14. Nolan
NOLAN
Hooking up with a teammate once was a blip. The second time was probably a mistake. After two weeks, I don’t know what to call what Ben and I are doing.
He hasn’t put a name on it. Obviously.
Pope texts after practice and shows up at my place a few hours later. Sometimes he stays for a hockey game. Once he stayed long enough to eat half the takeout he’d recommended, then got annoyed when I pointed out that he was the one who picked something with mushrooms.
The first few times, he waited in the hall after I opened the door. I had to grab his shirt and drag him inside. Now he steps in on his own and kisses me as soon as the door shuts. He still looks pissed about wanting me, but that might just be his face.
Mostly, we fuck.
He’s learned how to suck cock with terrifying speed.
He still gets this hard, focused look right before he puts his mouth on me, like he’s preparing to win an important face-off.
Then his tongue hits the right place and I stop finding it funny.
Last night he held my hips down and took me deep enough that I saw white spots behind my eyes before I’d even come.
His curious side provides a lot of orgasms.
It also leaves me with no idea whether this is the only version of Ben I’m ever going to get.
Maybe he’s going to be one of those assholes who dates women and hooks up with men on the side, keeping everybody separate until someone gets hurt.
Maybe he’s going to get me out of his system and never touch another guy.
He hasn’t mentioned anyone else, and I haven’t asked.
I’m not sure I’d like the answer.
Whatever this is, it has kept me in my apartment for two weeks fucking my linemate and abandoning my friends.
“So,” Tessa says, “who is she?”
I look up from the answer sheet in the middle of our table. “Who is who?”
Micah leans around her to see my face. “Who is he?”
“Or they,” Tessa adds. “We’re not making assumptions.”
“Very progressive of you. There’s nobody.” I reach for the pen, but Micah takes it first.
“You missed two trivia nights.”
“Hockey.”
“You always have hockey. You still show up and complain about it.” He has me there, so I steal his beer.
Marlowe’s looks exactly the same as the last time I was here.
The booths are still worn, and my crooked Leviathans picture still hangs behind the bar.
The host is reading questions from the front while every table writes answers on paper and guards them from anyone walking past. Tessa and Micah have carried us through most of the first two rounds without me.
I did contribute Lake Baikal and an argument over whether a tomato counts as a berry, so I’m not completely useless.
Still, I’ve missed this. Micah has changed our team name twice since I sat down, and Tessa has threatened to stab him with the pen.
My usual beer appeared before I asked for it.
I’ve been back in the lineup for a week, and nobody here cares about the three games I missed as long as I know enough answers to make up for disappearing.
Tessa takes Micah’s beer out of my hand and gives it back to him. “You’ve also been impossible to reach after nine.”
“Maybe I started going to bed early.” Neither of them believes a fucking word of that. “Fine. Fuck you too.”
My phone vibrates against the table before either of them can ask another question.
Pope.
You doing anything?
Micah leans far enough across the table that I turn the screen against my chest. “Oh my God. That’s the person.”
“You can’t see anything.” I tuck the phone closer to my stomach.
“Your face changed.”
“I don’t have a different face for texts.” Tessa holds out her hand, and I move the phone out of her reach before she can ask.
“Give me the phone.”
“Absolutely not.”
The host starts the next question, and Micah reluctantly looks away. I should answer Pope and put the phone down. Instead, I scroll up.
The last two weeks are all there. He sent me a clip of a goalie losing his stick into the crowd during warmups.
I sent him a GIF of a golden retriever running into a glass door after he missed me on a backdoor pass.
Most of the rest is hockey or Bobby’s latest attempt to make everybody play some terrible phone game.
Pope has also sent three restaurants he thinks I need to try because he disapproves of my diet.
He texts me from the stall opposite mine sometimes. At lunch yesterday, he sent a picture of Bobby stealing fries off Caleb’s plate while Bobby was sitting right beside me. I laughed, looked up, and found Pope watching me over his own phone. He went back to eating before I could say anything.
Nothing in the thread would get us in trouble. We haven’t even sexted, which feels like a failure of imagination considering what he did with his mouth last night.
The number of messages is the problem. We see each other at the rink nearly every day, and somehow we still have this much to say when we leave.
Whatever. I made a friend. An orgasm friend is still a friend.
Micah is still trying to come up with the smallest species of penguin. The line on our answer sheet is blank, and I want to answer Pope before he decides I’m busy.
“Little penguin,” I say.
Tessa takes the pen from Micah. “Is that real?”
“That’s my guess.”
She writes LITTLE PENGUIN with the kind of pressure that might tear the paper. “We’re going to lose because you were making eyes at your phone.”
“I wasn’t making eyes at anything.”
I send Pope the address for Marlowe’s, then add, Pick me up in thirty.
His reply comes before I can lock the screen.
Okay.
He doesn’t ask why I’m at a bar in Capitol Hill on a weeknight or complain about being ordered across town. He just says okay.
I put the phone facedown.
Micah watches me do it. “Thirty minutes?”
“You were reading over my shoulder.” He doesn’t even have the decency to look guilty.
“I was looking in that direction.”
I point at the chair he’s half out of. “With your whole body?”
“Thirty minutes is enough to finish the round,” Tessa says. “You’re staying for the music questions.”
