“When we met…” She paused to toss her hair over one shoulder, stroking it into place.The gesture was so glamorous it took Ben a moment to place it as a marker of insecurity.“You seemed like a very kind man trying very hard to appear like any other professional athlete interested in wealth, power, and status.”
“I thought you married me because of all the professional athlete stuff.”
“I married you because I wanted someone kind, and secondarily, because I wanted wealth, power, and status,” she said bluntly.“You don’t want those things.”
“Oh.”Phil laughed.“I guess that’s true.I just wanted to play hockey and be happy.Seemed the way to go at the time.”
“We had an all right five years.”Camille gave Phil a quick hug.“But we can both do better.Now, I have no intention of intruding on your wedding celebration.It sounds very boring.But I’ll be back tomorrow to pick up a few pieces around the house I know you won’t miss.”
Ben hoped the crochet blanket in the living room was one of them.
They went inside without her and had a steak lunch followed by cake, champagne, and sparkling juice.Phil’s wedding gift turned out to be eminently practical and maybe a little romantic.He’d had his financial advisor open a joint account for household expenses as well as given Ben the password for his various online services accounts.
“I’m not budging on the cleaning service,” Phil warned.“I didn’t spend fourteen years in the NHL to clean my own windows.But this way, we both have a say in everything else.”
The house did have a lot of windows.
Later, alone in the bedroom that was now theirs, and Charlie in bed for the night, he showed Ben the attached savings account with a college fund for Charlie.
“It’s just a start,” Phil said, and Ben had to stop getting undressed and stare at him, sitting on the bed with his banking app open on his thousand-dollar iPad.
“How much do you think college costs?”Ben asked.
“I don’t know.I never went.”
Ben debated telling him about federal grants and loans and state schools versus private schools.But he felt loose and warm from the champagne, and if Charlie had a nest egg when he finished whatever schooling he wanted to do, all the better.
Instead, Ben kissed Phil and handed over his own gift, which compared poorly on financial terms.He and Charlie had gone to Build-A-Bear and made a pair of stuffed sea lions connected by a heart.
Phil laughed as though it was the best gift he’d ever gotten.
“How are you feeling as a married man?”Phil asked.
“Not as different as I thought,” Ben admitted.“You?”
“Eh.Sorry about Camille.”
“Actually, I’m kind of glad I met her.Makes it easier to imagine that part of your life.Areyouokay about her being here?”
Phil leaned back against the headboard.The stuffed sea lions sat in his lap, and he stroked across them idly.“What she said about us, about me… When we got divorced, I thought our marriage had been all about how she wanted things to look, you know?All perfect from the outside, like something you could put in a magazine.But since I met you, I’ve realized I wanted that, too, so no one would look at me too closely.”
Ben sat on the edge of the bed and rested a hand on Phil’s ankle.“You’ve adapted to not being straight much quicker than I did.”
“I’m thirty-four.”
“Yeah, but I figured myself out at fifteen, and it still took me six more years to kiss a man.”
“Okay, one, you had all the crazy family trauma to deal with.Two, my method involved kissing a man first and thinking about it later.I don’t think we can argue I was more well-adjusted.”
“It was a good kiss.”
Phil smiled and set the tablet aside.He drew Ben down for a kiss, much longer and more intimate than their first.
Ben was a little breathless when they pulled apart.“Okay, I think you’ve gotten better at that.”
“Hey,” Phil said.“You said something about fucking me?”
“Really?”Benhadn’tsaid anything.Phil had mentioned it first, and now he mentioned it again.
