I lifted the bottle, leaned in just enough to make the shot work, and gave them exactly what they wanted. I held the smile until the shutter clicked, then let it drop the second the photographer lowered his camera.
I hated every minute of this dog-and-pony show.
But a thirty-one-year-old defenseman on the league’s worst team, stuck on the worst contract of his career, didn’t have a lot of earning power. Endorsement gigs like this helped pad my salary, even when they made me feel like the punchline of a joke.
My agent knew I hated this type of shit, but he kept booking things like this anyway, especially after I told him I was thinking about coming out. Now, he was hell-bent on presenting me as a real guy’s guy, probably to boost my image with the type of hockey fan who’d argue with other online trolls about whether I was a top or a bottom.
Not that I even knew myself.
The only man I’d ever been with was my former roommate, and we’d never actually fucked.
For a long time, I tried telling myself that fooling around with one guy in college didn’t necessarily mean anything.
But when I told my sister, Audrey, that I thought I might be bisexual, she looked at me like I was the world’s biggest idiot. Apparently, I’d talked about Sebastian Carruthers a lot back then, and, in her opinion, it hadn’t sounded even remotely platonic.
“I hate to break it to you, baby bro,” she’d said. “But you were head over heels in love with that boy.”
At first, I denied it, tried to claim we were nothing more than best friends, but the louder I protested, the more I realized how deluded I’d been.
After all, what kind offriendvisited three different grocery stores to track down another guy’s favorite ice cream? Or woke up at five o’clock in the morning to have his coffee ready before he left for swim practice? And then sat by his side for four days straight when he got pneumonia, brushing sweat-damp hair off his forehead and calling him “baby” like it was the most natural thing in the world?
There’d also been the part where we got each other off practically every night. You’d think that would’ve been my first clue.
After a lot of therapy, I could admit that no one—man or woman—had ever come close to making me feel the way Sebastian once had.
And now, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d squandered a shot at something real because I’d been too stupid to recognize what was—in hindsight—heartbreakingly obvious.
Crosby snapped his fingers right in front of my face. “Yo! Earth to Taylor.”
I blinked, the club suddenly coming back into focus—the music too loud, the lasers too damn bright. I had no idea how long I’d been sitting there, completely zoned out.
“Dude. Are you on something? Because if you’re holding out, Imma be pissed.” He made a “hand it over” gesture, wiggling his fingers expectantly.
I scrubbed my hand over my jaw, biting back a comment about how Crosby should know better than to fuck around with drugs. But nothing I said to this guy would make any difference. “Sorry. Didn’t sleep well last night. You know?—”
He pulled out his phone and swiped over the screen, not really listening. “This place is lame. I know we have to stay another hour, but I just added us to the VIP list at Portal.” He looked up with that shit-eating grin he got when he thought he was being clever. “We should sneak out and head over there instead.”
“Nah,” I said with a shake of my head. “I’m already on Johnny’s shit list, and if he finds out I bounced early, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
Johnny was my agent Carl Wasserman’s assistant—a job he clearly hated, mostly because he had to wrangle people who couldn’t follow simple directions.
People like this asshole, Crosby.
“Ugh, Johnny’s such a little bitch,” Crosby sneered, his tone making it all too clear what he really meant.
Christ.
I rubbed my temples, feeling a headache coming on. “Come on, man. Don’t say shit like that.”
He barked out a self-satisfied laugh and clapped me on the shoulder, squeezing it before sliding out of the booth. “Always a pleasure, Taylor. Always a pleasure.” With that, he crossed the mezzanine and jogged down the staircase to the dance floor below, getting lost in the sea of bouncing, swaying bodies.
Kwame Jones, an Olympic sprinter also on Carl’s roster, slid into Crosby’s vacated seat. “Carl made me promise to getyou out on the dance floor. Something about shaking what our mamas gave us.”
I tried to muster some enthusiasm. I liked dancing. What I didn’t like was getting groped by women who seemed to think my being a somewhat famous athlete whose name was on the marquee out front meant they could touch me. If I had a dollar for every time I’d had to grit my teeth through someone pinching my ass, I’d be … well, richer, I supposed, because it happened a lot.
“Yeah, okay.” I tossed back one of the shots Kimber had poured earlier, wincing when the tequila hit my taste buds. I might not be able to discern good tequila from bad, but even I knew this stuff tasted like ass.
An hour later, I’d taken approximately fifty selfies and had been fondled no less than ten times.
