Chapter 11 #2
With Jax, being aroused became not a problem in need of solving but a natural consequence of skin and mouths and sparking heat. Tom found himself savoring the feeling without wanting or needing it to end.
“Like you want me to tie you to the goddamn bed and make you come so much you pass out,” Jax snapped all in one breath, aroused and angry at the same time.
“Oh,” Tom said, then checked his phone. It was already eleven thirty. “I told Phil I’d bring stuffing, so we need to go to a store. I don’t think we have time.”
Jax made a wordless noise of frustration. “Stuffing takes hours to make. What—”
“I was going to buy the ready-made kind.”
“Absolutely not.”
So, Tom followed Jax through the grocery store two blocks from his building. He’d never made stuffing—why, when it was literally the furthest he could get from adhering to his meal plan—so he had no idea what Jax needed.
Instead, he turned over what Jax had said in his mind.
Just because Tom hadn’t done most of the things his teammates talked about when they were two or three beers in didn’t mean he remained ignorant of them.
He’d always found it somewhat distasteful when they talked about bondage.
It was always “she let me tie her to the bed with my game day tie,” or “I gagged her with my socks.” It sounded disgusting for the girl involved.
Hockey player socks smelled awful, and a washing machine could only accomplish so much.
It also sounded as if it would be a lot of work, tying someone up and then having to think of things to do to them.
Rarely had teammates mentioned doing it the other way around, but even then, the phrasing left something to be desired. One time, Vanderbilt bragged about an extramarital hookup by saying, “I let her put me in handcuffs.”
The way Jax had said it didn’t sound as if Tom would be letting him do anything. It didn’t sound as if Tom would be in control. It sounded as though Jax would take the reins and do whatever he wanted to Tom, and Tom could lie there and take it.
“What are you smiling about?” Jax asked, dumping a truly ridiculous amount of celery in the shopping cart. No one even liked celery, which was nothing but crunchy water, only more unpleasantly so than cucumbers and lettuce.
“Thinking about what you said before.”
“What did I—oh.”
For a minute, they stared at each other, Tom’s cheeks going hot. He wondered idly if Jax would forget about everything and take him back home.
But he turned around and started piling herbs on top of his celery.
The nice thing about being distracted by thoughts about sex was that Tom didn’t worry about much of anything else.
They took Tom’s car from the garage under his Palo Alto apartment, where it had been since the last time he’d driven to Phil’s.
He didn’t need it to get to the practice rink since he lived next door to it, and he usually took rideshares to Cyberian Arena for games, unwilling to deal with the traffic when he had to get his head in the game.
Going to Phil’s house, a newish construction in Cole Valley he and Camille had completely redone when they moved in, meant a good half-hour drive through the city.
It was a lot more fun with Jax in the passenger seat, fiddling with the air conditioning and complaining about every radio DJ in the Bay Area.
He only remembered he had things to worry about when Phil asked, “You came here together?”
Things like being seen with Jax. Being close to Jax. People knowing he spent time alone with Jax.
Because Jax wanted to work with queer charities. Because Jax would come out at some point, and Tom wouldn’t.
Panic quickened his breath, and before he could come up with an excuse, Jax spoke up.
“Yeah, we both live near the rink, and I don’t have a car yet. Made sense. You should thank me for it. This guy wanted to buy a hockey team’s worth of supermarket stuffing.”
Phil wrinkled his nose. “Ew, Tom.”
“What? I don’t know how to make stuffing.”
“It’s Thanksgiving.”
“Not in—”
“We’re not in Canada,” Jax interrupted. “How are you at onions?”
Tom blinked. “Fine?”
Jax eyed him. “So, the same as you are with bell peppers?”
“Yup.”
In the end, Phil and Tom sat at the kitchen table, drinking beer and watching Jax chop vegetables. Phil had ordered out for the turkey and assigned sides to everyone who RSVP’d, meaning he only needed to put out plates and silverware.
“Why didn’t I get a side?” Jax asked, midway through cracking an obscene number of eggs into a mixing bowl.
“I didn’t think you could cook,” Phil admitted. “You didn’t seem the type.”
“Oh, so you just assigned the most important side dish to Tom, who you know can’t cook.”
“Tom can cook,” Phil argued loyally. “I’ve seen him make at least one thing.”
Jax pulled open three different drawers until he found a wire whisk and then shot them both a look of extreme skepticism.
“Where did you learn to cook anyway?” Tom appreciated watching Jax move around the kitchen, very in charge. Feeling rebellious for even entertaining the thought, Tom acknowledged it was pretty hot.
