4. Gideon
Gideon
I stared at the space where Ryan had been, still trying to work out what I’d done wrong.
We’d been laughing, and he had cheese on his chin, and I reached across with a napkin without thinking about it, and then he looked at me like I’d taken a swing at him.
Maybe I crossed a line I didn’t know was there.
Whatever it was, I scared him, and that thought followed me out of the food court and stuck.
I wasn’t here for pretzels or for Ryan, even if running into him had turned out to be the best part of my afternoon.
The charity dinner was coming up fast, and the email from team ops had made it clear my high school graduation suit wasn’t going to cut it.
The department store sat at the far end of the mall, rack after rack of blue and gray suits that all looked the same to me.
I was still pretending I knew the difference when a sales assistant found me, a tape measure looped around her neck.
“Looking for anything in particular?”
“A suit.”
“I gathered.” She smiled. “For a special event?”
“It’s for a special event.” I left it there.
“Perfect, let’s get you measured.” She waved me toward the fitting area, and I barely turned before someone said my name.
“Gideon?”
Ryan stood a few yards off, breathing hard as if he’d hurried the whole way, the small striped shopping bag crushed against his chest so tight the paper handles had folded under his fingers. His face was pale.
“You okay?” I asked. “I’m sorry if I did something that—”
“No, you didn’t.” Ryan cut in before I could finish. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
“Sure.” The sales assistant took the hint and drifted off to give us space.
“It’s not for a friend,” Ryan said, lifting the bag. “The makeup. There isn’t a Penny. I don’t even know anyone called Penny.” He laughed, but nothing about it was funny. Then he looked up at me straight on, as if he was daring me to say something. “It’s for me.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, not right away. He stood there holding my gaze as if he was waiting for me to laugh or call him weird or worse.
“Did you think I’d—” I stopped and started again.
“In the food court. I didn’t mean to touch you like that.
I wasn’t going to hurt you.” I’d always been the biggest guy in any room, six-four and built the way wingers get built after enough years taking hits along the boards, and standing there I wanted to fold myself down smaller, take up less space, not loom over him the way I clearly had.
“I know that, but my brain—” Ryan tapped his temple.
“So, you’re saying that you like wearing makeup,” I said, careful with it.
He tipped his chin, and there was determination in his expression, but maybe a flicker of fear. “Yes.”
“Okay.”
His forehead creased as if that wasn’t the answer he’d braced for. “That’s it?”
“I mean, yeah.”
“I wear eyeliner. I wear dresses. I’m gender fluid.” He threw the words out one after another, watching me for every flicker.
“Okay,” I said again.
“You don’t think it’s weird?”
“I don’t think it’s any of my business.” I shrugged. “If it makes you happy, then I’m happy for you.”
He searched my face so long I started to wonder if I’d said the wrong thing anyway. Then the tension went out of his shoulders in one long drop. “You really don’t care?”
“I care that you look terrified.” I nodded at the bag still crushed against his chest. “I don’t care what’s in there.”
The smile that broke over his face was small, but it was real, and my chest tightened. He said he should let me get my suit, and I told him I still needed one. For a second, he just stood there, as if he wasn’t sure he was still invited.
I thought about Walker decking him outside that hotel, about how they both apologized and moved on afterward, and about how maybe Ryan had just met people on the worst nights of their lives more often than he should have.
“Do you still want my help?” he asked. “After I did the whole stupid made-up friend thing?”
“I asked for your help because you look so—” I gestured at him. “That part hasn’t changed.”
His smile grew another fraction. The sales assistant reappeared with her tape measure already out, running it over my shoulders and chest and waist while Ryan hovered close, watching everything. “Classic navy?” she asked, tablet in hand.
“Probably.” Safe. Reliable. Hard to screw up.
She walked us to a wall of navy suits, fifty of them at least, some priced at more than my mortgage.
My stomach dropped when I looked at the tags.
People assumed hockey meant money, and maybe it did in the NHL, but not down here in the AHL.
I was one of the best paid on the team, and it was woefully short of the millions that NHLers earned.
Having watched too many guys my age burn through contracts as there’d always be another one waiting, I’d drilled it into myself from the day I signed my first deal: save first, spend never.
I drove a truck that still ran fine after six years and lived in a condo well under what the bank said I could afford.
Every dollar that hit my account got siphoned into investments before I could get ideas about it.
I wasn’t dropping a thousand bucks on a suit I’d wear twice a year.
The sales assistant lifted a jacket off the rack. “This one’s popular.”
Ryan looked at it, then at me, then back at the rack, and asked if I’d thought about a different color.
“I wear navy every day,” I said.
“Exactly.” He was already moving. The nerves from a minute ago burned off by something more familiar. “You’re tall, dark hair, blue eyes. Navy’s fine, but it’s boring.” He pulled a jacket free that looked almost black until he turned it under the light and a deep red came up out of it.
“Maroon?” I guessed.
“Oxblood,” he corrected, already holding it against my shoulders, already stepping back to look. “Oh.”
