by Beth Bolden
Nick took a long drink of his beer and resisted the urge to find something harder. “I’m trying not to.”
“The hardest thing in the world is to support the person you love, but not smother them.”
Nick laughed, even though Gabe had a really fucking good point. “When did you become some sort of Zen love expert?”
Gabe glowered, but Nick was pretty sure he caught a hint of a smile as Gabe turned and headed back to the living room. You know when was the unspoken, extremely self-explanatory answer. Since Jemma.
Nick had never experienced the desire to provide more than a token support for any of his past partners, and never the intense need to protect (aka smother) if he was using Gabe’s terminology, and he didn’t particularly want to. Nick had known very early on during his trip to Miami that he was on new, undiscovered ground. He’d believed himself in love once or twice before this, but it had never been like it was with Colin. Colin felt like a whole new universe.
It was after midnight when Jemma and Gabe left. Colin had had a few beers – most of a six-pack if he was being totally honest – and so when he walked into Nick’s bedroom, he was feeling pleasantly buzzed and more relaxed than he had in at least a week.
Nick was lying in bed, head propped up on a handful of pillows, his tablet on his lap, and he looked up when Colin walked in.
He extended the tablet silently, and Colin took it.
It was what he’d wanted all damn day, but still looking at it, at the twitter icon at the top of the screen, was almost too much. He saw enough to know that Nick had specifically filtered out results with his name.
Not just replies to the tweet he had written earlier this afternoon and Helen had vetted personally, and then posted. No, just a general search. The widest search with the most possibility there could be something Colin wouldn’t want to read.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to do this,” Colin said.
Nick gave a helpless shrug. “I keep forgetting how tough you are. Apparently my natural inclination is to wrap you in cotton wool. I’m sorry.”
“And Helen?”
“Helen’s just afraid you’re going to see something bad and have trouble with your interviews in the next few days.”
“Oh, so she’s worried about herself,” Colin said wryly. “Per usual.”
“She means well,” Nick said, but Colin noticed that he hadn’t disagreed. “But this is your choice. If you want to read what people are saying, you should. It’s your right.”
Colin stared down at the screen, but he couldn’t look at it. Not yet. “This is all I’ve wanted to see all day,” he said slowly, “and I thought I’d be ready, but I’m fucking terrified.”
Nick’s face softened. He tapped the bed next to him. “Come sit with me, and I’ll read you a few. Break the ice.” He plucked the table right out of Colin’s grip. “You can still be tough and ask for help, you know.”
Colin slid onto the bed, lying on his back, hands tucked behind his head, his eyes closed. “I know,” he mumbled.
“Okay, well, now that we got that out of the way,” Nick teased, keeping his voice light. “You just tell me when you’re ready.”
Colin took a deep, mostly steady breath. Let it out, took in another. Let that one out. “Okay. I’m ready.”
“Hmmm, let’s see. Here’s a good one. MrsAlice45 says: Colin O’Connor says he’s bisexual. Apparently that means some people don’t think he can play football. Too bad he’s already proved them wrong.”
Colin couldn’t help but chuckle a little at that one. “I think that might be Helen in disguise.”
“Too bad her name wasn’t MrsHelen45. We could have exposed her so easily.”
“I knew she was too smart for us,” Nick hissed conspiratorially and that was all it took to unearth a laugh from somewhere Colin thought he’d lost in the last week.
“Go on,” he said. “And don’t take it too easy on me and only read the good ones.”
“How about I read all the fair ones?” Nick asked and Colin made a grumbling noise of assent. “Okay, here’s one. “VikingsFan4Ever says: Definitely knew something was off about Colin O’Connor when he passed for almost three hundred yards against the Vikings.”
“Three hundred yards and two touchdowns,” Colin corrected, amused.
“EverShade wants to know what the downside is. According to her, everyone should be thrilled because you’re fair game for both sexes.”
Colin laughed again. “If they only knew.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Nick teased. “Oh, this is good. This gentleman says, Colin O’Connor joins Michael Sam as the only two football players with enough sense to be honest about who they are.”
Nick read tweets out loud for almost an hour, and by the end, Colin had laughed and he’d cried. There had been a few that had set his teeth on edge, but he knew Nick had carefully edited out anything really bad. They would be out there, and someday he’d read them. But not today. Today, he felt just about light and free as a helium balloon, floating towards the endless horizon.
