7. Connor
CONNOR
P ractice the following morning is a godsend.
Something to take me away from the house.
I stupidly believed that I could force things back to ‘normal’ if I acted the way I would usually act with Elliot on the beach.
But the second I touched him, I knew it was weird.
I had to just put on a show and go with it.
And then what was all that about with him looking sick and unhappy? I know it wasn’t just because he hates the taste of beer.
I don’t have time to think about it while I’m on the ice, chasing the kids around, urging them to push themselves. My muscles burn and my lungs ache, and it feels amazing.
I’m so buzzed from practice, I don’t even remember to check my phone until I’m pulling up outside the house.
Brad and Chase are asking me to come over and hang out.
A girl I gave my number to at that party is asking how I’m doing.
I should reply to them all, and I will … later. Right now, I’m not in the mood.
I linger on the message from that girl—Casey. She was nice. I’ll text her back, but I need to find the right way to let her down. Because now I’m sober, I know I want to let her down.
These past two years have been all about experimenting with a side of my sexuality that I’d known existed for a while, but was too scared to explore. And while I was in college, that’s all it was—experimentation.
At first, I thought I’d ‘get it out of my system’ and eventually get a girlfriend. Now I know how stupid that was. That’s not how it works.
My teammates were cooler with it than I’d thought they would be.
I’d planned to keep it to myself while I messed around, but then I got a little too drunk at a party and made out with some guy in front of everyone.
They gave me good natured shit for it, asked me if I was gay.
I told them I was bi and that was that. If we went out, they still played wingman, asking if I was looking for a guy or a girl.
That final year of school, it was always a guy.
I rarely needed a wingman. So many guys were looking for hook ups around campus and apps make that stuff painfully easy.
I thought maybe I was gay, but then I moved to California and into the adult world, where you don’t have to stress as much about what people think.
While staying in hotels on business trips, I used apps to hook up with women and men.
But it was always just sex. And there was always something missing, regardless of my sexual partner’s gender.
It’s different here, though, in my hometown, around all my high school friends and my family.
It’s a bigger deal to them if I’m bi. College felt temporary and California might as well have been a different universe.
Guys on my team were going to move on, people I met on business trips were complete strangers.
It was as transient as it can get. But this, here, is permanent.
Once I let the cat out of the bag here, there’s no putting it back. It changes things.
I don’t know if I’m ready for those changes. Not yet.
Scout’s VW is sitting on the driveway. It’s late, so I guess Mom and Dad’s cars are already parked in the garage. They don’t let Scout park that piece of shit in there. Mom always jokes that no one would want to steal it anyway.
The house is quiet when I let myself in. I find Mom and Dad sitting in front of the TV with glasses of wine, watching a nature documentary.
“Hey, honey. How was practice?”
“Good. I’m exhausted, though. Coaching junior hockey is harder than I thought it’d be.”
Mom looks up and smiles. “Come and watch TV with us, tell us all about it.”
I get myself a glass of water and take the armchair while Mom spreads out next to Dad in the corner of the big, L-shaped couch.
After I finish filling her in on my day, she starts telling me all kinds of gossip about the neighbors.
Who got a flashy new car and what they’re trying to compensate for.
Who’s getting work done on the house. Whose teenage son got his girlfriend pregnant and is shirking on his responsibilities.
I listen with an increasing hum growing in my ears.
I don’t care what the neighbors are getting up to, but Mom does.
That’s why she battles with Marcie next door to have the best Christmas lights every year.
And why she’s president of the Neighborhood Watch Committee and why she was president of the PTA when me and Scout were in school.
Stuff like that is important to her. Sometimes I wish she didn’t care so much how things look to other people.
I wish she wouldn’t stress so much about what the neighbors will think if we don’t have the hedges trimmed frequently enough.
“You remember Rohan Chbosky?”
“No.” I shake my head.
“You do. He was in your year in school. He had that beautiful red hair and all those freckles.”
“Oh, yeah. Sort of. We weren’t friends or anything.”
