Page 12 of Grief & Glitter

With an afternoon game tomorrow, I had no choice but to work late. The team needed sharp skates to play well. So far we’d been meh. Not great, not terrible, just mediocre. I didn’t want to be the reason anyone felt off on the ice. Humming along to Megadeth, I wheeled the cart out of the small, stuffy room down the hall to the dressing room where I hung each set of skates in the proper stall. When I came to Gideon’s stall, I paused, then glanced over my shoulder. No one was here besides security and the cleaning crews. By the smell of things, the showers, locker room, and dressing room had already been cleaned. The lingering scent of antimicrobial cleansers still clung to the air.

Seeing no one, I gently hung his boots in his cubicle, then lifted out a big gold hoodie with a smiling panda eating ramen on the front. I knew the logo. It was from my favorite ramen shop, The Shared Bowl. How cool that he went there too? They had the best shio ramen in the state. I would fight any fool who said otherwise. And they served their soup in large ceramic bowls that two people shared. The tiny eatery was tucked away on a side street by the Susan B. Anthony House. I studied the happy panda, smiling softly, and then buried my face into the soft fleece. With my nose crammed into the logo, I inhaled pine and bergamot. It was a crisp, masculine smell that was so Gideon.

Gideon. The big hockey player who didn’t care that I wore makeup or frills. How could anyone be a massive jock yet so damned accepting? Those two things generally didn’t jibe, at least in my understanding of the world. Most of my interactions with sport dudes ended with me shoved into a locker or punched in the face. The high school shit was not on me. The attempt to rip off a hockey star totally was. Most aggressive men reacted to feminine men with disgust or violence, but not Gideon. He’d been sweet and understanding, and he’d handed control of his wardrobe to me. That took real trust. Eyes closed, I drew in another long, deep breath, then slipped the hoodie back onto its hook before I got caught huffing Gideon Taft’s clothes. Explaining that would be uncomfortable. Probably I’d just violated his space. Ugh. Crap. Okay, I was now a creepy stalker. Yuck. What the hell was up with me? Just because the guy was nice and let me pick his pocket square didn’t mean I was allowed to touch his personal belongings. Now I felt like shit. Like total shit. Like the kind of shit that is so terrible if you step in it, you don’t even try to scrape it off; you just toss your shoe into the dumpster. Then set it on fire. That was how shitty I now felt. And that dive into the bog of self-hate set off a craving to lose myself in a ketamine high where nothing was bad and everything was good.

Fuck. I’d been doing so good too. Shaking with the crushing grip of my old demon, I sat down on the bench in front of Gideon’s locker, pulled out my phone, and dialed Lyle. He picked up on the third ring. My gut was twisting in on itself as my heart sped up. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. A familiar whisper in the back of my mind reappeared, telling me the only way to survive the next five minutes was to get some K into me fast. I was talking before Lyle even said hello.

“Hey, it’s Ryan. I’m sorry it’s so late, but I’m dealing with a really bad moment. Like, uhm, I feel really bad about something I did and… now I feel like I’m in a plane that’s on autopilot that’s flying toward bad habits. I know you have a life outside of group and⁠—”

“Ryan, breathe.” His craggy voice slid into the oncoming panic attack, easing me back to the here and now. “I’m here for anyone who needs a hand at any time. God knows I called my sponsor enough times during my first few years. Where are you? Can I come get you? Meet you somewhere?”

“Thanks. I’m…” I drew in several deep breaths. “I’m at work. It just hit me out of nowhere. I did something bad, creepy, and I felt really shitty about what I did, and the urge was just there, Lyle. Like a ghost that you run into without warning. This is fucking scary.”

“I know, man, but hey… listen, you did the right thing. You reached out. Let me come get you. We’ll go have pie and coffee somewhere. We’ll talk.”

“Okay, yeah, sure. Thanks. I’m… I have my car. I’ll text Dad to let him know I’ll be later than the usual late.”

“You sure you’re good to drive?”

“Yeah.” Was I? Mostly. I hoped.

“Good man. You’re a strong motherfucker, do not ever forget that.”

“Right. Strong.” I didn’t feel strong. I felt like a weak loser who had to call his sponsor in the middle of the night. “There’s a coffee shop that sells donuts by the community center. Want to meet up there?”

“I know the place. Yep, sounds like a plan.”

“Cool. See you there. Thanks, Lyle.”

“Any time, man. No one gets through this thing called recovery alone. See you soon.”

I ended the call, sent Dad a text in case he was still up, and slunk to my car. The night was cold. A brisk wind rustled up dead leaves and a few gum wrappers by the players’ entrance. Coffee would keep me up all night, but I’d sooner be wired on caffeine than sitting on Mental Mike’s sofa in his garage stoned out of my head in a K-hole for who knows how long. Days sometimes. Lyle was a god in my eyes. Anyone who would roll out of bed in the middle of the night to hold some ex-addict’s sweaty, trembling hand was as close to divine as anyone could ever get.

My hand was steady when I slipped the key into our front door.

Shocking, since I drank enough coffee to power the electric grid for most of Rochester. The door creaked open. I stepped inside, toed off my sneakers in the foyer, and took a long, calming breath of warm air scented with cinnamon. Cinnamon?

“Hey,” Dad said, emerging from the dimly lit kitchen in his new scarlet macaw-patterned caftan and corduroy dad slippers. I jumped slightly, twirling from the sight of my shoes on the floor to my father. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. I woke up in the night to pee and had a sudden hankering for those cinnamon rolls from the tube. You know, the ones you liked so much as a kid?”

“Oh, hey, yeah. I like those,” I replied, knowing full well he’d not woken up with a craving for cinnamon rolls. He’d been up this whole time. He smiled and ran a hand over his silver and red hair, his whiskers thick on his cheeks. “You waited up for me, huh?”

Caught red-handed, all he could do was shrug and smile wanly. “Maybe. Your text sounded upset.”

“How does a text sound emotional?” I asked as he padded off into our little kitchen where the warmth of a recently used oven filled the room with spices and radiant heat. He placed a plate of buns on the round table, next to the stack of bills to be paid where Mom used to sit to eat. The fourth chair was now a coat catcher.

“Call it parental telepathy,” he explained before going to the fridge for milk to fill two empty glasses waiting for the two percent. “You never work that late, not even when there’s an away game early departure. Want to talk about it?”

“Sure. Not much to talk about,” I said and sat in my chair facing the back door. Dad sat across from me, fluffing out his caftan before taking his seat. I picked at one of the warm rolls, not hungry in the least as I had pie with Lyle to soak up the gallons of coffee.

“Oh? Did you go clubbing?”

“No, no, I don’t club anymore.” He knew that. That was his roundabout way of asking if I’d been in a bad place facing bad choices. I poked at the roll on my plate, lifting my gaze from it to him. “I did… I did this weird thing at work.” He cocked a red brow as he cut into his roll with a knife and fork, his dark eyes on me as I spoke. “Okay, so I ran into Gideon Taftwell the other day at the mall.”

“Oh, Taft is a good guy. Good hockey player. Quiet but respectful.”

“He is, yeah, all those things. We had a pretzel and talked. Then he reached for me, totally innocent,” I assured him as both his brows winged up. “He wanted to wipe my face for cheese. Stupid me freaked out. Ran from the food court. It was just… stupid.”

“No, son, it’s a reaction to a big person moving at you too quickly. After that incident in New York with Walker, being leery of hulks is pretty normal.”