Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“It’s wild to see it from behind,” Leo says. He’s not talking about Gabe’s ass, but the image certainly does cross his mind. “His drop shot, it’s—it’s like poetry or something.”
“His drop shot,” Tess deadpans, and then pauses, finding her way through this sentence, “is like poetry.”
“Whatever, you know what I mean,” Leo says. “His hands are so soft. At the net, I mean. It really is incredible when you see it from a new perspective, that’s all. Playing doubles with him, watching him up at the net, it—I don’t know. It made me appreciate his game more.”
They are pulling down dishes from Leo’s kitchen cabinets to put out snacks.
It’s here. Game night. Usually it’s just for him, Tess, and Ollie—maybe one other friend or the current sexual partner of the latter two will tag along—but tonight, Liv is joining and Gabe is coming with his friend Billie.
Gabe. In Leo’s condo. The matrix is surely broken.
Regardless, Leo did spend most of the day scrubbing every inch of the place from baseboard to curtain rod.
When he finished cleaning, he baked chocolate chip banana bread. Then, he cleaned himself up. He chose a rust and white-striped bowling-style shirt, kept unbuttoned to show his white tank underneath, while Tess is wearing a denim shirt-dress.
“I know what you mean,” she says. “The man is spectacular at the net. I’m just shocked to finally hear it from you. For the past decade, all you’ve done is talk about how overrated he is, how conceited he is, how arrogant he is, how—”
“Okay, okay. Yeah. I know. Well. I’ve gotten to know him a little better.”
“I’m not saying I told you so,” Tess says, reaching for another plate.
“Told me what, exactly?”
“That you two were destined to become besties.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“Leo, he’s coming to game night. Your most precious evening of the year.”
“You invited him!”
“And you set up a spritz bar!” Tess shouts, extending her arm toward the kitchen island, where he has, indeed, set up a spritz bar. Wine glasses in two neat rows of three, orange slices fanned out on a small wooden cutting board, a couple bottles of Aperol, and prosecco on ice.
“So?”
“So, you’ve never done this for me and Ol,” Tess says. “We have snacks, sure. Wine, absolutely. But this? I’m just saying, you clearly want to impress him. Your new bestie. Gabe Montoya.”
“I’m just mixing it up, okay? We have a few extra people coming tonight,” Leo says. “That opens up the variety of games we can play, too. And that’s also why I made tonight a potluck. I’m dying to get into the lumpia.”
Leo nods over to the plate Tess brought, piled high with crispy Filipino egg rolls and small bowls of sweet and sour sauce.
“Nice. Nice transition,” Tess says as Leo smiles innocently.
“Hey, you,” Gabe says as Leo opens the door. “This is my friend Billie.”
At least, that’s what Leo assumes he said. Considering Gabe is wearing a sage-green knit polo buttoned low enough to show off his gold chain resting at the edges of his pecs, he could’ve told Leo they were there to kill him and he wouldn’t have registered it.
Meanwhile, Billie herself is striking. A Black woman just a bit shorter than Leo, her braided hair is pulled back in a thick ponytail. She’s in a butter-yellow dress with an empire waist and ruffled shoulders.
“It’s so great to finally meet you,” Billie says brightly. She gives his hand a firm shake. “I’ve been hearing about you for years now.”
“Really? And you still came?” Leo asks, only half kidding.
“Gabe told me you were funny,” she says, a sly twinkle in her eye.
As the two of them enter Leo’s condo, she turns to Gabe, then back to Leo. “And I told Gabe that I was definitely overdressed.”
“No, no, you’re gorgeous,” Tess says from behind Leo, whose ears have rosied. “I mean, you look gorgeous. I love that dress. Hi, I’m Tess. Sorry, that rhymed.”
“Nice to meet you,” Billie says with a chuckle, then says hello to Ollie and his plus-one, Liv. “Thanks for having me. All Gabe told me was that tonight was special, so here I am, dressed for the Oscars.”
“Billie and I grew up together,” Gabe tells them. “We hang out whenever I make it back to Miami.”
“Yes, I just sit by the phone, waiting for his call,” Billie says, gazing out the floor-to-ceiling windows to her left, speaking in a transatlantic accent. “When will my husband return from war?”
She already has the group laughing.
“But yeah, I’ve known Gabe forever,” she continues. “Way before his glow-up.”
“Okay, I hope that means photos are imminent,” Liv says.
“Oh, you know I came prepared,” Billie says. “Let me just set this food down somewhere first.”
