Chapter 35
Grady
I decide I’m not going to answer the knock on the door. I don’t even get up off the couch to look through the peephole. I just keep staring at my television, forcing myself to watch a stupid soccer game I give zero shits about. The person knocks again.
Something tugs at my conscience. What if it’s Angie? What if she has the results? What if she needs help or isn’t feeling well? What if…
I start to move, then stop myself. No. Angie is tenacious. If she really wants me, she’ll call. And then my phone pings, and I grab it off the coffee table. It’s not Angie or that asshole Landon.
ABBOTT: Are you home? I’m knocking.
This must be a team thing, so I get up and walk down the hall. Abbott has no other reason to be here. I open the door, and he steps inside. “Hey. We have to talk. A lot is going on, and I don’t want you to find out from the news or in a group chat.”
“What?” I ask, confused.
“Landon is in the hospital.”
My heart stops. “What? Why?”
My head flies to the absolute worst possible scenario. He’s sick. His cancer is back. I’m going to lose him.
Abbott puts a hand on my shoulder. “It’s not cancer. I mean, not necessarily. He had an attack of vertigo. His sister was at his place and called an ambulance. He’s at Southern Maine Med now. His ex called the coach to inform him that he can’t play tonight. Did you know she’s around again?”
“Yeah. I knew.” I scrub my face with my palm. “What causes vertigo?”
“Lots of things can,” Abbott says, but I’m already Googling it on my phone. “Grady, don’t. The last thing you need right now is Web MD making this worse.”
The results are, in fact, terrifying, because my brain latches onto the worst thing on the list of possibilities. I look at Abbott. “Brain cancer. Can leukemia lead to brain cancer? Did it spread and nobody knew?”
“It can be as simple as a crystal in his ear canal, Grady,” Abbott says. “And we have a game tonight, remember? You need to focus. He’ll likely be home by the time the game is over. You can go visit him then.”
“Unless this is brain cancer.” My stomach turns sour.
“You just lost what little color you have. Come. Sit down.” He grabs my elbow and pushes me toward the bench in the hall where I put on and take off my boots.
I lower myself onto it. Abbott keeps his hand on my shoulder and squeezes.
“Do not panic until there’s official word it’s something to panic about, okay? ”
“I make no promises.”
“You have real feelings for him, don’t you?” Abbott asks.
I look up at him, and the urge to finally be honest with someone is overwhelming. “Yeah. I do. And I fucked it all up.”
Abbott’s smile is filled with sympathy. “I figured the tussle Deveau said you guys got into was about this. Grady, you’re your own worst enemy, you know that?”
“I think it’s become clear.”
“Why don’t you make me a coffee and tell me everything?” Abbott suggests. “As your friend and your captain who needs to figure out what the hell I can do to help bring some peace back between my best goalie and my best defenseman.”
I nod. If I can be honest with anyone, Abbott’s the one. He’s always been an ally.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Abbott has been stunned into silence.
He knows I’ve had a thing for Landon for over a year.
He knows that I accepted an invitation from Angie to have a threesome with them.
He knows that after Angie and Landon broke up, I volunteered to let him use me to explore his sexuality.
He knows we talked about actually having a relationship.
He knows Angie showed up, pregnant, and we don’t know for certain who’s the dad, and he knows I think it’s Landon, and I told them they should get back together.
“Wow. Man… you two have really tried your best to make this as complicated as humanly possible,” he finally says with a wry smile. “No wonder you’ve both been a little unpredictable on the ice lately.”
I run my hands through my hair and tug on the ends as I stand to pace. The ocean outside my window is rolling with big, aggressive waves. The beach looks cold and bleak, the same way I feel. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Are you looking for suggestions?”
“Sure.”
“Even if you don’t want to hear it?”
I nod. Abbott presses a finger to his closed lips and inhales, clearly trying to figure out where to begin and how to say what he’s thinking. “Abbott, just say it. Bluntly. I’m drowning in panic and guilt.”
“What I think you should do is go to the rink and play this game,” he begins. “And then go find Landon. Have Angie text you updates so you know if he’s home or still in the hospital. And then tell him, clearly, how you feel about him.”
“I don’t know if I can get a minute alone with him,” I reply, still pacing in front of the window. “If I wait until after the game, his parents will probably be here. And you said his sister was here? And maybe his brother will show up.”
“I’m not finished with the uncomfortable advice.”
“Sorry.”
“What you said is part of what makes it uncomfortable, Grady. Because if you care about him the way I think you do, who the fuck cares who hears you say it?” he asks, and I open my mouth to argue, but he holds up a hand to silence me.