He turned me toward the mirror. “Look,” he said. “It does something to your eyes. Makes your skin look warmer.” He studied me for a second longer. “It looks good.”
“Wow.”
“I know,” Ryan said, sounding a little breathless about it.
The sales assistant came over and admitted she’d never have picked it for me, but he was right.
Ryan’s shoulders dropped another inch at that, and then he was moving again, pulling a shirt off the rack.
“Crisp white, not cream.” He grabbed a tie next, deep oxblood with a subtle texture to it.
“Nothing shiny.” Then he crouched at the shoe display.
“And dark brown, not black,” he said when I started to argue.
“Trust me,” he said.
“I already said I would.”
His ears went pink.
He fussed over ties and pocket squares and lapels with a confidence that had nothing nervous left in it, and I stood there and watched him and couldn’t stop smiling.
Ryan checked his phone and went still. “I have to go. I’ve got a meeting.”
“Go,” I said. “I’ve got this.”
“Thank you.”
“No, thank you.”
He hesitated by the fitting room door as if he wanted to say more, then just nodded and headed for the exit, the small striped bag still looped over his wrist. I handed the sales assistant my card and let her ring up the jacket, the shirt, the tie, the shoes, the whole thing Ryan had built from a rack I would’ve walked straight past.
Running into him today had turned into the best part of my week so far.
Coach Harris blew his whistle hard enough to echo around the empty arena.
“Again.” Nobody argued. A few games into the season, it hadn’t been disastrous, but it hadn't been good either. The problem wasn’t creating chances—we were outshooting most teams—the problem was finishing them, or, as Walker had put it in the locker room before practice, our net-front game was absolute dogshit.
Coach preferred “we’re not capitalizing on second opportunities. ” Same problem, different vocabulary.
I skated back to the blue line with the second unit while Bob settled in front of the crease, cross-checking Walker in the kidneys before the drill even started.
“Love you too,” Walker grunted.
Bob shoved him again. “You won’t after this rep.”
Coach pointed his whistle at us. “Traffic, rebounds, ugly goals. I don’t care if they’re highlight-reel worthy. Stop trying to pick corners.” He looked straight at me. “Taft. You’re a winger. What are you paid to do?”
“Score.”
“No.” He grinned at my frown. “Retrieve pucks. Win battles. Then score.”
A few of the guys laughed, and Walker pointed at me. “Told you.”
Coach blew the whistle. “Go.”
The puck came high from the point. Walker got a stick on it, and Bob kicked the rebound straight into the slot, crowing about the save before it had even cleared his pads. Mine. I snapped it off the crossbar.
“Again!”
Another puck, another shot, another rebound, and this time I jammed it under the pad before the imaginary whistle would’ve gone.
“That’s one,” Coach called.
“Ugly as sin,” Walker shouted.
“It still counts.”
“It always counts,” Coach said.
We ran it until my thighs burned, point shot after battle after rebound after recovery after shot, over and over, and after fifteen straight minutes every jersey on the ice was soaked through. Arnaud leaned against his stick while Coach explained the next variation.
“If I see one more pretty shot from the top of the circles, I’m making everyone bag skate.”
Walker raised a hand. “What if it’s really pretty?”
“Especially if it’s really pretty.”
The guys laughed, and Walker sighed. “I’m just too good to make ugly plays.”
“Get your ass to the crease.” The whistle shrieked again. “Let’s go.” We reset, Bob planting himself in front of the net like an oak tree while Walker immediately tried to move him.
“You’re cheating.”
“I’m bigger.”
“That’s not a rule.”
“It’s always been a rule.”
I circled high and cut hard toward the crease just as the puck arrived. Walker tied up one defenseman, Chip occupied the other, and daylight opened up in front of the net. The rebound popped loose, and I buried it. The sound of the puck smacking the back mesh never gets old.
“There!” Coach shouted. “That’s exactly what we’ve been missing. Quick feet, inside body position, second effort.”
I peeled away toward the boards with Walker skating alongside me, and I pulled my helmet off long enough to drag a towel across my face.
Ryan was standing near the stick rack, talking quietly with his dad.
He looked up, caught me looking, and smiled—not the hesitant little thing from the mall, a proper one—and I smiled back before I could stop myself.
“Earth to Taft.” Walker bumped my shoulder. “You planning on marrying your water bottle or getting back out there?”
“Huh?”
Walker followed my line of sight. “Oh.” His grin spread. “I see.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Mmm.” He took another drink. “You’ve got exactly the same expression Finn gives me when he thinks I’m not looking.”
“I was looking at the sticks.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I like sticks.”
Walker snorted so hard he nearly sprayed water across the bench. “I’m sure you do.” Then he waggled his eyebrows. “I have questions.”
“Nope.”
“They can wait,” he threatened.
Thankfully, Coach blew the whistle again, and we were back at it. What would I say anyway? I liked Ryan. He was…
Cute. Fun. Damaged. Happy. Sad. Confused. Sweet. Scared.
And I was me.
And me carried the black dog of depression on my back too many days to count.
Ryan was a friend.
That was all.