He also decided against asking Tom why he chose to avoid Phil.Tom went through bouts of strangeness sometimes.Phil would invite him over for dinner in a week or two, and they would be back to normal.Maybe by then, Phil’s own crazy impulses to quit hockey entirely and make out with men would be gone.
Chapter Six
[…] Taken by themselves, many LDS beliefs don’t seem any stranger than those of other religions or sects.So Mormons don’t drink alcohol.Well, neither do many Muslims.So Mormons send their offspring out into the world to proselytize.Well, most Christians have believed in proselytizing, historically.So Mormons pay a 10 percent tithe of their earnings straight to the church every month.Well, so did medieval peasants.
Okay, maybe that last one isn’t how they’d couch it.
Instead, they’d talk about how nice it is that there’s no donation plate passed around, and the church isn’t begging for money.Nobody is forced to pay the tithe after all.At least not officially.The pressure to do it is all informal, for plausible deniability’s sake.
Similarly, LDS members will tell you very proudly how family-oriented they are.Did you know the divorce rate among LDS members is only 6 percent (evidence not provided)?And do you know what happens to Mormon women who want to divorce their husbands?You can probably guess.More of that informal pressure.
Of course, if, like me, you happen to be nonconforming in another very unsanctioned way, the pressure gets a lot more formal.[…]
(From “Confessions of a Gay Ex-Mormon,” by Ben Sinclair, published in theSalt Lake City Star, 01/22/2007)
At10:52p.m.,theGreyhound from Salt Lake City was officially seven minutes overdue.
This was unfortunate for several reasons.First, it was late, and Ben was old.Second, Charlotte was presumably unaccompanied and traveling this far for the first time.She must be nervous, and delays wouldn’t help.And third, standing alone at a bus stop with nothing to do meant Ben couldn’t stop thinking about kissing Phil.
It had only been two days since, but Ben had done very little besides overthink the entire interaction.
Neither of them had mentioned the kiss or Phil’s entirely legitimate question about what the fuck Ben was doing coaching a hockey team.
They hadn’t talked about it the day after, when Ben had joined Phil on the large, cozy, L-shaped couch to watch the East Coast games and ask all the stupid hockey questions he’d been wondering about.To his credit, Phil hadn’t asked Ben any questions in return, only answered to the best of his ability.It turned out Phil also couldn’t explain all the ass-grabbing that went on in the sport, but he had a much better definition for goalie interference than the rulebook Ben had been consulting.The couch was big enough for them to sit on either end with ample space between them, but they’d both sat on the right so Phil could keep his leg stretched out in front of him on the long end, and Ben could still reach the popcorn bowl.
Their hands and thighs had brushed together all evening.
They hadn’t talked about it today either, not during the half-hour drive through San Francisco to the rink.Phil had been busy outlining an improved training regimen for Luca Mazetti, something more adept than what his AHL coaches had provided for building strength while not sacrificing speed.
Phil had sat in on practice, surreptitiously texting Ben, letting him know which drills to run.Occasionally, he’d added notes like:Tell Breezy to go lowerorDoes Jax know there are people besides Tom on the team?Ben had read those out verbatim, and they appeared to have had the desired effect.Phil had sent a few inscrutable looks his way, but he hadn’t renewed his questions about Ben’s coaching acumen.
Later, when Ben had wrapped up video review for the day and checked in on Phil, he’d been midway through a workout, and the sight of him lying under the bench press in the world’s tiniest athletic shorts, sweat beading down his forehead, had forced Ben to make a tactical retreat rather than mention the time they’d kissed.
They hadn’t driven back together.Ben had a staff meeting with all the coaches and trainers, in which Trout, once again, hadn’t let anything incriminating slip and, once again, had been impervious to Ben’s attempts at friendship.And when Ben had gotten home, he’d been too chickenshit to confront Phil.
The sequence of events left Ben standing at a bus stop, worrying about when a bus with a teen he didn’t know would arrive as a distraction from everything else he was worried about: his job uncovering whatever Coach Trout was doing to the Sea Lions, his other job coaching the Sea Lions himself, his living situation at Phil’s house, bringing someone else into his living situation at Phil’s house, and how electrifying it had felt to kiss Phil.
Ben opened his emails on his phone and started drafting a progress report for Pulvermacher.Maybe he would miraculously be satisfied with Ben’s lack of results, and Ben could quit.
He was engrossed in attaching all of the screenshots he’d taken when the bus pulled up.Greyhounds all looked alike.Ben had taken a lot of them early in his career, when he had the energy to go from city to city and story to story at the drop of a hat.They didn’t seem to have changed much.
Ben hit send on the email just as the bus brakes popped and hissed, and it came to a full halt in front of him.The doors slid open, and one by one, people emerged.A Black man with earbuds in.A woman with two small children.A skinny, scrawny boy, aged maybe twelve, in a flannel shirt that swallowed him whole.Two Latino men, chatting and laughing in Spanish before parting ways.Another family.A—
“Uncle Ben?”
The boy in the flannel shirt was looking up at him.
Ben blinked.“Uh.Charlotte?”
He scowled so instantly and so thoroughly Ben felt an immediate urge to apologize.
“It’s Charlie.”
Only lamplight and the ever-present ambient light of high rises and headlights illuminated the parking lot.It took Ben a moment to see him properly.His hair, chopped short unevenly, looked as if he’d done it himself.He wore his baggy pants cuffed twice, and though the sleeves of his shirt almost covered them, Ben could see his fingers twisting together nervously.
“My bad,” Ben said.“Nice to meet you, Charlie.What are your pronouns?”
“He-him.”