“Thank you so much,” Leo says, grabbing the dish from her. “What’d you bring? Besides prepubescent photos for blackmail.”
“Some of my favorite food from this takeout spot in Little Haiti,” Billie says. “Best in the city. I had to treat y’all.”
Leo’s mouth begins to water. For the food. Not Gabe. Just to be clear.
“Here’s us at a school dance, and here’s us in Gabe’s bedroom taking magazine quizzes, and here’s us at the Pizza Hut where Gabe came out to me,” Billie says, scrolling through a parade of awkward middle school photos on her Facebook for the group to see, Gabe’s face broken out and his hair unkempt.
“And I shouldn’t have been surprised when he told me, considering the fact that, if you look closer at that photo of us in his room, he has a life-size cutout of Legolas.
That was sus. Look how big it is, right next to his bed. ”
“I loved Lord of the Rings! Sue me!” Gabe yells.
During a game of Rummikub, the night’s finale after several rounds of Uno, Codenames, and Monopoly—not to mention several rounds of embarrassing old Facebook photos—the group is chatting playfully, Billie and Liv next to each other, giggling about something.
Leo listens in and hears Billie, seemingly caught up in the moment, say to Liv, “I have to ask. What made you want to be with Sascha?”
“Billie,” Gabe says. He clearly caught the question, too, and gives Billie a look like, What the fuck?
“That is … a fair question,” Liv says, fidgeting with the tiles in front of her on the table.
“I’ve thought about it a lot over the past couple years.
I was avoiding a lot of pain in my life back then.
And I saw that in him, too. I think, in a way, we both wanted to disappear into each other.
I ignored so much of the bad about him because he was the distraction I needed at the time. ”
Billie offers her a sympathetic smile. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have pried.”
“No, it’s okay,” Liv says, then gives her a coy look. “We’ve all got that one ex, right?”
“Cheers to that,” Tess says, exasperated, shaking her head while raising her glass.
“And Gabe,” Liv says, her eyes more serious now. “The things that he’s been saying, you know, about you. There’s no excuse for that.”
Gabe gives her a little nod. “Thanks,” he says.
The group gets back to playing, and after another round of Rummikub, Gabe excuses himself to the bathroom.
When he doesn’t return after nearly ten minutes, Leo decides to check on him.
As he walks down the hallway, passing by his bedroom, he glimpses Gabe out of the corner of his eye, holding one of the framed photos he keeps out on his dresser.
He steps backward and moves into the doorway, waiting a moment before speaking.
“That was one of our first practices together,” Leo tells him. He can see which frame Gabe has picked up and knows it’s the photo he posted last fall, the one of him and his dad posing together on a court, little Leo’s tongue out.
“Shit, sorry,” Gabe says. “I went to the bathroom and then wandered in here. I guess I just had to see where the magic happens.”
“Ha, ha,” Leo says.
“I love this picture,” Gabe says, looking back at the photo. “You looked so much like your dad, even as a kid.”
“And everybody made sure to tell me,” Leo says, making his way over to the dresser.
Gabe is still looking at the photo intently. He puts it down and picks up a wrinkled piece of looseleaf paper next to the frame that says “Hold your own” in black Sharpie. “What’s this?”
“Oh, I used to keep that in my bag. My dad always said that to me when I wasn’t feeling good about my game or just wasn’t believing in myself.”
Gabe smiles, then returns his gaze to the paper. “I don’t think I’ve ever known anybody with MS,” he says. “Christ, sorry. Ignore me.”
“No, no, it’s cool,” Leo says, leaning back on the acorn-colored dresser. “I never did either growing up, besides my dad, obviously.”
“That must’ve been hard,” Gabe says.
“Yeah, it could be lonely,” Leo says. “I would sometimes wish I had a dad like the other kids did. I would wish for him to get better, for him to change. So things could be easier. But as I got older, I guess I just started to think, fuck it, the world should change for him, not the other way around.”
When Leo works up the nerve to look at Gabe, he finds tender eyes.
“You know, what you wrote, when you posted this photo,” Gabe says, “about how people need to be more patient with players, because they don’t always know everything that’s going on behind the scenes—it really hit home for me.
I already couldn’t stop thinking about coming out back then, and seeing your post, it, well, definitely gave me a boost. Thought you should know. ”
Leo smiles at him, remembering the heart emoji.
Gabe inhales sharply. “All right, well, I don’t know about you, but I need a new drink.”
They head into the kitchen, and as Gabe begins to loosen the cork in a new bottle of prosecco, he nods to the spritz bar. “Nice touch, by the way.”