Mom gets that hungry look in her eyes, the same one the women on The Real Housewives get when they’re about to spill some tea. “Well … his mom was going around bragging about how he got a job on Wall Street, right? Turns out he lied to her. He was actually working in the mail room of some?—"
I zone out, feeling kind of sorry for Rohan Chbosky and not wanting to be one more person gloating about his failure. Imagine being the subject of gossip by people you don’t even know.
Dad saves me from having to comment on this guy’s predicament by shushing us so he can hear what the narrator’s saying about the mating habits of the ringtail lemur.
I go up to bed as soon as I can slip away without Mom complaining. It helps that I can’t stop yawning.
But the second I brush my teeth and get under the covers, I’m wide awake, my stomach in knots.
Are people going to gossip about me if I fail in California?
Will Mom’s so-called friends be laughing behind her back about her loser son who told everyone he was going to be playing in the NHL one day?
Did she brag about me to them when I was drafted to Colorado?
When I got into Harvard? And is she embarrassed by me now?
Is that why she doesn’t seem happy about me pursuing a job in sales?
But would it really be better for her to have to tell her friends I’m playing minor league hockey and making just over $500 a week?
At least with my sales job I can make over $60,000 a year, without commission and bonuses.
Still, it must have sucked for her to have to tell her friends that I was dropped by my draft team, that I’m ‘taking a break’ from college.
I can just imagine their fake concern and how much they’d be itching to get away from her so they could gossip.
When I look at the time, it’s two-thirty in the morning and I haven’t had a wink of sleep.
I head downstairs to get a drink, maybe watch some TV to distract myself. The house is deathly quiet except for the snores coming from Scout’s room. Does Elliot snore, too? Are his snores drowned out by my warthog of a sister?
There’s a soft glow emanating from the living room when I get downstairs. My heart rate picks up at the prospect of bumping into Eli.
The TV is off—the glow is coming from the lamp—and in the reflection of the TV screen, I can make out a figure hunched over something on the couch.
I recognize the back of Elliot’s head straight away.
His usually neat, black hair is a little mussed, like he laid down and got back up again.
I step closer, until I can see the side of his face.
He’s wearing his glasses. I had told myself it was the no-glasses thing that changed the way I looked at Elliot.
That maybe if I saw him wearing those dorky glasses he’d worn since we were kids, I’d see little Elliot again—Scout’s adorkable best friend.
But nope. He’s still the hot guy I drooled over the second I saw him walking around Scout’s car that day.
Still the guy with the hot body I spied sitting by the pool.
Still the producer of those droplets of water I fucking held in my hand.
Despite my attempts to make everything ‘normal’ again, I know things can’t just go back to the way they were.
It’s become painfully obvious that acting like Elliot is just my sister’s nerdy best friend won’t magically make him my sister’s nerdy best friend again.
Before he can turn around and catch me creeping on him, I say the first thing that comes to mind.
“Hi.” Genius.
He jumps. Luckily, this time he doesn’t drop anything.
“You scared me,” he says, his hand against his chest.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to.”
He smiles, pushing the bridge of his glasses up. They’re different from the round ones I remember him wearing when we were younger. Still dorky, though. Still unbelievably cute. “New glasses?”
“Huh? Oh … no, not that new. My contacts were irritating my eyes.”
Why was he making himself uncomfortable with contacts when he looks incredible with his glasses on? That sounds like something I shouldn’t say to my sister’s best friend, right?
Get your glass of water and leave him alone.
He has a big, heavy textbook spread out over his legs. Is he down here studying at two-thirty in the morning by himself?
“A little light reading?” I ask, pointing to the textbook.
“Oh, yeah.” He fidgets, like he’s thinking about closing the book, but also like he’s waiting for me to hurry the fuck up and leave so he can get back to it.
“Well, I’ll let you?—”
“It’s okay,” he interrupts. He’s squirming when I look back at him, like he’s embarrassed. “I mean, it’s your house. You can stay.”
“Why do you keep saying that? ”
“Saying what?”
“That it’s my house? It’s just as much your house as it is mine. I mean, you’ve probably spent more time here over the past few years than I have.”
“Yeah, but … it’s your parents’ house.” He lowers his eyes to the book.