With ridiculously contagious enthusiasm, she commando rolls from the bed, landing on her feet and her arms above her head like she’s about to bust out a star jump. “If you think I’m letting you go without me, you’ve got another thing coming. I haven’t left this house except for work in months, and I haven’t seen Quinn and Brady since he was discharged from the hospital. I’d like to check in on his progress.”
“Andyou want to interrogate them about their throuple-ship?”
“Yes, and that.” She follows me into the bathroom, peppering me with questions, and creepily watching as I reach for my contacts. “This is it, Cory. Our hard launch into Boston hockey society.”
“Hard launch? I have been out with these people before. I was last week.”
“Yeah, like twice,bothwithout me. Andyou said you spent the whole time hiding in a booth reading before leaving to meet some guy.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
“What? It’s true. You probably had bunnies all over you, but actually spoke to like three people–”
“No,” I grumble, “not fuck offyou. Fuck off this.” I hold the contact lens box in Cherry’s face. The empty box. “I forgot to pick my prescription up. Fuck.”
Cherry groans and slams her head against the wall. So dramatic. “Cory. WEAR. YOUR. GLASSES! There is nothing wrong with being you. You is great … are great … You’re great. If you can’t handle being yourself, maybe you shouldn’t go.”
“Fine. Let’s not go.”
“Noooo,” she whines. “We have to.”
“Okay then, so should I ditch the specs, and rock the blurred-vision hockey fuckboy look? Or do I embrace the real me. The geek.”
“Jesus, Cory. If you listened to anything I just said, the answer is fairly obvious.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Blind fuckboy it is.” I pick up my comb, swipe a generous amount of hair gunk onto my fingers, and get to work.
“What’s behind this, no glasses and slicked back hair back, will make the team fall at your feet-theory?”
I stare back at her in disbelief. “Um, obviously Clark Kent, but also Josie Grosie, Laney Boggs, Mia Thermopolis, and every other bookish girlie in like,everyhigh school movie ever made?”
“God, you are so gay.”
“Yeah, no shit.” I laugh. “That’s part of the problem. I can keep changing before everyone arrives, and dressing before they wake on away games, but I can’t keep avoiding partying with the team, or the bunnies. Even if it means staying in the closet a little longer, using this time to make friends and earn the respect of my teammates will be worth it when I do come out.”
I hope.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.
The world hates me. Case in point. Ryan Fink.
Ryan is the only person I could tolerate from my old workplace. To this day, one of the only people I could remotely call a friend and, for some time, the only other gay man in my acquaintance. He’s also kind of a jerk, and chews gum so frequently and loudly that it drives me insane, but beggars can’t be choosers.
Like most people our age, we keep in touch with intermittent texts, shared memes on Instagram, and that’s about it. Out of the blue, he called me today and asked me to join him for a beer. Since it had been a particularly rough day at home with Dylan, I accepted.
That’s how I found myself at an off campus Irish bar, three tables away from Cory Malkovich. More of the team are with him, Quinn Harris too. But it’s Cory and Cory alone I can’t take my eyes off.
Primarily due to his absurdity.
Gone is the grace he displays on the ice. He tripped on a chair leg upon entering, again on absolutely nothing when strutting from the bar back to the table, and he squinted at an upside down menu for a good fifteen minutes before the girl next to him angrily tore it from his hands and replaced it with glasses, which he refused to put on … Until she also put him in a headlock.
He’s … odd.
From what I’ve observed from my booth, at practice, and while maturely hiding behind the corners of buildings at BC, there’s three different versions of Cory Malkovich. None of which seem to beout.
Hockey Cory, with his hair slicked back and contacts in, is all swagger, arrogance, and whether he knows it or not, commander of respect. Around campus, he seems the total antithesis. Walking with his head down, a backwards cap, that floppy Dean hair hanging randomly over the frames of his sexy glasses. At my apartment, and here tonight, he seems a mixture of the two, glasses with slicked back locks, cocky, but moving clumsily. He’s adorable. Should he not be on the team, I would be on him so fast—buying him a drink and asking if I could take him home.
Well, the old pre-Brandon me would have.
