Chapter Sixteen #2
What was he supposed to say when he got home?
Sorry, Phil, I got proof that your injury is a result of a deliberate conspiracy, but we’re going to have to sweep it under the rug.
Also, if you can keep pretending I’m your coach, that would be swell?
Ben might as well hand the rings he’d set on his nightstand back over.
He’d gone into the morning meeting thinking he could bring home a success story and end things on a good note.
That way, he could leave Phil behind with no guilty conscience, only his own heartache.
But the notion that he would have to admit to failure now, failure that wasn’t even his fault, but his family’s…
he couldn’t bear it. Why should he give up Phil?
Why should he be the one to let down someone as kind and decent as Phil for no good reason?
How had it come to this?
The answer was, as always, the family.
The words were practically capitalized in his head, The Family, as though he shared a backstory with Breezy’s mafiosi ex-girlfriend. Except instead of smuggling drugs and killing people, his family treated him terribly over and over again, and he was too stupid to learn from it.
What had Phil said?
He could show Ben what “family” really meant if Ben would only let him.
All at once and far too slowly, Ben understood the sinking, yawning pit in his chest that had opened up when Phil had said the words.
He hadn’t been afraid of the commitment.
He hadn’t been put off by the difficulties of their respective careers.
He’d been scared shitless because he wanted it so much.
Ever since his family had rejected him, Ben had been in motion, heading from job to job, from short-lived relationship to ephemeral friendship.
The chance at a home and stability had seemed impossible after he’d lost it once.
But there Phil was, setting everything Ben wanted at his feet and telling him he just needed to reach out and take it, and Ben—
Ben was terrified of saying yes because he’d spent his whole life loving people who didn’t love him back.
He stood up from the park bench and dusted off his pants. He took a last long look at the couple from South Dakota. The woman kissed the man’s cheek while holding out her phone to film the action.
Had Ben really thought it would be safer to run from that?
The cozy everyday kind of love that meant someone was always willing to listen to you bitch about work or give you a hug or buy your nephew too-expensive home décor?
That love could never hurt him as much as being alone and holding on to the last thread of a family who didn’t want him had.
And Phil had shown him, not only with words but also with actions, that he was offering Ben exactly the kind of love he’d been missing.
Charlie waited for him in the school parking lot, chatting with some classmates—a girl with dyed black hair and a very Goth aesthetic, and a tall, reedy boy carrying a backpack about twice his size. When Ben pulled up in the mostly empty lot, Charlie smiled, big and wide and happy.
“Hey,” Charlie said once he’d yanked the passenger seat door open. “Can Ellie and Marshall come over? We have a social studies project.”
“Yeah, sure,” Ben said and then remembered he was supposed to be responsible. “Uh, if their parents are okay with it.”
He congratulated himself when both teenagers showed him text messages from their parents granting permission before they slid into the back seat.
They got home just in time for Phil’s afternoon workout in the home gym. He wore a loose tank top and his tiny little athletic shorts as he greeted the group with a friendly smile and an offer of healthy snacks. He had a real thing about veggie sticks.
He was so good.
Ben hated the thought of disappointing him.
“Do you have enough space upstairs? You can use the living room instead,” Phil offered. “The table there should be pretty clean.”
“We’re good. Thanks, Phil,” Charlie said and led his friends up to his room with an arm full of carrot sticks with dip and some puffed rice chips.
Phil watched them go with a concerned look. “Should we be talking to him about leaving his door open when he has friends over?”
Ben blinked. “Why?”
“I don’t know. I was reading this blog about raising teenagers, and they said it’s a common rule.”
“I don’t think he’s having sex with them.”
Phil considered. “Not with both at the same time anyway.”
“Probably. Anyway, I’d rather have a safe sex talk than make him leave the door open. It would be too much like what his parents would do.”
“Isn’t he a little young to be having sex though?”
Ben shrugged. “I mean, I think so, but it’s up to him. Anyway, I think he has enough body image stuff going on without putting pressure on him to have or not have sex.”
“Fair,” Phil decided. “So, how did your meeting go?”
Ben glanced up the stairs. He definitely didn’t want Charlie hearing about this. “Let’s go to the gym.”
