CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“Hey, Tommo! I need to talk to you,” Tanner said to Tom Bass as they skated off the ice after practice two days later.
Leif was back in New York, and they still didn’t really know what they were doing, but Tanner thought maybe Tom could help him figure it out.
Tom looked confused. “Okay? What’s up?”
“I’ll buy you lunch after we finish with stuff here.”
“I’m always up for lunch,” Tom said with a laugh. “But what is this about?”
“I’ll, uh, tell you when we’re at lunch.” Tanner rattled off the name of a nearby restaurant that he knew Tom liked.
“Sure.” Tom looked even more confused. “That sounds good. Let me text Krista to be sure it’ll work for her, okay?”
“Okay.”
Tanner reached for his phone, typing out a text to Leif. Hvng lunch with 1 of da boys. Talk 2nite!
“Okay,” Tanner said when they were at the restaurant later that afternoon and their hot waitress had set their food in front of them. “So I need to figure out something, and I think you can help me.”
Tom still looked amused. “Happy to help if you’ll tell me what’s going on.”
“How do you know if you’re poly?” he asked, stabbing his chicken pasta with a fork. Fuck, he was starving.
“Oh.” Tom blinked. “For some reason, I didn’t think that was where this was going.”
“Where did you think it was going?” Tanner glanced up, catching the eye of a pretty blonde woman who took a seat at the table beside them.
“Don’t worry about it. Anyway, one thing to remember is that the community is trying to move away from using the word poly. Some Polynesian people feel that it is their word for their community.”
“Uhh,” Tanner said. “Honestly, I don’t even know what Polynesian people are.”
Tom smiled. “The indigenous people of the Polynesian islands. Like Hawaii, New Zealand—”
The blonde woman narrowed her eyes, like she was maybe trying to figure out if she recognized him. Boston fans were usually pretty chill, and Tanner hoped she wouldn’t come over and interrupt their conversation. It was kinda important.
Tanner realized Tom had stopped talking and hurriedly said, “Ohh, gotcha. So they use the word poly?” and hoped he’d still been talking about the Hawaiian people or whatever.
“Yes.”
“Cool. So what does the other poly group use now then? The multiple relationships one.”
“Polyam, usually.”
“Oh, okay.”
“I usually forget, to be honest,” Tom admitted with a crooked smile. “Krista is always reminding me.”
“Polyam,” Tanner repeated so it would maybe stick in his head.
“Anyway,” Tom cleared his throat. “You have questions about how Krista and I figured out were polyamorous?”
“Yeah. So like, don’t tell anyone on the team. It’s a secret. But there’s this guy I’ve been seeing, and he wants to be exclusive, but I’ve never been exclusive with anyone, and it’s got me wondering if I’m actually, like, poly—uh, polyam, or if I just haven’t tried monogamy. Like, ever.”
“Okay, so let me be sure I’ve got this squared away in my head,” Tom said. “Things are starting to get serious with this guy and you’re trying to navigate the boundaries of your relationship.”
“Sure,” Tanner said even though he wasn’t entirely sure he knew what all of that meant?
“And you’ve never been in a monogamous relationship before?”
“Right.”
“Has he?”
“Uhh, I think so,” Tanner said. “I mean, I don’t think he’s ever been super serious about anyone, but he tends to focus on one person at a time when he’s dating or hooking up or whatever.”
“Got it.” Tom cleared his throat. “So, well, do you think it’s possible you could love more than one person at a time?”
“Sure,” Tanner said with a shrug. “I don’t see why not.”
“But you haven’t personally had multiple romantic partners at once, right?”
“Right. Well, I haven’t had any romantic partners, to be honest.” Tanner grinned. “Your boy has been having funnn.”
Tom shot him an amused smile. “Multiple sexual partners?”
Tanner laughed. “Fuck yeah!”
“How would you feel about talking about those experiences with other people with the guy you’re seeing?”
“I mean, I think we need to get better at talking about shit in general, but I’d be fine with that. I think it would be fun.”
“How would you feel about hearing about other partners he had?”
“Oh I’d be up for it,” Tanner said. “I’ve kinda tried talking about it before, but he never seems into talking about it with me. And he—”
“One thing at a time. How would you feel about him having a primary partner other than you? Someone he lived with and—”
“I’d fucking hate it!” Tanner said, so forcefully that he felt as surprised as Tom looked.
The blonde woman glanced up again, then looked away.
“Didn’t know that about yourself until now, huh?” Tom asked drily.
“Nope.” Tanner lowered his voice and thought about it some more. “Yeah, I don’t like that shit at all. Thinking about him living with someone else, texting them instead of me when something big happened, sleeping next to them every night, yeah no. No fucking way.”
