9. Ryan
Ryan
Two nights after the Gids dinner, Gideon texted asking if I wanted to come over and watch game tape with him, which had to be the least romantic invitation anyone had ever extended to me and still made my stomach flip.
His apartment was tidier than I expected from a hockey player, though I supposed a guy who ironed his own suits probably didn’t leave protein shake bottles growing new life forms on the counter.
He’d already changed into sweats and a plain white tee by the time he let me in, his hair still damp from a shower.
He waved me toward the couch as if it were something he did all the time, like I already belonged there.
We watched twenty minutes of a Harrisburg Railers power play before he gave up trying to explain zone entries to me and put on some cooking competition show instead, one he pretended to only tolerate for my benefit and clearly enjoyed more than the hockey.
Halfway through a segment about a man crying over a collapsed soufflé, Gideon rubbed his thumb along the inside of his other forearm, slow, absent, as if his hand went there on its own whenever his brain wandered off to some place where he didn’t want to follow it.
I’d seen him do it before. At the noodle place. In the equipment room, waiting on his skates. Always the same spot.
“You do that a lot,” I said.
He blinked at me. “Do what?”
I nodded at his arm. He looked down at his own hand as if it belonged to someone else, and his face closed—fast—shutters coming down before he even knew I’d caught them moving. “It’s nothing.”
“Okay.”
He stared at the TV without watching it. His jaw worked. Then, slowly, he pushed his sleeve up. Pale marks ran along the inside of his forearm, some raised, a few short and jagged where his hand must have shaken, old, healed a long time ago.
“After Ethan,” he said. “Not right after. About a year after, once everyone stopped checking on me because I hadn’t fallen apart yet, so they figured I was fine.
” He said it flat. “It wasn’t me trying to die.
I need you to know that part. Everything in my head was just so loud, and this was quiet.
The cutting I could control, and it let something out of me.
” He frowned. “It’s difficult to explain. ”
“How long since—”
“Almost three years.” A muscle moved in his cheek. “I still count. I don’t know why I still count, but I do.”
I reached over and laid my hand flat against his forearm, over the marks, not covering them so much as just being there. He flinched, barely, then let me stay.
“I count too,” I said. “A year, two months, eleven days. I know today’s number without even trying.”
We sat like that for a while, my hand on his arm and the soufflé guy on TV still crying about butter. When the show ended, he laced our fingers together, and I leaned into him.
“You could have just looked away and pretended you didn’t see them,” he said. “Most people do.”
I huffed. “I’m not most people.”
“No.” He turned his arm over under my hand, as if he wanted me to see the rest of it, or maybe just wanted to feel me touching it on purpose. “You’re really not.”
“… and then your uncle Larry dips into the group chat and goes off about this new car of his, which, you know, sets your aunt Jane off because it’s an electric car.
” The rattle of pots as Dad worked on a fast lunch for us before a game barely registered.
Kind of like his diatribe about his brother and sister down in Kentucky.
My nose was buried in an online search on my laptop for beauty schools in the area.
I guess I listened with one ear as Dad went on about his very conservative sister because I did hear the water running into the spaghetti pot.
“’Course she’s tossing out nonsense about how electric cars are bad for the environment because they emit sonic waves that blind the birds.
I have no clue where she gets her information.
No, that’s not true. I do know, and I wish she would change the channel sometime.
Like the other day when she leaped into the family chat to ask if it were true that illegal pinto beans were being smuggled into the country to taint the soup pots of good Americans who enjoy ham and bean soup.
I mean, honestly. Would you smuggle funky pinto beans across the border just to ruin some poor soul’s dinner with—”
I did zone out then. My aunt Jane and I were not on speaking terms. She thought addiction was a sign of weakness, and if I prayed hard enough, the Lord would…
well, I wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do for me.
Cure me maybe. Show me a light. Cast out the demons.
Which, hey, if it were as easy as asking an entity sitting on a cloud to vanquish the rotten monster that was addiction from me, I—and every other addict working to get and stay clean—would have done so right off.
