Taylor had chosen a sports bar that he said was fairly quiet during the week and had some good microbrews on tap. Fine by me.
About ten minutes after our conversation in the parking lot, I walked into the place, and I had to pause to let my eyes adjust from the bright afternoon to the darkness inside. When I could see again, I found Taylor at a booth beneath a neon Coors sign.
“Hi,” I said as I slid onto the bench.
“Hi.” He folded his arms on the edge of the table and studied me. Awkward silence hung between us even after a waitress took our orders, then brought us each a beer. I wasn’t sure what to say. Maybe coming here had been a mistake; we should’ve just let it go after we’d talked outside the rink.
Taylor finally spoke, though. “Just, um… right off the bat? I’m sorry. I read the whole situation wrong.” Avoiding my gaze, he murmured, “I don’t know why I took it so damn personally.”
From the way he wouldn’t look at me as he said that, I suspected he knew exactly why he’d taken it personally. I was curious, but my gut said not to pry that out of him. Not yet,anyway. We’d only just eased some of the tension that had formed during practice.
“Honestly,” he went on, watching himself thumb the edge of the table, “it shouldn’t have been a big deal. Dancing with me or kissing me didn’t mean you had to go any further, you know?” He met my gaze. “Even if you didn’t have the shit with your ex, like… if you weren’t into it, you weren’t into it, you know?”
I swallowed, heat rushing into my cheeks, and now it was my turn to avoid looking at him. “To tell you the truth, Iwasinto it.”
I may have been imagining it, but I thought I heard Taylor’s breath hitch.
After a moment, I made myself meet his gaze again, and I swallowed hard. “I was. I didn’t just grab you at random to dance.” Rolling my shoulders, I exhaled. “But then I started getting into my own head, and I had to bail. I thought I was ready, but…” I trailed off and made a frustrated gesture. “Getting rejected—it sucks. I know it does. But it really wasn’t because of you. It could have been you or any other man in that building, and it still would have played out the same.”
Taylor chewed his lip and nodded, staring at the table between us. “I still don’t even know why it fucked with me so much. Going to places like that—everyonegets rejected, you know? I don’t…” A thought seemed to pull his brows together, but whatever it was, he let it go and mumbled, “I was stupid.”
Yeah, there was more to this. Something that made a rejection—any rejection—hit harder than it should have. I had to wonder if, just as I wouldn’t have been able to follow through with any man in the building that night, Taylor would have been just as stung by a rejection from anyone else.
Well, aside from the part where no one else in that building had, in his mind, ignored him at training camp.
“Maybe it’s good we didn’t go further than dancing, then.”
He met my gaze. “How do you figure?”
I rolled a sip of beer around in my mouth, studying him as I weighed exactly how to say this. The fact that we were speaking in my second language didn’t help; I was fluent in English, but it would never be as effortless for me as Russian.
Finally, I said, “It’s been months, and we can both remember how fucked up we were that night. The next morning probably wouldn’t have been much better.”
Taylor straightened, eyes losing focus, and he whispered, “Oh. Shit.” He reached for his beer. “I hadn’t even thought of that.”
Neither had I, but now that I was thinking about it—yeah, I was glad we hadn’t hooked up. It probably would’ve been hot as hell—just seeing Taylor naked would’ve been amazing—but the regret wouldn’t have been pleasant.
And there was the part where he’d only be the second man I ever slept with, and I had a pile of regrets about the first, so… yeah. Not hooking up was the best outcome, even if it made things a little awkward today.
“Can I…” Taylor hesitated. “Can I ask about what happened? With your ex?”
My stomach somersaulted, but I nodded. “You can ask.”
He chewed his lip, and silence held for a long moment. “Feel free to tell me if it’s none of my business, but…” He absently ran a finger around the rim of his glass. “Were things really as messy as people said they were?”
I winced, dropping my gaze into my own drink. “They were messier, to be honest.”
“Yeah?” Honest curiosity, though he wasn’t being pushy.
I was tempted to keep these cards against my vest. I hated talking about Drew and our shitshow of a breakup, and I hated that anyone knew about any of it at all. On the other hand, maybe Taylor would understand better why I walked away from him the night we met at the club.
I took a deep swallow of beer and pushed the glass aside. “Which story have you heard?”
Taylor shifted in his chair. “Um. I mean, the one that’s going around social media is that your ex couldn’t handle being in a secret relationship anymore, and when you guys got into a fight in the locker room, the team turned on both of you.” He furrowed his brow. “That… doesn’t seem like the whole story.”
“It’s a bullshit story,” I muttered. “Drew was the reason we kept it a secret. He insisted—Ugh. Well. It doesn’t matter now. He had a laundry list of reasons why he didn’t want to be out to anyone. Not even our teammates.”
Taylor’s eyebrows climbed. “Wait, sohewanted it to be a secret?”
