Chapter 1 #2
No, it didn’t. Trevor tapped his glass. He’d had two so far, and he should probably slow down, but it was New Year’s Eve, and he wasn’t drunk.
Not even tipsy really, just a little warm in the base of his stomach.
Or maybe that was how close Lane was standing to him, his bigger, broader body pressed to the side of Trevor’s.
He was always warm, and tonight was no exception.
“I just . . .” Trevor shrugged. He couldn’t say he wasn’t feeling it again. He’d already said that once. “She wasn’t really interested in me. She was only interested in who I am.”
“Ah. Yeah. Maybe?” Lane scratched his scruffy chin. Didn’t look convinced.
“Are you kidding? All she wanted to do was ask me about football. And you.”
“Come on, you’ve got a lot to offer that isn’t football.”
Trevor rolled his eyes. “Okay.”
“I mean it, bud. Like . . .” Lane gestured to him, up and down. “You’re nice. You’re sweet. And then, bonus, you look hot tonight.”
Trevor had just gone out of his way to tell Lane that it wouldn’t bother him if he hooked up with a guy while Trevor was around.
It had never bugged him, not once, that Delia’s son was gay.
Not once. Then what was this hot bubbly feeling in the base of his stomach?
Was he disgusted after all? Was all it took finding out that Lane thought he was hot?
Trevor opened and then snapped his mouth shut. It didn’t feel like disgust. It felt like . . . well, he didn’t know what it felt like. But he was fairly certain it was not disgust.
“Um, thanks?”
Lane’s gaze slid away. He picked up his glass and threw the rest of the tequila in it back in one gulp. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Made it weird.”
He turned to go, but Trevor grabbed his arm. “No, no, you didn’t. I’m . . . I didn’t realize you thought that.”
“Not really,” Lane blustered.
But Trevor wasn’t quite sure he believed him.
“Just saying you have more to offer than an NFL contract,” Lane said. “Don’t assume that’s what they’re into.”
It wasn’t lost on Trevor that he’d said they. Not she’s.
That could mean nothing. Or it could mean everything.
Trevor opened his mouth to say something—to ask, actually, what he meant, or maybe, even more insanely, to wonder if somehow Lane had guessed the thoughts that had been circling around his brain for the last few weeks—but before he could, Cam and Dawson crashed into them, almost literally.
Cam was giggling and Dawson had an arm around his waist, and they both seemed like they were having a really good night.
“Oh shit, it’s the demon twins,” Cam hissed not very quietly as Dawson steadied him. He glanced up at Lane and Trevor.
Lane huffed under his breath, making Trevor think maybe he didn’t like the nickname very much either.
“You two having fun?” Trevor spoke up, before Lane could say anything.
“Oh yeah,” Cam said, so earnest. Sometimes he made Trevor feel bitchy, which was really saying something.
But even then Trevor liked the rookie punter.
There weren’t that many rookies on the team, and he wished sometimes that instead of them being separated, all isolated in different parts of the team, that they were all closer.
Friends, maybe.
There were two others, besides Trevor and Cameron. One of them was Jordan Atkinson, who played inside linebacker.
“Hey, we should . . .” Trevor wasn’t sure how to phrase it. Then he shook himself out of it. There was no reason this should be a big deal. “We should hang out sometimes.”
“Yeah?” Cam’s expression softened and he smiled, in a surprisingly sober way. Maybe he wasn’t so much drunk as very happy. Very in love.
Trevor couldn’t say he’d ever felt like that about anyone before; didn’t know if he could feel like that about anybody.
But that was part of the problem, wasn’t it? Even before Sophie had gotten pissed at him for not declaring for the draft after his junior year, he hadn’t ever felt about her like Cam clearly did about Dawson.
“Yeah, definitely,” Trevor said confidently. He wasn’t sure if becoming friends with Cam would be the magical answer to all his questions, but it couldn’t hurt if he had someone else to ask, right?
“Hey, I’m gonna pee,” Dawson said, murmuring something else into Cam’s ear. Cam flushed red and nodded.
“I’m gonna get us more drinks,” Cam said, and Trevor nodded, turning towards the bar with him. That was the moment he realized Lane had slipped away then.
He wasn’t disappointed. He wasn’t.
The thought crossed his mind that maybe Lane was running away after the half-an-awkward-convo they’d had, but it had probably only been awkward at all for Trevor. Not for Lane, who was the most comfortable, confident person in his own skin that Trevor knew.
“What are you drinking?” Trevor asked, searching for a less serious way to open the conversation than, wow, you’re really in love. Wanna tell me about it?
“Vodka sodas,” Cam said, nodding at the bartender, who grabbed two fresh glasses. “You?”