I was planning to. Now I want to leave just to be difficult.
Micah wants to know whether my mystery person has a car, which isn’t subtle. Tessa asks whether we’re dating, then acts like she’s only clarifying the rules when I tell her no. Neither of them gets a name. Giving them Pope would answer too many questions I don’t want them to ask.
By the time the host calls pens down, they’re guessing professions.
“Dentist,” Micah says.
“Why would I date a dentist?”
“You’re not dating them. Keep up.” Micah gestures for Tessa to give him the pen, and she ignores him.
Tessa studies me. “Personal trainer.”
“I have several of those at work, and I don’t fuck any of them.”
Micah points at me. “You are fucking somebody.”
Shit.
The host starts reading the answers before they can celebrate. We get the capital of Mongolia wrong because Micah insisted it was Bishkek, then lose another point on a question about a Broadway musical none of us has seen.
“And the world’s smallest penguin species,” the host says, pausing while the room quiets, “is the little penguin, also known as the fairy penguin.”
A laugh barks out of me. Tessa turns slowly, still holding the pen.
“Don’t,” she says.
“You doubted me.” I tap the correct answer on the sheet.
“You guessed.”
“I still got it right.”
Micah takes the pen from her and marks the point. I lean back and enjoy being right.
Trivia ends with us out of the prizes, mostly because of Ulaanbaatar and whatever a Jellicle cat is. Tessa maintains that the penguin point belongs to her because she wrote it down. Micah starts building a case for replacing both of us next week.
My phone vibrates again.
Outside.
I check the time. Pope is three minutes early.
Be a few more minutes, I type.
My thumb hovers. Then I add, You can come in for a beer if you want.
The regret is immediate.
Tessa and Micah are going to know something is up the second they see him. I don’t bring hockey friends to Marlowe’s. Bobby was the one exception, and he sat so stiff through one beer that I thought he’d turned into wood.
This place is where I get to be Normal Nolan with my normal friends. Tessa has never asked about the power play. Micah thinks icing is something that belongs on a cake, and he refuses to learn otherwise. Hockey Nolan can stay at the rink for one night.
Now I’ve invited my center inside.
The door opens before I can tell him to stay outside.
He steps into Marlowe’s wearing dark jeans and a black jacket, big enough that the room seems to lose a little space around him. Micah looks at Ben, then at me, his eyes going wide. Tessa’s hand clamps over Micah’s wrist before he can point.
I ignore both of them.
Pope stops a few feet inside. His gaze catches on the rainbow stickers behind the bar before moving to the two men pressed together in the nearest booth. His shoulders go tight. Shit. He didn’t look up the place before coming.
The bartender asks what he wants. Pope looks at the taps, orders a beer, and stays exactly where he is while it’s poured. I take a full breath when he doesn’t turn around.
He pays, picks up the glass, and walks toward us.
“Nolan,” Tessa says, drawing my name out, “introduce us to your friend.”
Micah looks close to physical pain from holding in whatever he wants to say.
“Ben, Tessa and Micah. Tessa and Micah, this is my friend Ben.”
Pope takes the empty chair beside me. “Nice to meet you.”
“We’ve heard so much about you,” Micah says.
“No, you haven’t.” I kick Micah under the table before he can prove me wrong.
Tessa smiles at Pope. “We’ve heard enough.”
Pope looks at me over the top of his glass. “Should I be worried?”
“Yes,” Micah says.
Tessa reaches past him for the discarded answer sheet. “He showed us your Instagram interview.”
“Six times,” I add.
Micah spreads his hands. “It was eight seconds long.”
Pope keeps looking at me. I take a drink of my beer and refuse to help him.
Micah lasts maybe ten seconds. “First time?”
Pope lowers his glass. “At trivia?”
“In a gay bar.”
“What? No. My brother’s gay.”
Tessa’s eyebrows lift. “That wasn’t the question.”
“I’ve gone out with him.” Pope takes another drink. “Just not here.”
He doesn’t look at me when he says it.
My hand tightens around my bottle. He reached for his brother fast. It makes sense, and it still makes me feel like shit.
It shouldn’t bother me. Pope isn’t going to call himself bi or queer because he’s fucked one man a lot over two weeks. He doesn’t know what any of this means yet. I told him he didn’t have to rebuild his identity over one experience, and I meant it.
I put the bottle down without taking the drink.
Tessa gives him an easier subject. “How much do you know about penguins?”
Pope glances at me. “Nothing useful.”
I kick him under the table. He traps my shoe between his feet for a second before letting me pull it back.
Micah remembers enough hockey to start talking shit about the team’s record. Pope takes it without getting defensive and tells them I spend practice making everybody worse. That earns him a laugh from Tessa and another kick from me.
His knee knocks mine and stays there for one extra beat before he moves it.
Maybe I should quit this while we’re ahead. We could stop before Pope decides he has finished experimenting or I get tired of being the one part of his life he can’t explain without bringing up his brother.
Pope finishes his beer and sets the glass on the table. “You ready to go?”
Tessa and Micah both look at me. I know I should make him leave alone. Instead, I’m already thinking about what happens when we get back to my place.
“Yeah.” I reach for my jacket. “I’m ready.”
I put it on and go with him.