Chapter Seventeen #2
The day of the second-to-last game was especially bad.
Ben scratched Howie for being late to practice, knowing all the while that Howie had been with Michelle Horowitz and didn’t want to admit it in front of the whole room.
Tom caught Howie crying in one of the supply closets and had to comfort him, an experience that must have been harrowing for both of them.
Afterward, Tom asked to speak with Ben privately.
Phil, who was in his own session with Michelle Horowitz, working through his myriad reasons for hating contract negotiations, couldn’t even intervene.
Ben kept silent for the entire drive home.
It took him two hours to shake off his funk, and he only managed to do so by giving Phil the blow job of his life. Which would have been even better if Ben wasn’t clearly doing penance for something he couldn’t help. Phil counted it as a win when Ben accepted a hand job in the shower in return.
At least the team entered the break on a four-game win streak, and Trout left town to spend the week on Turks and Caicos.
With everyone gone or on vacation, they could finally relax.
A whole week with no practices or games, no times when Ben had to be Coach Morris, no big chunks of the day when Phil had to pretend not to be in love with him.
It felt like a preview to a life they were heading for, and for the very first time, Phil couldn’t wait for the end of hockey season.
They’d set the wedding date on the Friday of their bye week, when the media would be occupied by the first day of the All-Star Break.
Despite it only being a courthouse wedding, Phil found himself excited the day before, and he went shopping instead of getting the groceries delivered.
He picked up a sheet cake decorated with two little groom figurines, a bottle of champagne, and sparkling grape juice for Charlie.
He hid all of it in the basement fridge Ben hadn’t discovered yet.
Phil was humming in the kitchen, thinking about dinner, when Ben came in wearing one of his nerdy graphic tees. (This one featured a dinosaur with a book as a mouth instead of teeth and the caption “Thesaurus.”)
“You never told me what my wedding present is,” Ben said.
“We’re not married yet, are we? You get gifts at the reception.”
Ben pouted, which looked ridiculous on him. Also, kind of cute. “But how do I know what to give you when I don’t even have a hint?”
“You don’t have to get me anything.”
Ben glared.
“Seriously. I like giving people things. It makes me feel good. What’s the point of making money if I can’t shower the people I love with stuff to make them happy?”
Looking very much as though he was fighting a smile, Ben said, “Well, then, I’m going to have to get you something that will make you happy.”
“You make me happy.”
From the living room, Charlie yelled, “You guys are super gross.”
“You wanna come to the mall with me?” Ben called back. “Apparently, I need to go shopping.”
“You don’t need to—”
“Can we pick up Chloe at the shelter? She wants to use her Hot Topic coupons.”
At some point, Phil had to have a talk with Charlie about how he seemed to be a magnet for girls who dressed like extras on one of those vampire TV shows Phil didn’t watch.
He wasn’t sure whether Charlie attracted them in a friend way or a more-than-friend way, and he didn’t disapprove in either case.
However, if Charlie’s game continued to be this impressive as he aged into late teenagerhood, Phil wanted him to be responsible about it.
With the house to himself for a few hours, Phil had just started wondering if he should hang up some of the Christmas decorations again—the more neutral stuff like fairy lights, to provide a festive flair—when the doorbell rang.
And rang.
And rang again, all within the same three second period.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Phil called, not that it would make a difference.
He yanked open the door to find Breezy standing there, his shoulders slumped, his eyes downcast. Even his curly hair looked droopy.
“Breezy? What’s up?”
“Hey, man. Can I, uh, can I come in?”
Phil stood aside and let him pass.
“So what’s up?” Phil asked again as he got two preemptive beers out of the fridge.
He figured it would be about All-Stars. Luca had gotten in on the fan vote.
It had to sting that Breezy’s roommate, who’d been on the team for all of three months, had been invited when Breezy had been playing for them for two years.
Breezy took a fortifying sip, nixing half the bottle. “So, uh, Amélie dumped me.”
Oh boy. There went Phil’s hope he’d come to talk about a hockey problem. “She’s the third girl you’ve been out with this year, huh?”
“Fourth.”
“Mm-hm.”
“She said my heart wasn’t in it.”
“Was she right?”
Breezy looked down at his knees. “I don’t know.”
If Phil changed his mind and went into contract negotiations after all, he wondered if he could bargain for an extra million to make up for this experience. No one told him being an alternate meant giving dating advice to twenty-two-year-olds. “Why did you go out with her?”
“Luca introduced us.”
“Okay, but what did you like about her?”
Breezy considered for a very long time. “She has great hair.”
Phil waited, but nothing more came. “Is that it?”
“She was nice?”
“What about Chloe?”
“She wanted to work with kids, which is pretty cool. Her stories about university were so interesting.”
“Uh-huh. And Vanessa?”
“My parents loved her. And I liked her outfits. She had a great eye for fashion.” He thought briefly and then added, “Also, she always told me where to take her out for dinner and stuff. That made it a lot easier.”
Phil decided not to ask about the fourth girl. He couldn’t remember her name anyway. Breezy’s answers about the first three revealed the underlying theme.
He debated finding a subtle way to ask, but then remembered who he was talking to. “Okay, so how was the sex?”
Breezy choked on his beer. His face went bright red, and his voice went up an octave. “Fine.”
“Bud,” Phil said, trying to find a kind way to phrase this. “If you were really into any of them, it would have been better than ‘fine.’”