“Oh?” Phil’s eyebrows shot up.
Ben flushed, remembering the first time they’d had sex, balanced precariously on the workout bench and drunk on need. “Not for that.”
“What else would you ever go into the gym for? You hate it there.”
“I do not.”
“You hate exercise—”
“I do not. Not all exercise is as silly as hockey.”
To prove his point, he walked alongside Phil on the treadmill while he explained what had happened.
“You’re supposed to sit on evidence so he can get a new job?” Phil asked incredulously. “That’s…”
“Immoral? Illegal? Both, probably.”
“Now what?”
Ben had been asking himself the same question since Pulvermacher hung up the phone. “I think,” he said slowly, “I want to go to the police.”
Phil shut off his treadmill. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I mean, it has to count as some kind of insider trading or something, right?”
“Will it get you in trouble with your family?”
Torpedoing Pulvermacher’s chance at the Arizona job almost certainly would, but it wasn’t as if Ben would be welcome either way. Anyway, Pulvermacher didn’t deserve to be rewarded for leaving the team high and dry because its players had decided to do some good in the community.
“Honestly?” Ben said. “Yeah, it will. But I think people should know, you know? Both that it’s not your fault you guys can’t win—”
“Hey!”
“—and that your GM is such a homophobic prick he’s leaving because of a charity. I mean, there are three queer men on the team. You deserve better.”
“Three— Oh, right, I’m still on the team.” Phil frowned. “Hey, how do you know about Jax and Tom?”
“If they want it to stay a secret, they should wait until after curfew to sneak into each other’s hotel rooms.”
Phil snorted. “Only had to wait a decade for Tom to finally start acting like an idiot teenager.” He turned off the treadmill and moved to face Ben. “So what’s your plan?”
Ben took a breath and then another, and then he got down on one knee.
“Ben?” Phil spoke quietly, but Ben saw the sun dawning on his face.
“You were right.” The words came out quickly, faster than Ben meant them to, but he had to get them out before he lost his nerve.
“About all of it. About my family and about me doing whatever they told me just to keep them in my life in some way even when they gave nothing at all back. And you were right that being with you, living here, is so much more. I can’t undo what happened to your knee, or your career, or my part in it.
But if you still want me—if you want to try this—”
“Of course I do! I’ve been saying—”
“I don’t deserve—”
“Fuck that. Ask the question, Ben.”
Ben laughed, not because anything was funny but because his whole chest felt so light he had to let the air out or he would float away. “Will you marry me?”
“I will.”
“Great. I have these rings some hockey player gave me. But they’re upstairs—”
The joke was cut off by Phil pulling him to his feet and crashing their mouths together.
“I love you,” Ben said when they pulled apart. “I should have led with that.”
Phil carded a hand through Ben’s hair, and Ben leaned into the touch. “I love you too.”
Phil never ended up finishing his workout.
Charlie’s school friends got picked up around six.
He joined Ben and Phil in the living room shortly after, and they ordered out for dinner—big steaming bowls of ramen filled with vegetables, noodles, and meat, the stock gleaming with flecks of fat.
It was a culinary experience Charlie would never have had if he’d stayed in Utah with his family his whole life, and he took to it with gusto.
Ben hoped the celebratory meal would make their news palatable as well.
“We should take you out for sushi sometime soon,” Phil decided.
Charlie made a face. “I know it’s hockey player catnip, but I’m gonna need some time to get over the raw fish thing.”
“It takes some getting used to,” Ben said. “But I promise it’s really good once you can handle the concept. Also, the sushi here is miles better than whatever you’d get in Utah.”
“Well, yeah,” Charlie agreed. “There’s an ocean, like, right there.”
“So.” Ben decided it was as good a segue as any. “You like it here? You still want to go ahead with the guardianship plan?”
Charlie looked between them. “I…yeah? Of course I do. Do you? I know it’s a lot to ask—”
“It’s not,” Ben said at the same time Phil said, “No it isn’t.”
They looked at each other, smiling, finally on the same page.
“We, uh, wanted to tell you that we got a date for the hearing. It’s on February seventeenth. And before then, we’re going to the courthouse for…something else.”