But hey, what did I know? She thought I was a loser.
And this was without her knowing that I was gender fluid and liked men.
If she knew that, she’d faint or call out an exorcist. Sometimes it was a good thing when family was far, far, far away.
The screen was sadly lacking in choices, but one did seem like a possibility.
Luxe and Lace Cosmetology College by the Seneca Park Zoo.
Clicking on their website showed me plenty of good things about the school.
They’d been teaching makeup and hair styling for over forty years.
They were fully accredited, and part-time classes were available, which was good.
I could keep working at the arena while studying for my degree.
It would take twice as long, obvs, but I could do it in two years.
I sat there staring at the pictures of men and women in soft pink smocks learning how to cut and style hair, apply cosmetics, and enjoy lunches outside on a rather nice-looking front lawn.
“That could be me,” I whispered just as my father placed a plate of spaghetti with two fat meatballs beside me.
“What could be you, Sparky?” he asked, taking his seat across from me, both of us still in our Copperheads team polos. Dad had a million nicknames for me. I liked it. It was a very dad thing.
I watched him settle into his chair with a sigh of contentment as I closed the laptop then pushed it over to the empty space to my left.
“I’m thinking of applying to a cosmetology college,” I said softly, impressed that I’d actually had the balls to speak the dream aloud. He glanced up from shaking grated cheese over his spaghetti.
“Oh, hey, that’s pretty cool,” he replied after a moment. “What about your job?”
“I’ll keep it. This place that I’m looking at is pretty close. I can do part time. Like, I’d be able to do the theory and textbook stuff online while we’re on the road or whatever, but I would have to attend in-person for the labs.”
“Oh wow, that’s amazing. Really. I think you should do it, Ryan, truly.
You’ve always been so drawn to hair and makeup, and now that you’re wearing it at home, I can see how skilled you are.
I mean, look at those eyeliner lines!” He waved his fork at my face.
“I couldn’t draw that straight of a line on my eyelid if my life depended on it.
And your lips are all outlined. And you pulled your hair up into a fluffy roll then added a little barrette. ”
“Thanks, Dad. I was really feeling femme today but had to wear this polo shirt.” I plucked at the required uniform for the team. “So I dove into my makeup kit just to make myself feel more me. I’ll wash it all off before I go back to the rink.”
He frowned. “I hate it for you that you have to wash away a part of you that is so Ryan.”
That choked me up. I swallowed down the emotion. “Yeah, me too, Dad. But I don’t think anyone is ready for an equipment handler to be wearing false eyelashes and a barrette in his hair.”
“No, I guess not, but someday they will be.” He gave me a smile. “Eat your spaghetti before it gets cold.”
I nodded and dove in. My hunger was fueled by the excitement of possibly, maybe, being able to do the one thing that I had dreamed of doing ever since I was a little boy who had days where khaki shorts and a Spider-Man tee felt way off while one of Mom’s soft sweaters felt perfectly right.
When we were done eating, Dad pulled his chair around next to mine and asked to see the website for Luxe and Lace Cosmetology College.
We talked and pointed at images, read over the admittance forms and applications, and then turned to look at each other.
“Do it, Buddy. Apply. We’ll work things out with the tuition, the team, and the other stuff. Your face lights up when you’re talking about it. Do it.”
“What if I fuck it up?” There it was, self-doubt, right on time with its rancid dark voice and poisonous words.
“You won’t.”
I wish I had as much faith in myself as my father did, but with Dad at my side, cheering me on, I opened the portal for an admissions interview.
Two days later, we were packing up for a road trip.
Just a short one along the East Coast for three games and then back home in time for the fundraiser that I was attending with Gideon.
As. His. Date.
I wished I had time to daydream about what that night could be like if I weren’t such a numpty and could wear what I truly wanted to wear. And not an oxblood suit. Sure, I’d rock that rich, dark red with my pale skin and red hair, but an oxblood dress…