Tom grinned. “Well, you’ve found your first boundary. So how would you feel about having him as your primary partner?”
“I’m into it,” Tanner said as he pictured it. “But uh, it’s complicated. We don’t live in the same city.”
Tom grimaced. “That is more complicated.”
“I know, right?” And Tom didn’t even know the fucking half of it.
“Are you open to having other sexual or romantic partners along with your primary partner?”
“But he doesn’t—”
Tom held up a hand. “This isn’t about what he wants right now.
This is about you. You need to figure out what you need and want and where you’re willing to compromise.
That’s the real secret of relationship success, Tanner.
Knowing what’s a hard boundary and what isn’t and being able to talk about it. ”
Tanner nodded. “Then okay. Yeah, I think I’d be cool with that.”
“What if he had other sexual or romantic partners? Not primary ones. Just … in addition.”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, that’s a good one to think about more then.”
“True.” Tanner was silent a minute before he sighed. “This is a lot. Holy shit.”
“I know. Especially right now.”
“Yeah, fuck,” Tanner agreed. “The playoffs and this shit? Dude.”
“And that, my man, is how you know it’s love,” Tom said with little wink.
He was right. If this had been anyone else, Tanner would have already bounced so he could focus on hockey. But Leif?
Yeah, for Leif, Tanner would figure this shit out.
Later that night, Leif’s stomach cramped as he waited for the video call with Tanner to connect. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see him—he very much did—but they’d agreed to give it a few days to think about what they wanted before they talked more.
Some of that time had been occupied by flying back to New York and practicing and preparing for the upcoming playoff games, but a lot of it had been spent thinking about what to say to Tanner.
It wasn’t that Leif didn’t trust that Tanner loved him and wanted to be with him.
He was just afraid that they weren’t going to be able to figure out how to be together.
He didn’t want Tanner to be unhappy trying to be someone he wasn’t.
But he didn’t want to make himself miserable trying to be someone he wasn’t either.
And right now it felt like there were more reasons they wouldn’t work together than reasons they would.
The call connected and Leif’s heart ached at the sight of Tanner on the screen. He was wearing his Harriers hoodie, his curls were kinda messy, and his eyes were soft and oh fuck, Leif was so in love with him it hurt.
“Hi,” he whispered.
“Hi.” Tanner looked at him, his gaze open and earnest. “I want to be with you.”
“I want to be with you too,” Leif admitted, kind of relieved that Tanner had jumped right into things. As much as his bluntness had driven Leif crazy, he kinda appreciated it now. “But fuck, Tanner, how do we do this?”
“Well, I talked to someone on the team today?”
“What?” Leif yelped, a spike of adrenaline hitting hard and fast.
“No! Shit, no,” Tanner said with a grimace, “Not about you or who you are. I didn’t even say that you were a hockey player.”
“What did you say?” Leif frowned at him.
“Just that there was a guy I cared about and he lived in another city.” Tanner looked down. “And that I, uh, wasn’t sure if I’m poly—uh, polyam or not. Just so you know, we should use polyam instead of poly so Hawaiian people don’t get upset.”
“Oh.” Leif settled back against the pillow, somewhat confused about where Hawaiian people came into the conversation, but he’d worry about that part later. “But you think you might be?”
“Well,” Tanner said slowly. “Like, the idea of falling love with multiple people or having multiple relationships, that seems possible to me.”
“It isn’t possible for me,” Leif whispered.
“I know. You can’t even picture it, can you?”
Leif shook his head. “I want—I want a partner. Singular. Not multiple people. Not both of us seeing other people. That sounds stressful. And exhausting. How would we even do that when we live in other cities and play on different teams?”
“We wouldn’t always have to live in other cities and play on different teams,” Tanner pointed out.
Another jolt went through Leif, and he sat up straight again. “What?”
“I mean, think about it,” Tanner said. “The Rockets have your contract locked down already but I’m gonna be an RFA.”
“Shit, I didn’t even think about your free agency status,” Leif said.
“So like, it’s not impossible that I could end up … somewhere else.”
Somewhere else could also be much much farther than the distance between New York and Boston. They could be in different conferences. Different coasts or countries even. Leif felt a little sick.
“Do you want to go somewhere else?”
Tanner smiled. “Nah. Not really. I’d love to stay in Boston my whole career, but c’mon, let’s be realistic.
I’m not Connor O’Shea. And honestly, Connor isn’t going to be captain forever.
His shoulder is pretty fucked, and he needs surgery and there’s no telling if he’ll make it back and who knows what the team will be like then. ”
“True. So what are you saying?”