Chapter Seven #3
“We didn’t tell him. He overheard some stuff in the locker room.”
Kilian stared down at his sushi. It looked delicious. Tom never took Breezy out for sushi. He never meant to tell Breezy secrets and leave Kilian out.
It should have made him feel better.
It didn’t.
“I always looked up to you so much,” he told Tom. “And ever since I figured out about me, I wished there was someone else, someone older and more established, who did this before. Who could, I don’t know, pave the way. I guess finding out so many people on my team could have and didn’t…”
Tom winced. “I’m sorry, Howie. If it’s any comfort, I wished the same thing.”
It was no comfort. It meant they had both been alone and miserable for no goddamn reason.
Kilian ate his cod and his eel and his tuna, saving the salmon for last before he moved on to the crunchy shrimp tempura roll.
There was mayonnaise and hot sauce in it, an affront both to the meal plan and the nation of Japan.
It was delicious.
“You learned to use chopsticks,” Tom observed.
Kilian had learned over lukewarm takeout, the same way he’d learned about the Stonewall riots and what the Reagan administration did to AIDS sufferers and how the Soviet Union ran targeted smear campaigns against Tatars.
He’d sat on his shitty couch in his cramped, awful apartment, feeling more and more alone and hopeless with every word he read and video he watched, and all along, Tom had been right there and done nothing.
Tom knew how to use chopsticks.
Tom had known how to use chopsticks the first time he took Kilian out for sushi, and he never bothered to teach Kilian.
“Howie?”
“I don’t understand, Tom. I don’t get how you could know there are so many guys on the team who are gay or bi or whatever and just…
keep quiet about it. You told me last year, remember?
You told me how what I said to Luca mattered to the guy who actually was gay and too scared to come out because of the way hockey is.
You made me realize I was that guy. Doesn’t it matter just as much to be the guy who makes it safe for him to come out? ”
Tom ate a slice of pickled garlic and set his chopsticks down. “You know why I got a dog?”
“To make you a functional human or something—you said before.”
“I wasn’t kidding,” Tom said. “She’s…not quite a service dog, but she is trained to help me deal with anxiety.
I’m not a good role model, Howie. Learning to be okay with who I am, with being a gay man in professional sports, hasn’t been easy.
Jax and I nearly broke up over it, and the thought of coming out still makes me extremely anxious even though I want to do it.
I’m sorry I couldn’t be the person you needed, but I couldn’t be the person I needed before this year. ”
Kilian took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and pictured the little light turning off again.
Remarkably, when he pretended he didn’t exist and his feelings didn’t matter, everything got easier.
That made it more painful for the part of him screaming to be seen, but no one cared about that part.
“I’m sorry too. It’s not your responsibility to be the gay ambassador or whatever.
I guess I want whoever’s next to feel less alone than I did. ”
Tom nodded at him once, indicating he understood.
They didn’t talk for the rest of lunch.
Tom caught another bus home after, leaving Kilian standing between a store selling “vintage but not used” clothing and one selling vinyl records.
He debated taking an Uber to his apartment, but he was a little buzzed from the cocktail and hollowed out from the conversation.
He wandered back to the streets he recognized and then took a left toward the cozy apartment building he’d been to twenty times for video game nights or chill hangouts.
The doorman recognized Kilian and let him up. “Good going in Ottawa!” he called after Kilian as the elevator doors closed.
Kilian barely managed to smile in return.
He knocked on the door to Breezy and Luca’s apartment a few times. When no response came, he rang the bell.
It took another couple minutes, but finally, Breezy answered the door. He wore nothing but a pair of his signature novelty boxer briefs covered in a pattern of sloths hanging from branches in between eucalyptus leaves.
“Hey, man,” Kilian said.
“Howie!” A smile lit up Breezy’s face. “Hi! What are you doing here?”
“I, uh…I wanted to say hey.”
“Hey.” From anyone else, it would have been facetious or mocking. From Breezy, it was earnestly pleased.
Kilian licked his lips. “I went to the shelter this morning. Thought I might see you there.”
“Yeah, no, me and Luca were…um…we had…”
He probably didn’t want to make Kilian feel excluded from whatever special roommate thing they had going on.
Ordinarily, Kilian would have, but he’d transcended being a human being with his own thoughts and interests for the day.
All that remained was an idea, the concept of a guy called Kilian, and the vague notion of what he ought to do.
“It’s cool, dude. I just wanted to tell you I’m over it.”
“Over it?” Breezy asked.
“Yeah. It’s cool, we’re cool. I’m sorry I got mad at you for not telling me about…well, you know. And I’m sorry I’ve been such a dick about it.”
A line drew down between Breezy’s eyebrows. “You don’t have to—”
“I’ll let you get back to whatever you were up to. See you at practice.”
“Howie!” Breezy called after him, but the concept of Kilian had already left the building.
He took an Uber home, his forehead leaned against the window. His brain buzzed uselessly, trying and failing to process every conversation he’d had today. In an effort to avoid the overwhelming nothingness, Kilian pulled out his phone.
On autopilot, he opened his Instagram message thread with Damir.
howza68: you know how we were talking about all the little muslim kids who look up to you?
ddenisov88: sure
howza68: i think i wanna be that person for gay kids someday.