18. Nolan
NOLAN
Bacon wakes me up.
I open my eyes to Pope’s gray couch and a stripe of morning light across the coffee table. My neck is bent wrong, with one foot numb beneath me and the taste of extra-spicy Pad Thai still in my mouth.
For a few seconds, I don’t know why I’m here. Then Pope crosses behind the counter in a T-shirt and sweatpants, carrying a plate to the stove, and last night catches up with me.
He looks over when I sit up. “Morning.”
His eyes stay on me long enough that last night I would’ve crossed the room and kissed him. This morning, I only get both feet on the floor before Pope turns back to the stove, leaving me to look for my phone instead.
Grease spits from the pan as he turns down the heat. For once, the counter is crowded with breakfast: cooked bacon on a plate, a stack of toast, and an open carton of eggs beside the stove.
My phone is wedged under my hip. I check the time and get up so fast that blood rushes back into my foot all at once.
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“I was about to.” Pope tips the last of the bacon onto a plate lined with paper towel and turns off the burner.
“I have to go home and change.”
I can make it if I leave now. My building is in the wrong direction, but traffic shouldn’t be bad yet. Ten minutes upstairs to shower and pull on clean clothes, then straight to the rink.
Pope looks at the clock. “Eat first.”
Two plates are already waiting on the counter, each with eggs and toast, and there’s a cup of coffee beside the empty stool. Pope divides the bacon between them without asking me again.
Clean clothes are fifteen minutes in the wrong direction. “Okay.”
He pushes the stool out with his foot, and I sit while he puts the plates down between us. I take a drink of coffee and taste sugar. “You put sugar in this.”
“Two.”
He says it without looking up, as if two sugars is obvious. Maybe it is. He watches me drink coffee at the rink every day. By the time he looks over, I’m staring at his mouth, so I pick up my fork, eat too fast, and burn the roof of my mouth on the eggs. “Shit.”
“Slow down.” Pope slides his water toward me and keeps eating.
I drink from his glass, and Pope’s fingers close over mine when he takes it back. He puts his mouth where mine was, swallows, and doesn’t look away.
I’m still watching his mouth when I lean across the space between our stools.
Pope meets me halfway, cupping the side of my neck in one hand. His mouth is warm from the coffee and moves slowly over mine while his thumb rubs under my ear. When I pull back, his hand slides down to my thigh and stays there.
I stare at it. “I was going to shower.”
“You can shower after practice.” His fingers flex once against my jeans.
I tug the collar of my shirt forward and smell stale sweat. “I smell like your couch.”
Pope goes back to his eggs without moving his hand. “Nobody’ll notice.”
He’s probably right; the locker room never smells good enough for anyone to identify a specific couch.
When I steal a piece of bacon from his plate, he looks at the four pieces he gave me and moves the rest out of reach.
For a few minutes, the only sound is our forks against the plates. Pope’s hand stays on my thigh, warm through the denim, until I cover it with mine. He turns his palm up and curls his fingers around mine without looking away from his plate.
I know what happens when I come over at night, but this is the first time there’s been a morning. I already want another one, and I have no idea what to do with that.
Pope lets go and checks the clock over the stove. “We should go in ten.”
I nod and finish the toast. Pope carries both plates to the sink while I stand and pull my T-shirt away from where it’s stuck to my stomach. The fabric comes free with a faint crackle.
There’s a pale, stiff patch near the hem. I don’t remember getting come on my shirt, but I’m pretty sure that’s what it is.
“I think this is come.”
Pope comes over and pinches the stiff hem between his fingers. His knuckles brush my stomach. “Probably.”
“Yours?”
“You’d know.” His gaze drops to my mouth.
“I was busy.”
His thumb rubs over the spot. “With my cock in your mouth.”
My cock twitches against my zipper, and the corner of Pope’s mouth lifts.
“That was distracting,” I say.
His grip tightens on the hem. Neither of us moves until Pope lets the shirt go and checks the clock.
“You need something clean.”
“Yeah.”
He dries his hands and heads down the hall. By the time I follow, he’s crouched in the second-bedroom closet with one of his unopened boxes pulled out, digging through stacks of teal and gray clothes from the team he doesn’t play for anymore.
Those are the boxes I saw through the doorway last night. I didn’t expect to be borrowing his clothes out of one this morning.
Pope finds a teal training top with a hammerhead-shark crest across the front and MIAMI printed over the shoulders.
“You don’t have anything without that logo?”
He shifts two shirts in the box. “Not where I can get to it.”
“They’re going to see this.”
“Your coat will cover it until you change.”
He holds it out, and I take it because standing here in a shirt with dried come on it isn’t a better option.
Pope has seen all of me, but I still turn toward the closet mirror before pulling the dirty shirt over my head. In the reflection, his eyes drop to my back before he looks into the box and starts folding a shirt that was already folded.
The teal shirt is soft from being washed a hundred times and much too big for me. The tag says extra-large, the shoulder seams hang halfway down my arms, and the hem covers most of my ass.
In the mirror, Pope’s old team is stretched across my chest, and anyone who sees me will know where it came from. My stomach turns over, so I face him again before he catches me staring at myself.
Pope is already pulling on a hoodie. “Ready?”
“Yeah.”
Pope slings his gear bag over one shoulder and picks up his keys. At the door, he puts his free hand on my shoulder. It’s the same grip he uses after a good shift. I’m already leaning toward him before I know whether that’s all he’s doing.