“I’m just not into…that,” Breezy said.
“What?”
“Sex.”
Phil blinked. He thought he’d finally found his footing in the slippery eddies of sexuality, but he had no response ready for this situation.
Thankfully, Breezy went right on talking before Phil could say anything.
“I’m not a passionate guy. I’m pretty easygoing.
Sex is fine. It can be fun. But I don’t get all that intense about it.
” He drank more beer. “Dating is… I don’t do it for sex.
I like meeting people, you know? Being alone sucks.
And I’ll have to get married and start a family someday. ”
“You will?”
“Well, yeah,” Breezy said as if it ought to be obvious. “That’s what people do.”
Phil tabled the questions that had sprung up in the back of his mind about sexuality, sex drive, and identity. “Okay,” he said. “Where to start. First of all, you’re barely twenty-two.”
“So?”
“I know some hockey players marry young, but you don’t have to.
If you’re struggling with dating and you don’t really know why…
This is probably bad life advice, but go out.
Hook up. Meet people without thinking about forever.
Maybe take some time to figure out if marriage and kids is even what you want. ”
Breezy looked over at him with wide eyes. “You think so?”
“Yeah,” Phil said. “It sounds as though whatever you’re doing right now isn’t working for you, and it isn’t working for the girls you date, so why not try something different?”
“Try…not dating.”
“Yeah. And try finding someone you like yourself, maybe? I mean, your parents liked Vanessa. Luca liked Amélie. Who do you like?”
After finishing his beer, Breezy took a deep breath. “And, um, the sex thing? Should I be worried about it? Am I…bad?”
“You are an easygoing guy,” Phil said, wishing desperately he’d gotten a stronger drink.
“I like that about you. Makes you a great teammate. You’re also someone who puts in the hours and practices his ass off.
If sex is important to you, you can practice that, too, if you have a partner who wants the same things.
If you don’t want to, you don’t have to.
No one’s forcing you to have sex any particular way, or at all, and if they are, tell me whose kneecaps I’m taking out with a hockey stick. ”
“Really?” Breezy met his eyes for the first time, and he looked so honestly hopeful Phil found himself reaching out to pat his shoulder.
“Really,” Phil promised. “Hell, we have a physically strenuous job. When I get home after, I’m not thinking you know what would be great right now?
Super athletic marathon sex. Sometimes simple is best.” Simple with Ben was better than anything complicated Phil had tried before he had a handle on what he liked.
As if his strings had been cut, Breezy relaxed into the couch. He turned wide, pleading eyes on Phil. “Can I have another beer?”
Pity made Phil forget what a lightweight Breezy was.
By the time Ben and Charlie got home, he’d curled up on the couch under the crochet throw blanket, watching the Lifetime channel and nodding along as a woman with curly blonde hair found love with a simple Italian farmer and ditched her high-powered Wall Street boyfriend.
“He was having a crisis,” Phil explained.
They switched him to hot chocolate, and Charlie and Ben managed to last through the entire movie.
Phil gave up when the Italian love interest taught the girl how to ride a horse bareback.
He started surreptitiously texting Tom, asking about how Howie was doing and whether being benched for a game had improved his backcheck or destroyed it for good.
“I’m sure we can get rid of him in time tomorrow morning,” Phil told Ben as they got ready for bed. Breezy had fallen asleep on the couch, and Phil hadn’t the heart to wake him up and stick him in an Uber when he dozed off in the middle of his second cocoa.
Morning came, and with it the sound of someone unfamiliar moving around the house.
Phil had a sudden blinding sense memory of the first week Ben lived with him, the scraping noise from the bathroom and the sudden appearance of a chair in front of the vanity so he could shave for the first time in a week.
They really ought to move that downstairs again.
He remembered lying in bed and thinking how glad he was to have someone sharing his space again.
He rolled over and buried his nose in Ben’s hair. “Happy wedding day.”
“Do I need to keep my eyes closed?” Ben teased. His voice sounded deep, rough with sleep, and the sound of it sent a zing down Phil’s spine. “You know, bad luck and all.”
“I think we’ll be okay,” Phil said. “I wanna see you properly.”
Ben’s eyes blinked open, slow and sleepy. He wasn’t smiling yet, but Phil could see the crow’s feet waiting to form. He leaned in and kissed Ben until they were both grinning too hard to keep it up.
“Happy wedding day,” Ben said.
“So what’s my present?” Phil asked.
Ben stuck out his tongue.
Downstairs, a glass shattered.
They looked at each other.
“Breezy,” Phil remembered.
“He’s your teammate.”
“You’re his coach.”
Ben put a finger to his nose.
“Ugh. Fine.” Phil rolled out of bed and pulled on sweatpants and a T-shirt from the floor. It turned out to be one of Ben’s, tight across the chest and loose everywhere else. It showed the earth and the moon holding hands as they spun in circles.
Phil liked it.
“Breezy?” he called as he navigated the stairs. He still had to take it slow with his knee, even with the rope banisters and no crutches. He couldn’t afford to slip and fuck it up again.
“Good morning, Philip.”
That was not Breezy. The voice rang out low and elegant, the voice of a person accustomed to giving interviews and appearing on camera. It was also unmistakably a woman’s voice.
“Camille?” Phil asked. “What are you doing here?”