My father’s voice echoed in my head, sharp and disgusted when I’d hung a poster of a hockey player in my room:“You’re not one of those boys who likes other boys, are you? Because that’s disgusting. Unnatural. Not in my house.”
I’d been thirteen. Had learned quickly what was acceptable and what wasn’t. Had buried any hint of curiosity so deep I’d convinced myself it didn’t exist.
But it had existed, hadn’t it?
The house party. Eleventh grade. Simon Mercier sitting too close on the bed, his hand on my face, both of us leaning in?—
The door had opened. Someone had interrupted. And I’d jerked back, laughing it off, blaming the alcohol. Had avoided Simon for the rest of the school year, told myself it was nothing. Just drunken stupidity. Just teenage confusion.
Everyone thought weird things at that age. It didn’t mean anything.
Except now I was standing in Marco’s bedroom, hard from reading a gay sex scene.
I bent down and picked up the book with shaking hands. Closed it carefully, bent the dog-eared page. Put it back exactly where I’d found it, wedged between the mattress and the wall.
Marco’s book. Marco’s secret.
And now mine too.
I grabbed both sets of sheets and left the room quickly, my mind spinning.
I’d seen Marco reading on his tablet hundreds of timeswhile I played video games. I thought he was reading news, or hockey analysis, or viewing game tape.
What if he’d been reading romance novels all along?
What if that book wasn’t the only one?
What secret was Marco keeping?
Now that I thought about it, after three years of friendship and of us now living together, I’d never once seen Marco with a woman. I’d never heard him mention a past girlfriend. Never caught him looking at a woman or talking about being interested.
I’d noticed it—vaguely, in the back of my mind—but I’d never questioned it. Marco was private. Guarded. He didn’t share personal stuff easily. That was just who he was.
But now, with that book burned into my brain…
Was Marco hiding something he couldn’t tell anyone, not even me? Was he embarrassed to admit he read romances… or was he turned on by this kind of stuff?
In the laundry room, I loaded the sheets into the washing machine, added a detergent pod, and pressed start.
And stood there staring as the machine began the wash cycle, trying to make sense of anything that had just happened.
I arrived at the rink the next morning after barely sleeping again, and it felt like a refuge. Hockey, I understood. Hockey made sense.
Or it usually did.
Today, getting dressed in the locker room, I found myself hyperaware of my teammates in a way I’d never been before. Not attracted to them—I wasn’t—but suddenly conscious that Icouldbe. That the possibility existed where it hadn’t before.
The world had shifted. What else had I missed about myself all these years?
Kinnunen caught me staring at nothing, lost in thought.
“Earth to Savard. You in there?”
“Yeah. Sorry. Just thinking about tonight’s game.”
“Right.” He didn’t sound convinced. “You’ve been off lately, man. Everything okay?”
“Fine. Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