“My dad’s a line cook at a diner. Or he used to be. I guess he’s the owner now.”
“Huh.” Tom’s dad was an investment banker. He couldn’t imagine either of his parents doing anything involving getting their hands dirty.
“I used to work shifts with him when I needed money for new hockey gear. And in the summers.”
Phil’s eyebrows shot up. Much like Tom, his family was upper-middle-class enough that hockey gear had never been an issue. Also, much like Tom, he didn’t talk to them when he could avoid it.
For lack of anything better to say, Tom threw in, “Cool.”
Phil asked, “So how’d the road trip go? Why’d you all fuck up Toronto so badly?”
Tom dropped his forehead to the table.
It took the better part of an hour to tell Phil about everything, from the line changes leading to Hayes’s outburst to Howie’s apology tour to the communication shutdown leading to their massive loss in Toronto, ending with Breezy and Jax’s master plan.
“Wow.” Phil said. “This will be a fun evening. Why did no one warn me? Heck, why didn’t— Where was Morris in all this?”
Jax shrugged. He finally finished assembling the stuffing, using every ovenproof dish Phil owned. After topping it all in a truly concerning amount of butter, he pushed it into the oven. Thankfully, Phil had one of those designer kitchens with the oven at waist height.
“Around,” Tom said. “I don’t think he heard any of the…racist, homophobic parts?”
Phil grunted in displeasure and levered himself out of his chair in his crutches. At least he had crutches now, a definite improvement from ten days ago when Tom had last seen him.
Jax took his vacated seat and cracked open a beer, then made a face. “Light beers. Blech.”
“You’re a massive hedonist, aren’t you?” Tom realized.
Jax glanced away shiftily.
“I mean, the hotel pillows, the reconstituted egg thing, the beer…”
“Okay, I know you think life will reward you for denying yourself or something, but some of us can enjoy nice things and win awards.”
Tom opened his mouth, but he couldn’t get any words out.
Pointing at him and narrowing his eyes, Jax went on. “And I know you feel the same way about the eggs and the hotel beds. I’ve seen your couch. Talk about hedonism.”
“I…” Tom looked down.
“I’ll make you enjoy life if it kills me.”
He was about to ask Jax what enjoying life would entail and if it could involve tying him to the bed when they were mercifully interrupted.
“…this is exactly the sort of shit a coach is there for, Ben. What were you doing?” Phil’s voice and the uneven thump of his crutches preceded him by mere seconds before he returned to the kitchen, Coach Morris in tow.
“I can’t do my job if I have to spend all day babysitting temperamental hockey players!”
“Babysitting temperamental hockey players is your job.”
“Phil—”
“Nope. You’re doing Thanksgiving with us, and you’re going to solve this clusterfuck.”
“Phil.”
“We all want a functional hockey team, don’t we?”
Phil stared Tom and Jax down until they agreed.
With a sigh, Coach Morris fell into place next to Jax. He wore glasses and a T-shirt with a graphic of a seal making a thumbs-up gesture with its fin. The caption read, “Seal of Approval.” Tom wondered if they sold that in the merch store now or if Morris just happened to have it.
“Stuffing smells good,” Morris said.
“Uh…” Tom wasn’t sure if he was allowed to ask, but he didn’t see how he couldn’t.
“My apartment is being renovated,” Morris said. “I moved in here to help Easton until his knee is better. Win-win.”
Given what Tom knew about how long it took to rehab an ACL tear, the renovations must be set to last a long time, but at least Phil wouldn’t be alone.
Phil maneuvered his way onto a stool next to Jax, and Morris wordlessly pushed the spare chair into place for him to put his leg up.
Their silent interaction, more than anything Morris had said, convinced Tom he’d done the right thing in letting Coach know Phil needed help.
Morris remained a mystery in terms of coaching style, neither authoritarian like Trout nor interested in the team’s psychological wellbeing like Edwards.
Tom wished he could get a sense of Morris as a player to help him understand, but the highest level he’d reached before switching to coaching was college hockey in Utah, which no one filmed in the early 2000s.
“So the new lines were a bad idea,” Morris summarized.
“No!” shouted all three hockey players in the room.
“Luca really is good,” Phil said. “Did you see his assist in the third period in Montreal?” He whistled. “He plays smart. That’s a defenseman who can stop goals going in and rack up his own points while he’s at it.”
“But Hayes—”
“Jimmy’s thirty-one,” Phil said bluntly. “He’s not bad, but he’s slowing down, and if he can’t accept playing less minutes for the good of the team, it might be time to pursue other options.”