As Leo walks up to him, champagne flutes in hand and face flushing, the cork pops and an abrupt rush of prosecco sprays onto his shirt.
“What was that about me loving to get you wet, again?” Leo asks, cocking his head and licking the bubbles off his lips. He sets down the flutes.
“Oh my God,” Gabe says, rushing to grab the blue-and-white dishtowel from the oven handle. “Let me help.”
He steps up to Leo and begins dabbing his shirt. Leo is looking down at Gabe’s hand patting his chest, and he can only hope that Gabe doesn’t feel how hard his heart is pounding. When Leo lifts his head, he finds Gabe staring directly at him.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” Leo says, trying, as always, to cut the tension.
Gabe isn’t dabbing Leo’s shirt anymore. They’re both just standing still, Leo blinking quickly, Gabe breathing slowly.
“I don’t want to stop,” Gabe says.
Cautiously, Gabe starts to lean in.
Unable to fight Gabe’s magnetic pull, Leo leans in, too.
Gabe leans in farther.
Like the final moment before a match begins, the whole world seems to fall away.
No grudges, no misconceptions, no animosity, no space between them now.
Only fondness.
They kiss.
Gabe cups Leo’s head in his hands, pulling him deeper into the kiss, like he wants to make sure he gets this right.
Their mouths move faster and faster, as if they can’t absorb each other quickly enough.
Leo loses himself in the moment, lets it swallow him whole.
Gabe’s mouth is warm and his tongue tastes like orange, pear, and rhubarb.
Leo didn’t even know he could pinpoint the taste of rhubarb.
As he feels Gabe softly suck on his lower lip, Leo opens his eyes, just briefly, to reassure himself that this is really happening.
And it is.
He really is in the midst of an effervescent first kiss with Gabe.
That magnetic pull may have been there the entire time, he realizes.
It feels like coming home—something he doesn’t feel often throughout the year, something he didn’t even know he could feel with Gabe, having spent so many years in the grip of his intense grudge against him.
For the first time, he lets the thought linger.
There’s a crash in the living room, and they pull apart.
“Tabarnak!”
Leo, pretending his eyes had only opened just then, at the sound of the crash, looks at Gabe, and before either of them has a moment to process, they scurry into the other room.
“I am so sorry, Leo,” Ollie says, slurring his words a little and blotting the Rack-O cards on the table, which are sticky with prosecco from the glass he just knocked across the table. “I got a little excited when I found the card I needed.”
“That’s—that’s okay,” Leo says, his head buzzing.
“We moved on to Rack-O since y’all were gone so long,” Billie says, and the sly twinkle has returned to her eye.
As Leo gathers the cards, brushes the small shards of glass into a trash can, carries dishes into the kitchen, he glances at Gabe and it sends a jolt of anxiety coursing through his limbs.
He thinks about the kiss and his heart starts to race.
Except, it’s not racing in passion now but in panic.
An endless parade of thoughts marches through his mind.
What happens now?
What does this mean for them?
Will he have to tell everyone? Tell his dad?
Could he even win a match, let alone the US Open, if he had to come out?
Can he handle this and his dad’s return to tour all at once?
The only voice he can hear in his head is reminding him, over and over: No distractions.
It sounds an awful lot like this dad. He can’t seem to silence it.
Once the table’s tidied, Tess pats Ollie’s arm and says, “Well, that might be our cue. Our sweet prince could probably use some beauty sleep. Are you cool if we head out, Leo?”
Ollie makes a groaning sound in response.
“Yeah,” Leo says, blinking furiously to focus himself. “It’s getting late, anyway. But this was so great. Thank you all for everything.”
When he pulls out of his hug with Tess, Leo hears Gabe ask, “Do you want me to stay behind? Help you clean up some more?”
No distractions.
No distractions.
No distractions.
Leo knows what he’s asking, but he can only muster a response that, somewhere deep inside his alcohol-soaked brain, he knows is sabotage, but he says it anyway.
“No, no, you should go, too. But it was good to see you.”
A line forms between Gabe’s eyebrows as his expression grows confused. Then, it goes slack again. “Got it,” he says flatly. “It was good to see you, too.”
Leo tells Billie again how nice it was to meet her, and though she says the same, the twinkle is gone now.
Once his guests have filed out, Leo meanders around his condo, switching off each of the lamps. He walks into the kitchen, sees the remaining mess—dishes in the sink, glasses on the island, empty chip bags crumpled. He turns, makes his way down the hall, and crawls into bed.