“Okay.” I’m not sure I could spill all the fears in my heart even if Blakewasn’there. But his presence sure doesn’t help.
Wes sighs, and then Blake is back, and we eat pizza and watch a daytime talk show that only Blake seems interested in.
I make sure to give the death chair a glare as Blake carries his plate over to our coffee table. Wes is not a stupid man. He takes the death chair, dropping onto the ugly upholstery like a man resigned. Then I feel like an ass because he has to play the Oilers in a few short hours, and I hope his whole lower back doesn’t seize up from sitting there.
If they lose tonight, I’m going to feel even guiltier than I already do. Yay.
“You ever come to our games, J-bomb?” Blake asks as I finish off the last of my pizza.
“Sometimes,” I say with my mouth full. “I have to coach a late practice tonight, though.”
“Sweet,” he says, taking my plate from my hands. I do appreciate his clean-up skills, though I’m not sure they entirely make up for his barging in unannounced.
As Blake lumbers off to the kitchen, my phone beeps. I lean forward and see the Facebook notification icon. Normally I wouldn’t care enough to click on it, not unless it’s from someone in my family, but Wes is sulking hard in his chair and I’m sulking hard inside, and I desperately need a distraction before I pick a lover’s quarrel right in front of Blake.
I open the app and find a status update from my college friend Holly. It says she’s in a relationship now, and there are two photos—pixie-sized Holly on the left and a huge mountain of a man on the right. They make such an unlikely couple—physically, anyway—that I can’t fight a snort.
Which of course captures Blake’s attention. He’s finished cleaning up, and now he’s leaning over the back of the couch, peeking at my phone.
“Ooooh,” he says in approval, tapping one blunt fingertip on Holly’s picture to enlarge it. “And who is this sexy little elf creature?”
“Ah, just a friend from college,” I answer. For some absolutely stupid reason, I’m compelled to add, “An ex, I guess.”
Blake’s gaze shoots toward me in surprise. Or rather, confusion. I can’t make heads or tails of his expression. Nor do I miss the tensing of Wes’s broad shoulders in my peripheral vision.
“Holly’s messaging?” Wes sounds nonchalant. I know better.
“Naah,” I say without looking at him. “Status update on Facebook popped up. I guess she has a new boyfriend.”
“Good for her.” Again, the edge in his tone is only noticeable if you know him as well as I do.
One of Wes’s biggest fears when we first got together was that my attraction to women would come between us. I’ve assured him over and over again that he’s the only one I want, but sometimes I wonder if he’ll ever believe me. The thing about Wes, he’s used to disappointment. Hell, I think disappointment isn’t something he fears, butexpects—like he’s forever living in a state of when-will-the-other-shoe-drop.When will my parents officially disown me, when will the world find out I’m gay, when will the team drop me, when will Jamie leave me.
Usually I do everything I can to offer him that reassurance he needs, but at the moment, my nerves are too raw. I can’t give him what he needs right now, and so I remain focused on Blake rather than my clearly agitated boyfriend.
“You were tapping this sweet bundle of goodness?” Blake says slowly.
I nod. “It was more of a friends-with-benefits thing.” I get the feeling that he doesn’t believe me. Or that if he does, he can’t make sense of it.
Worry pricks at my insides. I thought Wes and I had been doing a decent job keeping Blake Riley in the dark, but now I’m starting to wonder how successful we’ve actually been.
I finally find the courage to seek out Wes’s eyes, but he doesn’t meet my gaze. His jaw is twitching. And he’s white-knuckling the arms of the death chair. Fuck. Why is everything so hard right now? What if it’s always like this?
“We should head out,” Blake tells Wes.
My boyfriend rises from the chair, still avoiding my gaze. “I’ll grab my gear,” he mutters.
A few minutes later, Wes and Blake leave for pre-game warm-ups, and I’m almost relieved. The tension between Wes and me is unbearable. Of course, now the apartment is as quiet as a tomb. I’m left alone with my pessimistic thoughts.
It’s hard to say which is worse.
The next morningI’m out of the house while Wes is still snoring softly in our bed. I’m not intentionally sneaking out like a thief in the night—well, morning. I have an early staff meeting to get to, and I feel bad waking him up, even if it’s just with a quick goodbye kiss. Or at least that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.
But I don’t have a good excuse for why I pretended to be asleep when he got home from the game last night. Cowardice, maybe? Exhaustion?
I’m sure Wes is as tired of the tension as I am. I know he is. All those years we spent at hockey camp together, we had no problem talking to each other. All we fucking did was talk. About music. About where we grew up. Our thoughts on different brands of deodorant and the Superman/Batman schism and about which presidential nominees had the stupidest names.
And now we’re a couple, and we’ve forgotten how to have a conversation. It’s like we’re two acquaintances making small talk about the weather. Hell, the past couple days, it felt like wewerejust acquaintances, tiptoeing around each other in our condo, fearful of saying the wrong thing and upsetting theother person. We haven’t even discussed the night at the pub, for Pete’s sake. And sex? Forget it. We haven’t so much as kissed since our angry make-out sesh in the pub bathroom.