“Then you guys find out the paternity, and you go to our little PR dynamo Kendra and you tell her which one of you is becoming a father. You get in front of this before the media does. She doesn’t have to do an announcement, but she can at least prepare if the media finds out.
But honestly, I would let her announce it because no kids should come into the world a dirty little secret. ”
“It’s Landon’s kid. I know it.”
“Okay. Whatever. Tell him this part then.”
I stop pacing. My skin feels cold. “What if he’s sick again? What if it’s worse than leukemia?”
Abbott’s expression softens. “What if it is? Would you want to spend what time you get with him hiding from everyone?”
Whoa. My perspective shifts so suddenly and entirely that I lose my breath. My hand moves to my chest, and I feel my heart slamming viciously against my rib cage. “My family…”
“Your family will love you anyway.”
“Not my mom’s parents.”
“Then fuck them,” Abbott stands. “I wish I’d only lost grandparents when I came out. I’ve been no contact with every member of my family except my sister since I was a teenager, Grady. I’m still standing. I’m still thriving. And I get to love Declan for the rest of my life. No regrets.”
“I saw the way the media still, to this day, tries to make your sexuality your entire personality,” I argue.
“Like when you’re a gay athlete, nothing else matters.
Not how you play, not what charities you support, not your accomplishments.
Just last week, one of the top sports podcasts said ‘Abbott Barlowe, the first openly gay player in the league, scored the winning goal in overtime.”
He shrugs. His expression is light, unbothered. “And I heard the same podcast say ‘Grady Garrison gave us a perfect example of why we call the Garrisons Hockey Royalty when he stopped sixteen shots in the final period, securing the W for the Riptide.’”
I heard that too. He smiles when I don’t say anything and drives home his point. “You’ve spent your life having an asterisk next to your career—Grady Garrison, another crown prince of hockey—who gives a shit if they add another one?”
Fuck, I wish it were as easy as he makes it sound. But my heart is twisted into a ball so tight my whole chest aches. And I can’t decide if it’s because I’m terrified of coming out or losing Landon.
Abbott sighs. “Just give what I said some thought. Real, honest reflection.”
“I will,” I promise myself and him.
After Abbott leaves, I call Angie, a rarity since I’m the king of texting, but this is bigger than a text.
“He’s okay,” Angie says without even a hello. “They’re running a bunch of tests to make sure it’s nothing serious, but he’s fine right now.”
“Are you with him? Can I talk to him?”
“Hold on.” My heart untwists itself enough to begin fluttering in my chest until Angie’s voice comes back on the line. “Sorry. He’s being a little bitch and says he doesn’t want to talk to you right now.”
“Ever,” I hear Landon say in the background.
“Fuck,” I whisper.
“It’ll work out, Grady. He just needs a minute,” Angie assures me. Her confidence does nothing to lift the despair cloaking me.
“Keep me posted?”
“Sure thing.”
I end the call and stare out the window for a heartbeat, and then I dial the coach’s number.
“Garrison?” he says.
“I know about Landon.”
“I was just getting ready to send a team email. Kendra is putting out a press release,” Coach Larue explains. “We’re downplaying it. Saying he’s under the weather. No need to freak anyone out. Yet.”
“I can’t play tonight,” I say. “I need to be with him.”
“I know he’s your friend. We’re all worried, Garrison, but we can’t afford to be down a goalie,” Coach tells me what I already know.
“He’s not my friend. Not just my friend.
” Oh my God, am I actually doing this? I can’t do this.
I can’t. And then… “It’s more than friendship, and I would be of no use to you tonight because of that.
If it was Abbott’s husband in the hospital or Dobrev’s girlfriend, you’d let them take the night off.
This is… the same thing. I’m sorry. I know this is… completely unexpected.”
“I… oh. I…” Coach stops talking for so long, I wonder if we’ve been disconnected or if he’s hung up. “I had no idea.”
“I know. No one knows, and I would really prefer to keep it that way. Especially because I haven’t told my family anything.” I swallow. “But Coach, this might be serious, and I can’t not be there for him.”
“Well, fuck,” Coach says. “I’ll let Kendra know that the flu has taken out two players, and I’ll figure out an EBUG.”
An EBUG is an emergency goalie, since teams only carry two, and both have to be present at the games. I thank Coach Larue, and then he says, very solemnly, “I’m going to need you to have a sit-down conversation with me when all this is cleared up.”
“I understand. Thank you.”
“Give him all our best.”
“Will do.”
The call ends, and I finally take a breath. For the first time in my life, I’ve told someone who I really am. And the world didn’t implode. Not yet.