He goes still.
So do I. My mouth is six inches from his, and I can feel my face getting hot.
His eyes drop. The hand on my shoulder slides to the back of my neck, and he pulls me in.
The kiss is quick and closed-mouthed, but his thumb rubs once under my hair before he lets go. I want to do it again and have no idea if he does.
Pope opens the door.
We take the elevator down together. The back of my neck still tingles under his thumb. I stare at the floor numbers and try to think of something normal to say. Nothing comes.
At the garage level, Pope turns toward his assigned spot and I head for the visitor row.
“See you there,” he says.
“Yeah.”
My car is cold. I start it, zip my coat all the way to my throat, and sit with both hands on the wheel while Pope’s taillights disappear up the ramp.
The guys are going to ask about the shirt, and Bobby will keep asking until he gets a story.
Pope never told me to lie, but he doesn’t have to. The team knowing I’m bi doesn’t give me the right to tell them what Pope does with me.
I still resent needing a story.
By the time I pull out of the garage, I have one simple enough to remember: I spilled Pad Thai while we played video games and fell asleep on the couch. Most of it is true, which should make it easy to say.
At a red light, I look down at my zipped coat. As soon as I take it off, that shirt is going to look exactly like what it is: something I put on the morning after sleeping at Pope’s place.
I’m still thinking about the coffee, the two sugars and the second plate already waiting for me, when the light changes and the car behind me honks.
I reach the rink a few minutes after Pope. His SUV is already in the player lot, but he’s not in the locker room when I get there.
My coat hides most of the teal until I reach my stall, but the room goes quiet as soon as I pull one arm free. That almost never happens, so I stop with the other sleeve caught at my wrist.
Two guys near the equipment room quit talking while Anton pauses with half his tape job hanging from the knob of his stick. Everyone who has noticed me is waiting for somebody else to say it first.
Bobby stares at my chest. “What the fuck is that?”
“My shirt got dirty.”
“That’s Miami.”
I pull my other arm free of my coat. “I know.”
Three people tell me to take it off while somebody by the showers suggests letting the trainers cut it off me. Bobby crosses the room and catches the bottom of the hammerhead crest between two fingers.
“This isn’t yours,” he says.
My pulse kicks anyway. I pull the fabric out of his hand. “It’s Pope’s.”
The answer gets more noise than the shirt did.
Bobby follows when I try to get to my stall. “Why are you wearing Pope’s clothes?”
I put my bag on the bench. “I spilled Pad Thai on mine.”
“At his place?”
“Yeah. We were playing Mario Kart, and I fell asleep on the couch.”
I rehearsed it twice in the car. I busy myself with my bag so I don’t have to watch Bobby decide whether he believes me.
The door opens before I have to answer.
Pope comes through the door with his gear bag in one hand. His shoulders tighten as he looks from Bobby standing over me to the old Miami shirt.
Bobby turns on him. “Fraser says he slept at your place.”
Pope looks at me. For half a second, I want to tell Bobby to mind his own business and see what happens.
“On the couch,” Pope says.
“He says you were playing Mario Kart.”
Pope’s hand stays on the zipper of his bag. “Yeah.”
Bobby looks between us. “Who won?”
“Pope,” I say.
Pope sits and opens his bag. “I did.”
That is enough to turn the room on me. Anton wants to know how I lost to Pope while the guys near the equipment room argue over whether it counts if Pope owns the console. I let them talk and start on my shoes, though my fingers slip off the lace on the first try.
Bobby isn’t finished. “Did he make you breakfast?”
I look at Pope. His attention is on his gear, but he has gone still again.
I could say no and make the morning disappear. “Yeah.”
Pope’s head comes up.
The room gets loud enough to bury Bobby. Someone asks Pope when he started feeding strays, and one of the rookies tries to invite himself over while two other conversations start on top of them.
“I was already cooking,” Pope says.
He bends over his bag. The muscles across his back stay tight under his T-shirt while the jokes move on to the logo across my chest.
Caleb finally reminds us we have ten minutes, which gets Bobby back to his stall without stopping his threats against the shirt. Even the two guys coming in late take time to give me shit about the teal before sitting down.
Pope stays bent over his skates until nobody is looking at us anymore, and I hate how long it takes his shoulders to loosen.
The room already knows I’m bi. If Bobby had guessed that Pope and I get each other off, the jokes would’ve lasted a week, probably less, but Pope tensed as soon as Bobby said I slept there and hasn’t relaxed since.
The taste of coffee is still in my mouth, and the back of my neck tingles again where his thumb rubbed. I don’t understand why their assumption matters this much to him or why it makes me so angry.
Pope glances over. “What?”
I pull the Miami shirt over my head. “Nothing.”
He holds out one hand. “Give me that.”
“After practice.”
I stuff it behind my street clothes and drag on my base layer while guys finish taping sticks and clatter toward the hall. Bobby bangs his stick against the doorway and tells everyone they’re slow.
Pope finishes first, and I grab my stick to follow him to the rink.
Gunderson blows the whistle as I step over the boards, and Pope wins the opening faceoff clean. The puck comes through two sticks into the patch of ice I’m crossing.
I catch it in stride and drive the net.
My shot catches Anton’s pad. Bobby puts the rebound wide, then complains about the pass while we circle back.
The next whistle goes. Pope leans over the dot again and points his blade toward open ice. I set my feet on his right, ready to move when the puck drops.