We arrived together. I did not make a speech. I did not stand up. I walked in with Theo next to me and my hand on the small of his back, which was the physical equivalent of a press release, and the room did the math.
Cole Briggs, from the head of the table where he sat with Mik: "The figure skater from Decatur?"
"Theo," I said. "Theo Kimura."
"Welcome to the family."
The welcome was genuine and specific and contained the full authority of a man who had personally blown the doors off the Reapers' collective closet by kissing his boyfriend on the ice in front of 18,000 people and who therefore considered all subsequent coming-outs to be pleasantly anticlimactic by comparison.
Mik Volkov caught my eye from across the table. The nod. The Russian nod that carried the weight of his own journey from Chelyabinsk to center ice. The nod said: I know what this cost you. I know what this means. Welcome.
Wes Chen raised his beer from his end of the table, where he sat with Luca in the specific, comfortable arrangement of a man who had discovered that love did not require him to be anyoneother than himself. The raise was minimal. The meaning was maximal. The enforcer's salute.
Jonah Park and Ren Briggs were warm and welcoming in the way that the newest members of any club are warm to the newest-newest members, the generosity of recent arrivals making room for even more recent arrivals.
Luca said "FINALLY" with a volume that caused the restaurant to momentarily pause, and then he was at Theo's side, extracting information with the forensic enthusiasm of a man who considered other people's love stories a form of personal sustenance.
Theo was nervous. I could read it in his shoulders, which were elevated by approximately a quarter inch, and in his hands, which were gripping his water glass with more force than hydration required. I kept my hand on his back. The hand said: I'm here. This is the crease. We hold the line together.
After dinner, back at his apartment, Axel on the couch between us, the bossa nova playing low.
"That was not as terrifying as I expected," Theo said.
"The team has practice."
"At being welcoming?"
"At love. They've had three examples in one season. The learning curve is steep but the sample size is growing."
"You're using data metaphors to describe emotional acceptance."
"I'm a goalie. This is how I communicate."
He kissed me. The kiss began as gentle and escalated quickly because the adrenaline of the team dinner, the sustained social exposure that was new for both of us, had produced a specific, charged energy that needed somewhere to go.
The second time was different from the first. The first time had been raw and urgent and born from the emotional aftermath of the five-goal game and the midnight rink. Thistime was deliberate. Confident. We had learned each other's vocabulary in the first encounter and were now speaking it fluently.
In the bedroom, under the amber lamp, with the costume on the dress form watching from the corner and Axel banished to the living room where his yowls of protest provided a feline soundtrack that was less romantic than either of us would have preferred.
Mars was more confident. The analytical brain that had struggled to process sensation in the first encounter had adapted, the way it adapted to every new system: input, analysis, adjustment. He had analyzed the data from the first time and had arrived with a revised approach that was more assertive, more responsive, more attuned to the specific feedback that my body provided.
I was more vocal. The performing instinct that I had spent weeks learning to suppress had been repurposed: not performing for an audience but communicating with a partner. The sounds I made were not arranged for evaluation. They were the honest, unedited output of a body that was being touched by someone who had learned its language.
We were face to face, which had become our preferred configuration because the eye contact was the thing. The watching during the most vulnerable physical act either of us performed. The watching that was not judging but witnessing. The saving that was not stopping but holding.
Afterward, in the dark, his head on my chest, my hand in his hair.
"The regional is in two weeks," I said.
"I know."
"I'll be there. Row three. Center."
"What if row three isn't close enough?"
"Then I'll be at the boards. Or on the ice. Whatever distance you need. I told you: I'll be the signal."
"What if the signal doesn't reach?"
