“I think so, yeah,” I said, pulling the corner of my bottom lip between my teeth. “I’m gonna tell Charlie first. Then the team. I should probably tell Clive too.”
“I’ll handle Clive,” he said. “You can tell him too, but I’ll at least start the conversation.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, it’s the least I can do. And hopefully, I won’t lose my job.”
I frowned because I hadn’t thought of that, but I couldn’t see why it would be a problem. Ezra wasn’t my coach, and he didn’t have anything to do with my day-to-day training. He just got to annoy me with his social media shit. I’d have to bug him about my training idea because that was gold. At least in my opinion. “I don’t see why you would. It’s not like we’re doing anything wrong. Besides, Clive’s pretty chill. And if he’s got no problem with Jonny and Devon, he shouldn’t have a problem with this.”
And if he did, then Iwould do what I did best and become the fucking problem.
“Fingers crossed,” Ezra said, shooting me a smile.
I left him at the bottom of the stairs, stealing a sneaky kiss before I headed towards the canteen to find Charlie. I’d already messaged him to say I wanted to talk to him about something, which in hindsight had been a pretty bad decision because he’d been bombarding me with messages since he woke up, asking what it was. So far he’d covered severe illness, bankruptcy, a long-lost sibling, a surprise baby, a lottery win, an inheritance, an international call-up, retirement, and me transferring to another club. In France.
I wasn’t sure if he was being serious or trying to lighten the mood, but knowing Charlie, they were all real worries he was trying to pass off as jokes. I probably would have been better just coming straight out to him or cornering him at some point during training.
I’d debated not telling him at all and enjoying things with Ezra for a few weeks before everyone else got involved. But I was piss-poor at keeping secrets and I was bound to end up saying something to Ezra that I shouldn’t, and I wanted to make sure I came out on my terms.
It was time to stop hiding and get this weight off my shoulders for good.
“Danny!” Charlie yelled, waving at me from a window table as soon as I stepped into the canteen. He already had two trays of food in front of him and a selection of drinks. Fuck, I really had made him nervous.
“Hey,” I said as I sat down opposite him. “What’s all this?”
“Well, I figured you might be hungry, so I got us breakfast.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t want you to have to stress,” he said, picking up a spoon and a bowl that looked like it had granola and yoghurt in, which I quickly grabbed from under his nose.
“You can’t have that, dipshit,” I said, grabbing my own spoon to start eating it before he tried to take it back. “Have something else. But leave me at least one of the apple crumble muffins, please. I fucking love those.”
Charlie shot me a disgruntled look but reached for some scrambled eggs and a pile of toast. “I like that granola.”
“I know, but you put dairy yoghurt on it instead of soy, so you’re not having it.”
“Yeah, but the soy tastes like bean! I hate it.”
“Well, ask Chef if he’ll get you something else. There’s gotta be other types of yoghurt out there.”
“Fine,” he said, and I chuckled because Charlie could not pull off sulky and pouting. “So, what did you want to talk about?”
Okay, straight in. I could deal with that.
“You know I said I was exploring some stuff… about me. And you asked if I was coming out and I said I was still figuring it out,” I said, glancing around in case anyone was listening. But everyone else was too occupied by their breakfast.
“Yeah.”
“Turns out it was the truth. I’m gay. Like really fucking gay.”
“Okay,” Charlie said, shooting me the warmest smile as he reached over the table to take my hand, squeezing it tightly.
“Okay? That’s it?” I asked with a laugh.
“Well, yeah, I kinda thought we’d already covered this. I thought you were gonna tell me you were leaving or something.”
“I’m not leaving. You’re stuck with me forever.”