“Tequila on the rocks. Um. Lane likes it. Got me into it.”
Cam shot him a look that Trevor could only describe as knowing. Trevor wanted to ask why that look, why now, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer. “Oh yeah? He being good to you?”
“He’s not being bad. We, uh, we have a good time, you know? Play a lot of video games. He’s addicted to these stupid meme compilations on YouTube.”
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
Cam shot him a gentle look. “What do you like? You like playing Call of Duty or Fortnite with Lane?”
Trevor nodded. He did, sure. Lane was usually a pretty good time, even if he was in a prickly mood.
Trevor had noticed over the last few months that he could usually get him out of it with a distraction of doing something.
Which was why they ended up with video game controllers in their hands so much.
“But yeah, not entirely my thing. I like other stuff too.”
“Like?”
Trevor sighed. Lane had given him so much shit for this particular hobby, the first time he’d showed up at home with one in his hands, had even half-jokingly warned him that nobody better know he had a twenty-two-year-old going on eighty-year-old living with him.
Trevor had made a face at him and told him to fuck off.
But the words had lingered.
Was he old and stuffy and boring? Maybe a little. But you look hot tonight, echoed in his head. Reminding him that maybe he wasn’t all tedium.
“Um, actually one of my favorite things to do to decompress is a jigsaw puzzle,” Trevor said.
Cam blinked in surprise. “A puzzle? Like that kids do?”
“I mean, they’re not just for kids. I do like thousand-piece ones that take me awhile. Can be really challenging. It’s a good way to keep my hands and my brain occupied, instead of angsting over everything I can’t control.”
Nodding along, Cam pulled one of the drinks the bartender had made closer, then picked it up, taking a sip. “That sounds nice, actually?”
Trevor made a face. “Don’t tell Lane that.”
“He doesn’t like your puzzles?”
“He seems to think I’m a major dork,” Trevor confessed. “Too sweet. Too nice. Too much of a loser.”
It was flattering, how quickly Cam’s chin raised and the flash in his brown eyes. “No way,” he rebutted. “That’s not true.”
But Trevor could only shrug. “I’m not saying it’s true, but I do believe that’s what he thinks.”
“Well, he’s wrong, then,” Cam said loyally even though Cam technically had no reason to think otherwise. They still seemed more like acquaintances, not friends. At least not yet.
“Thanks,” Trevor said wryly.
“I also think,” Cam said and Trevor couldn’t miss the careful note in his voice, “he wouldn’t hang around the apartment so much if he didn’t like you. If he thought you were too sweet or too nice or too dorky or whatever.”
Trevor wanted to believe that was true but it was hard because ever since he’d been drafted to the Thunder, he knew Lane had faced a certain amount of unsurprising pressure to welcome Trevor. To mentor him. To be his friend.
“Maybe.” Trevor wasn’t convinced. Not really. But Cam was right, still. Surely if Lane thought he was such a drag, he wouldn’t stick around so much. Wouldn’t seek him out.
It was the one reason Trevor had been disappointed—he kept telling himself it was not a huge thing in the face of all the positives—that he’d been drafted by Toronto.
He’d always kind of hoped, maybe stupidly, that Lane would someday like him on his own, not because Lane’s mom wanted him to, or because Trevor’s dad convinced him it was in his best interest, or because Lane’s team had also drafted Trevor, thinking they would be a two-birds, one-stone kind of deal.
“Listen, we should hang out more,” Cam said, flushing. “I’ve been a little . . . distracted.”
Trevor laughed. “Yeah, we’ve all seen that.”
“But us rookies have got to stick together, right?” Cam lifted his glass and clinked it against Trevor’s.
“Right,” Trevor echoed, taking a long sip of his tequila. It burned on the way down, erasing some of the uncertainty and weirdness he’d felt.
Lane was in heaven and hell, which was pretty par for the course these days.
It had been horrible enough watching that pretty girl flirt with Trevor. Not as bad as knowing, deep down, that when he did end up with someone, it would be a girl like her.
But the more girls Trevor brushed off—that was hardly the first since Trevor had come to Toronto—and the more time they spent together and the deeper he sank into the realization that Trevor was just as sweet and adorable and charming and hot as he’d always secretly imagined, the worse (and the better) Lane’s feelings got.
The more acutely the fledgling hope he kept trying to shove down kept cutting him.
Tequila slid down his throat and he forced himself not to look for Trevor. He’d left him with Cam and Dawson, and that had felt safe. Safe-ish.
Much safer anyway, than Lane pinning Trevor to the bar and demanding to know why he kept indifferently pushing all these perfectly fine girls away.