9. Adrian
I fled Nicky’s apartment like the building was on fire.
Not left. Not departed. Fled. I woke up on a couch that wasn’t mine, under a blanket I didn’t remember pulling over myself, with a glass of water and two ibuprofen on the coffee table that I definitely did not place there.
Where the fuck am I? Oh shit, I need to puke.
And then the memories started trickling back like water through a cracked dam. Each one worse than the last.
The club. Dancing with Sabrina. Stumbling upstairs. Nicky’s shoulder under my arm.
Oh fuck.
My boots were by the door. Unlaced. Placed neatly side by side on the mat like little soldiers.
He had taken off my boots like I was a child.
I shoved my feet into them without lacing them, grabbed my jacket off the floor, and let myself out as quietly as combat boots would allow. Took the stairs two at a time because if Nicky appeared in that doorway right now I was throwing myself down the stairwell.
Outside, the cold sliced through some of my brain fog.
Three things became clear simultaneously. One: I was still drunk. The hangover was circling like a shark but for now my blood alcohol was high enough that the sidewalk had a gentle rolling quality I did not trust.
Two: my phone was dead.
Three: I had no idea where I was. My entire mental map of Toronto consisted of Cam's apartment, Renaud's rink, and the sushi place halfway between them.
No phone. Yesterday's clothes. Smelling like a distillery had a baby with a nightclub. No sense of direction—geographically or emotionally. I looked, to anyone with eyes, like a guy doing the textbook walk of shame.
Except nothing happened. Nothing happened because there was nothing to happen. I got wasted and got carried home by a guy who couldn’t stand me, and he was cool about it because Nicky was annoyingly cool about everything. He probably felt sorry for my drunk ass.
The memory hit me out of nowhere.
Nicky's face above me. Glasses still on. That careful, patient look.
You're so beautiful.
I groaned out loud, alone on some random Toronto sidewalk, and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes like I could shove the memory back into whatever whisky soaked hole it crawled out of.
Prince beautiful. It’s annoying.
Oh fuck.
I like looking at you.
My inside thoughts. Those were my inside thoughts.
The ones that lived in the locked, alarmed, heavily fortified vault inside my brain.
The shit I didn’t even admit to myself, let alone say out loud.
And apparently six whisky sours was the exact dosage required to blow the vault door off its hinges.
I was going to kill Sabrina for letting me drink that much.
No—I was going to kill drunk Adrian. That guy was a menace. A loose cannon with no filter and absolutely zero respect for sober Adrian’s wellbeing.
A taxi appeared at the end of the street like a small yellow miracle. I flagged it down with the frantic energy of a man fleeing a crime scene.
“Where to?” The driver looked at me in the rearview with a pinched expression.
I gave him the cross streets for the rink because it was the only address my panicked brain could produce. The taxi pulled into traffic and the swaying motion made my stomach clench.
Do not vomit in the taxi, Adrian.
I pressed my forehead against the cold window and breathed through my nose. The driver glanced at me again. I gave him what I hoped was a reassuring look. He turned back to the road with the resignation of a man already calculating the cleaning fee.
I made it. Barely.
Paid with crumpled cash from my jacket pocket. Stumbled onto the sidewalk outside the rink. Stood there sucking cold air until my stomach downgraded from emergency to manageable.
The rink was closed. Obviously. The clock on the bank across the street said 6:20. I needed to get home, shower off the shame, and hopefully develop amnesia before Monday.
I started walking.
◆◆◆
The thing about being still drunk was that the memories kept surfacing in little bursts. Each one arriving with a jolt of mortification.
The way Nicky had watched me from the booth. Club soda in hand, glasses on, eyes following me across the dance floor while I ground against Sabrina like I had something to prove.
Sabrina had been oblivious. She was just there to dance and have fun, the way Sabrina approached most things in life.
She knew I was gay. It didn’t occur to her that the guy pressing against her on the dance floor was using her as a prop in some stupid game she hadn’t signed up for, because why would it? Normal people didn’t do that.
But I’d been watching Nicky watch us. The tightening jaw.
The white knuckled grip on his club soda.
The way he’d suddenly become very interested in his phone.
And some drunk, reckless part of me had leaned into Sabrina harder, whispered something stupid in her ear, let my hands settle lower on her hips—all to see what he’d do.
To see if that golden composure would crack.
To see if there was a real person in there with real reactions instead of the polite, measured, carefully calibrated responses he gave everyone.
I’d taken it too far. I knew that. The alcohol had turned a stupid impulse into a full performance and as the buzz began to wear off and the cold settled into my bones, I couldn’t even explain why I cared so much about getting a reaction out of him in the first place.
That was the part that nagged at me. I didn’t know why Nicky occupied so much of my headspace.
Didn’t know why it pissed me off when people took advantage of his kindness when I was no better.
Didn’t know why I’d spent an entire evening trying to get a rise out of him when I could have just had a good time and ignored him like a normal human being.
And despite my dickish behavior, he still helped me. The warmth of his body against mine on the stairs. His shoulder, steady and patient. Holding me up despite everything I’d done that night to make his life harder.
His face in the lamplight, looking down at me with something I didn’t expect. Something that didn’t match the careful composure he showed everyone else.
I needed to reset. Get back to normal. Focus on skating, focus on the season, stop playing games with a person who didn’t deserve to be played with.
I had an Olympic medal to chase. I didn’t have time for whatever this was.
I was going to show up on Monday. Act like nothing happened. Everything would be fine.
And I was almost drunk enough to believe it.