Phil exhaled minutely.
“Didn’t stop you when Crowler and Grant asked,” Vanderbilt muttered mutinously.
Looking straight ahead but speaking loudly enough to be heard across the room, Phil said, “Don’t see you with a letter on your chest.”
“Yeah, well, one of ourA’s is out for the whole year.Someone’s gotta step up.”
Phil tried not to wince too visibly.In the rational part of his mind, he knew it wasn’t his fault his knee had given out when it did.A too-intense training schedule on top of an old injury that had never fully healed were to blame.Playing professional hockey taxed the joints, and Phil was getting old for a guy who spent twenty minutes three nights a week standing on very narrow blades, getting pelted with pucks, and crushing other guys into the boards.If anyone could be blamed, it was the coaching staff for not taking his preexisting condition into consideration.
Phil still felt guilty.He’d been an alternate captain for the San Francisco Sea Lions for a decade now, and he took the role very seriously.Tom was a great hockey player, one of the best of their generation, but he wasn’t a demonstrative person.He knew the definition of a team captain and fulfilled those duties to the letter, but the intangibles were beyond him: the little talks with certain members of the team to keep spirits up, paying for a round of drinks at a bar on the road, inviting the guys from overseas around for the holidays.Those parts were Phil’s job.
Phil turned to the adductor machine again and loaded up the weights before working his thighs against the resistance.He welcomed the pull in his muscles.
Behind him, Phil heard Dmitriyev, the starting goalie, say, “Not cool, Bilts.”
Vanderbilt didn’t respond.Silence filled the air, only interrupted by the sound of weights clattering as someone loaded up the bench press.
Ben came to stand beside Phil.“That okay?”he asked out of the corner of his mouth.
“Uh-huh.”
“Great.Let me know when you’re ready to head home.”
“Fifteen minutes?”Phil grunted, while continuing his set.His bare thighs stuck to the seat where his shorts had rucked up, making the skin pull.
Ben didn’t respond.
“I got a response from my lawyer,” Phil said, keeping his words vague enough no one around them would know what he was talking about.“I can tell you in the car.Lots of paperwork.”
“Mm-hm.”
Phil looked up.Surely Ben had questions or concerns about the legal process of being made fully responsible for a teenager whom he had only met yesterday.
Ben looked down at him, brown eyes glazed, clearly distracted.
“Ben?”
Ben physically shook himself.“I can’t talk aboutthiswhile you’re doingthat.I’ll be in my office.”He turned on his heel and left.
Bemused, Phil looked down at himself.He was just doing thigh presses.Sure, his shorts were a little higher than usual, and when he pressed inward, the lines of muscle stood out starkly against the skin of his thighs.He’d seen the same view hundreds of times before.He honed his body for hockey, and he tended to view it as a tool more than anything else.It was a commodity; it was how he made his living.
Why would a bit of bare skin be a problem?Phil talked about important shit in the middle of exercise all the time.Heck, he’d been on the stationary bike when Camille said she wanted a divorce.
He couldn’t remember the last time anyone made a fuss about the casual display of bodies that was part and parcel of Phil’s life.Sometime before Juniors, Phil vaguely remembered a teammate who never showered in the locker room, preferring to go home in his rank, sweaty hockey gear.What was his name?Eric?Aaron?Something starting with a vowel.Of course, everyone joked he had a tiny dick as a consequence.When that got old, someone suggested he might be gay and scared of getting hard in the showers.The team wore that accusation into the ground pretty relentlessly.Phil couldn’t remember how it stopped; maybe the guy had gotten a girlfriend, or maybe he’d quit the team.Maybe Phil had left for Juniors before it stopped.
Phil had never said much about it either way.He hadn’t thought it was a funny joke, but hockey teams didn’t teem with diversity, and by age fifteen, he’d had more than enough experience with casual racism from his teammates, their parents, and his coaches.At the time, Phil had been relieved someone else had gotten negative attention for being different for a change.Nowadays, his own teenage cowardice disgusted him, but it had happened twenty years ago, and he couldn’t turn back time.Anyway, Eric or Aaron had never stared at Phil like Ben had, as if he—as if he—
As if he was gay, and the man he’d kissed last night was gripping a weighted leg press between his practically naked thighs.
Oh.
Phil had been doing a very good job at not thinking about the kiss, if he did say so himself.It hadn’t been unpleasant or anything.Phil might not be gay, but he liked the thought of Ben wanting to kiss him enough to go ahead and do it despite all the reasons he shouldn’t.Being wanted felt good.
But when Ben pulled away and apologized, Phil couldn’t tell what he was apologizing for.Was it because he coached Phil’s team?Was he worried Phil would out him at work?Was he still concerned about Phil’s contract negotiations?Or, worst of all, was he apologizing for whatever secret he was keeping from Phil?
Phil wouldn’t know until Ben decided to tell him.
But having the ability to render him speechless in gym shorts sent a zing of pride through Phil all the same.
