dealt with it, PR decided they wanted no part of a queer hockey player, although Jax knew they’d dealt with worse shit from straight dudes.
Kayleigh, the Sea Lions media rep, might be aggressively perky and into annoying fluff content, but at least she hadn’t called him a liability for something he couldn’t change.
The reasonable, rational voice in the back of his head, which sounded suspiciously similar to Tom asking for tips on how to be a better captain, reminded him that people with decent impulse control didn’t usually have other people blackmailing them with explicit photos.
Jax didn’t particularly want to listen to reason. Reason had never done shit for him.
To prove he had impulse control, instead of bagging the seat next to Tom and maybe holding his hand during takeoff back to California, Jax took the one next to Breezy.
“Oh, good,” Breezy said. “I wanted to run something by you.”
Jax raised an eyebrow, a trick he’d practiced for over an hour in the tiny bathroom at home when he was thirteen. It had served him well ever since.
“So everyone is super fucked up over the whole—” Breezy waved a hand. “—thing.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Like, Howie feels like shit, and Mooney’s super pissed, and I think Luca feels guilty, but he’d never say.”
“Yeah.” Jax leaned against the headrest, closing his eyes.
“And we need to fix it.”
“Don’t see how I can help.”
Breezy punched him in the arm, hard.
“Hey!”
“This is serious, dude.”
Jax opened an eye. “I know. That’s why I’m useless.”
“I don’t know what your deal is today, but you’re the guy who got us from being a bunch of dudes sharing a locker room to a real team. You got Cap talking to us. You got him to talk to the coaches—”
“That was all Tom.”
“Okay, well, it was your influence.”
“And it all turned to shit two months into the season.”
Breezy narrowed his eyes. “This is about the thing the guy from the Magpies said last night, isn’t it?”
Great. So, people had already seen the interview.
“Who cares what he thinks?”
“I do,” Jax snapped. “I should have kept my mouth shut. He’s right about me.”
“Hmm.”
“What?”
“Well, I always kinda thought your interviews were awesome. You just say whatever. Made it feel like you didn’t care what people thought about you.”
Jax swallowed. If he really didn’t care, he’d have come out years ago. He wouldn’t be so miserable every time someone mentioned Philadelphia. The sting of rejection was so sharp, and he hadn’t even enjoyed living there half the year, with the unbearable muggy summers making training camp awful.
But he had to concede Tyson’s point. If he’d had any impulse control, he wouldn’t have spent two evenings in a row kissing Tom until he got so hard he could barely see straight, and he wouldn’t still be desperate for more despite knowing Tom didn’t want that with him.
Tom needed someone who would keep his secrets, not someone liable to lose his shit and spout off at the mouth.
Tyson was right about him.
Philadelphia was right about him. He was a liability.
“So what if you’re impulsive or whatever?” Breezy said, barreling on. “You’re, like, real.”
Jax snorted. If only Breezy knew how real he wasn’t. Better to get off this topic before Jax lost his mind and started telling him truths he couldn’t take back. “What did you want to talk about?”
“I think we need to do something as a team.”
Jax opened his messages and showed Breezy the team chat.
“Thanksgiving at Phil’s house for everyone who’s not going home.
” He’d seen the message last night, before Tom came over, and figured he’d stay home and sulk.
But if it was important for team unity or whatever, he supposed he could make an appearance.
They did have three full days off with only weights and light practices scheduled, a concession after the Montreal-Toronto back-to-back.
“Yeah, I mean, that’s good and all, but I thought…” Breezy sighed and shifted in his seat. “I think we should do something.”
“What, one of those team-building courses? I am not doing trust falls with you fuckers. Especially not on skates.”
“No! I mean, like…charity.”
Surprised, Jax looked directly at Breezy, which was his first mistake. For all he was an absolute tank of a defenseman, Breezy had the biggest, brownest puppy dog eyes Jax had ever seen. Coupled with the thought he’d put into this, Jax crumbled like cheap drywall. “Okay, hit me.”
“Okay.” Breezy cleared his throat and sat up straight. “So, what happened in the locker room in Montreal was shitty. And dumb, and wrong. And Howie’s apologized to us all, but I mean, Howie’s a kid.”
Howie was all of three years younger than Breezy.
“But Hayes hasn’t said anything,” Breezy continued. “And we all started hearing this shit in the room when we’re about twelve, right?”
Jax nodded wordlessly.
“So, now that we’re in the NHL, and we’ve actually made it, I think we should do better. And also help other people do better.”
A burning sensation stung in Jax’s nose and behind his eyes. “Yeah,” he said roughly. “That would be…that would be good.”
“Right, so, um…I know it’s kind of vague so far, but—”
“You’re right. You’re so right. And we can do better. We’re the fucking San Francisco Sea Lions. There’s so many charities for gay rights literally on our doorstep.”
“Oh, yeah.” Breezy scratched his head. “I almost forgot. You know, my mom was super worried when I got drafted to the Sea Lions. I think she thinks the Castro is a den of iniquity or something. She kept going on about what if some beautiful Asian-American ‘transsexual’ seduced me or something.” He used air quotes around his mother’s words, but frankly, there weren’t enough air quotes in the world.
A snort of extremely undignified laughter escaped Jax. “Yikes.”
“I know, right!” Breezy grinned. “I told her it’s transgender now. And also, that I would only fall for Italian dudes.”
“Only you, Breezy.” Jax patted him on the shoulder. “I should take you to a drag show. They would eat you alive.”
“What?” Breezy’s eyes went wide and scared.
“Uh, nothing,” Jax said, attempting to emulate a person who had never been to a drag show. “You were right. This is a really good idea.”
A broad smile spread across Breezy’s face. “Wow. I don’t think anyone has ever said that to me before.”
Jax spent the rest of the flight buried in his phone, looking up charities and sending emails.
It was far more rewarding than his original plan of deep-diving the comments on Tyson’s interview.
Halfway through the trip, he switched to sit next to Kayleigh to talk over what he’d found so far.
She supported the idea enthusiastically.
“Honestly it’s a relief,” she told him as they narrowed down the possible charities.
“I’m running out of ideas for new content I can do with you guys, and it’s only November.
Every time I get Tom in front of a camera, I feel like he’s about to run away.
And then I watch the footage, and I wish he had. ”
Jax wasn’t interested in “content”; he was interested in doing something good. But if content got this project off the ground, he would do it.
He followed Tom off the plane as a matter of course. On the bus ride to Cyberian Arena, he showed Tom the research he’d collected in his notes app and the ideas he and Kayleigh were percolating on.
Tom answered in a series of hums and head movements, which had Jax increasingly concerned.
“Don’t you think this would be good?” he finally asked when they’d disembarked, and Tom had yet to say anything more substantive than “hmm.”
“No, I, uh…” Tom rubbed the back of his neck. “Why don’t you come over so we can keep talking?”