3. Nate #3
And while I kept Carter firmly out of my thoughts for most of the day — charting out this season’s plans with the assistant coaches was a good distraction — it was harder to ignore him during the drills.
Seeing him in his full gear, moving swiftly between the players, and exhibiting a great deal of Dana’s unique moves and traits tickled some images from our dawn encounter.
Having to keep my eyes on his body as he glided across the smooth ice certainly didn’t help me forget what he looked like in those green boxers.
At the end of the day, I returned to the soulless apartment to mix myself a drink.
It wasn’t a cocktail I’d ever tried to make before, but it would do.
Based on whiskey and with a few similar smoky flavors and a coffee bean, it wasn’t my favorite.
I swiped through my notifications while sitting on a tall chair and leaning against the kitchen island’s counter.
The subtle lights in the room were comforting to my eyes, but the blinding blue light of the screen caused a throb of headache in the front of my skull.
One of the notifications was the damned Grindr ping from this morning.
Some random guy with a profile as empty of personal information as mine had dropped me a photo that I shouldn’t have opened.
Rolling my eyes, I blocked the guy and scrolled around.
The red dot indicating visitors made me tap on it instinctively, and I scrolled through the profiles that had checked me out.
Not that there was anything to look at here.
Instead of any dirty or creative nickname, my profile simply displayed my age, height, and weight.
I debated removing the latter two because they were pointless identifiers to me.
Superficial decisions about not dating anyone under six feet or of a certain weight were the fastest way to bore me to death and kill the conversation.
Then again, I wasn’t dating anyone, so I couldn’t claim to be the authority on how people should do it.
I just knew I didn’t care for people who were exclusive about something so irrelevant.
I stopped scrolling and almost choked on a sip of my shitty attempt at a new hobby. My hand jerked away from the phone like it was a venomous viper. I stared at the square picture of a visitor to my profile and counted the hours to get the time stamp.
It was Carter.
Without opening his profile at all, I saw his head and torso photographed in front of a mirror.
He had that cheeky grin of his and a daring look in his eyes as if to tempt me to hit him up.
Not me, exactly, but the visitors. And he had looked at my profile sixteen hours ago, around when we had been in the same gym. Just the two of us.
My heart pounded, and my mouth burned from whiskey.
He could pick me out even if the gym had been brimming with college students.
Thirty-eight years old, six foot four, a hundred and ninety pounds.
God dammit. I was a tragically stupid man.
Had I seriously thought those numbers wouldn’t be enough for someone who knew me to put the pieces together?
Besides, we had been the only two people in the locker room and the entire gym, aside from the girl who worked at the desk and was unlikely to pass herself as a middle-aged man on a gay hookup app.
Simply seeing that I was ten feet away from him would have been enough for Carter to identify me.
Breathe, I snapped at myself. It was hard to obey that simple command when my chest collapsed. As if a piano dropped on my head, I was completely stunned.
Before I could think about it, I tapped on Carter’s profile, forced myself not to hesitate to look at the large gallery of images he had posted, and blocked him immediately.
I would not look at a student of mine. Not even if he was the most attractive person I had ever seen.
And especially not since his visit to my profile obviously only meant he had discovered the truth about me.
I walked my mind back to the drills. The grins he shot me between his turns were nothing unusual. He hadn’t dropped any hints that he knew.
Even so, I didn’t want to attract his attention. If he looked for me here, he wouldn’t find me. With time, he would begin to doubt if it had even been me. But just to be sure, I removed the remaining information from my profile.
I’d had a lifetime of hooking up discreetly and protecting my name and brand from the truth that would lose me far too many fans.
Envy glimmered deep in me. It soured my insides.
These boys were lucky. I was happy for them.
I was. But twenty years ago, I couldn’t have imagined being so free with kissing a guy in front of a crowd or, God forbid, posting my half-nude photos on a hookup app without an attempt to hide my identity.
Carter should have been smarter than this. There were nasty people out there who’d find a way to use this to embarrass him and belittle him, hinder his rise to stardom, and hurt his father. No, not the last one, I scolded myself. Nobody should change how they live to suit their parents.
But he still needed to be careful.
He was young and beautiful. He had the best years still ahead of him. If he wasn’t careful, he could make a blunder with the wrong person. He risked not just his career or reputation but his health and his mental well-being.
And I was in no place to give him advice. Not only would I not reveal to him that he’d discovered the truth, but I was an aging closet case who was in no position to lecture anyone. I’d let my life run me over. What were my words worth to someone who was living his life on his own terms?