“How was school?”
Again, Charlie shrugged and turned away to look out of the window.
Bad, then.
“Did you make any friends?”Ben hated himself the second he asked it, but he had no other repertoire of questions in this situation.
Charlie looked away from the window for long enough to shoot him a baleful glare, and then resumed watching the slow crawl of houses and hills.
They didn’t talk for the rest of the drive.
When they got to Phil’s, Charlie went straight to his room and shut the door.
Ben had an hour, maybe two, before he had to start getting ready for the game tonight.He had a clearly upset teenager locked in his room, a research dead end in the case he was working, and no clear path forward for the rest of his life.Should he uproot Charlie again and try a school in some other city where Ben could get a job?Somewhere small enough the rent prices wouldn’t bankrupt him?But a smaller city would be worse.At least here, the school administrators knew what being transgender meant and treated Charlie with respect even if the kids didn’t.
But if Ben couldn’t crack Trout and the betting scheme, he had no reason to stick around.The job market in the Bay area was competitive enough that Ben had doubts he could find something in time.
He kept the door to his room open so he could hear if Charlie left his and then logged back on to the betting site.Fishfordinnerhadn’t placed any new bets since Ben had last checked.What else could Ben do at this point?He had a timeline; he had screenshots.In an empty document, he started typing up what he’d witnessed at practices, how Trout would shout at and belittle the D-men, what drills he would run.Phil would be better at remembering those.Ben should ask him.
But using Phil as a star witness wouldn’t help at this stage.There wasn’t enough evidence.Some sports coaches just behaved like sociopaths.Heck, Ben’s PE teacher frequently shouted at and belittled his students, and they weren’t even being paid to be good at sports.
At four, Ben heard the thump of Phil’s crutches downstairs.
“Ben?”he called up the stairs.“Ben, you home?I saw your car outside.”
Shit.Phil.He’d be so mad Ben had missed practice this morning.Trout must have run roughshod all over the team, and Ben had gotten so caught up in his own issues he ignored Phil’s livelihood and priorities.It was unacceptable behavior for a roommate, let alone a friend, which Ben hoped they were by now.
“Sorry,” Ben said from the top of the stairs, hoping to preempt Phil’s anger.“I lost track of the day.I thought today was Wednesday and the game was tomorrow.I should have checked my calendar—”
He turned the corner on the staircase in time to see Phil frown.
“Today was Charlie’s first day at school, right?”Phil said.“Of course you didn’t make morning skate.How did it go?”
Ben grimaced.“Well, he wouldn’t talk about it, and now he’s hiding in his room, so I’m thinking not great.”
Phil wrinkled his nose.“Shit.Don’t suppose he wants to go to the game, then?”
He might, actually.He’d had a good time the other day, had talked about it the whole way home.But Ben considered how Charlie had drawn in on himself on the car ride, how he’d sunk into his oversized shirt—shit, he really needed to take Charlie clothes shopping—and doubted Charlie would want to be surrounded by tons of screaming sports fans right now.
“Did you make it to Marisa’s office?”Phil asked.
“Yeah.Everything is signed and filed.Now we wait, I guess.”
“Hmm.”
Ben reached the bottom of the stairs.“You should sit.Your knee—”
“I’m supposed to put as much weight on it as I can,” Phil said calmly.“Youshould sit.You look terrible.”
Ben snorted.Always great to hear that, let alone from someone who looked like Phil.Ben was still working through the embarrassment of being literally unable to converse with the man while he operated a leg press.
It wasn’t his fault Phil’s thighs were magnificent.Ben had been under too much stress to think about sex for months, but for some reason as the stressors ratcheted up and up and up, the notion of planting his face between Phil’s legs and staying there formed a relief from everything else Ben couldn’t handle.
“Is it only everything with Charlie?”Phil asked, hobbling toward the couch in a clear bid to get Ben to sit down with him.
Ben fell back into the section of cushion he’d claimed in the few weeks he’d been staying here, the one next to Phil’s corner.
“No,” he admitted.He wanted more than anything to tell Phil all about it—Trout and Pulvermacher and the betting site and how Phil’s knee and professional future were a casualty to other men’s greed, and Ben was trying desperately to prove it.But if he did, Phil would be so angry.He would be well within his rights to kick Ben out of the house, and then what would happen to Charlie?