“Thank you,” Colin said softly, reaching out and stroking Nick’s leg. “Thank you really isn’t enough, but it’s all I’ve got.”
Nick sniffed suspiciously. “It’s plenty.”
“It’ll have to do until I can tell the world how amazing my boyfriend is.”
Nick rolled his eyes, but Colin hadn’t missed the gleam in the gray depths. As protective as Nick was, Colin definitely suspected that Nick would really enjoy informing the world that not only was Colin O’Connor off the market, he was his.
Someday.
The next afternoon, Nick took Colin to the Five Points office, where he signed a gigantic blown-up copy of the second Sports Illustrated cover that he’d posed for. This time, instead of a bare chest, he was wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with a rainbow, and he might not to be a real expert – not like Nick, anyway – but he was almost certain that he looked nothing like a cardboard cutout.
“This one is for my office,” Nick said, unrolling another enormous poster-sized version onto his desk. “Make sure the signature is nice and big.”
“Has anybody ever told you that you’re sort of embarrassing?” Colin teased as he signed in a huge swath across his own torso.
“I tell him all the time,” Jemma piped up.
Colin threw her a bright smile. The helium feeling that had bloomed inside him last night still hadn’t faded, and he felt like he was walking lighter than air today.
“You’re both the worst,” Nick grumbled. “Ganging up on me.”
Next on the agenda, and the real reason he’d come to the Five Points office, was a live Q&A session, via their Facebook page.
The questions were heavily moderated, but Colin wasn’t really surprised to get one about his love life. He’d been getting questions about his love life the whole time the world had believed he only liked women; he didn’t really expect that would change now that he’d opened it up to both men and women.
“I saw the Ellen interview,” the girl asked nervously, “and you said no comment when she asked you about a partner. Are you single?”
Helen shot him a look that could cut from ten yards away, but again, Colin let his flush do all the talking for him. “I’m not ready to say,” he said, which was most definitely not true. But what he was absolutely not going to do was lie outright and pretend that Nick didn’t exist.
Helen threw up her hands in mock defeat, and Colin was pretty sure he could see Nick, behind the scenes, smirking, clearly not as upset as he might have been. Colin wasn’t sure when Nick would finally say it was okay for them to be honest about their relationship, but he liked to believe that he was slowly but surely wearing his boyfriend down, and that day was a lot sooner than Nick tried to pretend it was.
When the Q&A was over, Helen pulled him aside. Colin knew from her expression that her patience was wearing thin. “First Ellen and now this?” she nearly shrieked. “Do you have any idea how much pressure I’m get
ting from the media about your love life?”
But nothing could really kill Colin’s good mood today, even Helen in a snit. “So, not much different than normal,” he said smoothly.
“You’re encouraging them!” Helen insisted, which wasn’t so far from the truth.
Colin fully expected Nick to bring it up later, and he was glad he hadn’t bet against his gut instinct, because he did on their way home from the Five Points office.
“You know, you can’t half-out me as a way to convince me,” Nick said, his words the opposite of the wide grin on his face.
Sure I can’t, Colin thought. The truth was, they were both flying high, the intoxicating taste of freedom burning in their mouths, and he gave it only a few more days until Nick caved. The response to Colin’s coming out had been even better than either of them had believed it could be, and Colin could practically see Nick mentally wrestling with how much he just wanted to say fuck it and throw caution to the wind.
During Colin’s next interview, the interviewer inevitably asked if he was dating anyone. Colin gave a single bright grin to the camera and wouldn’t answer at all. Supposition and rumors raged like wildfire. Helen told him he was giving her an ulcer.
But the soft smile on Nick’s face was worth Helen’s annoyance, and he kept going, pushing as much as he dared.
A week after the press release, Helen forwarded him an invite to a major NFL player’s big children’s fundraiser that he was holding in LA in a few days. Colin had been not-so-subtly pushing for an invite for a while because he not only wanted to do what he could for the kids, but because he had heard great things about this particular player’s charity and he wanted an inside look for his own burgeoning folder of ideas.
I knew it would come through, Helen wrote. You can take a plus one – but not Nick. Maybe Jemma?
Of course, the first thing Colin thought when he saw it was that now that the invitation had finally materialized, he needed Nick to come with him.
“Absolutely fucking not,” Nick said bluntly, as he shoved plates into the dishwasher. Colin had made breakfast – well, more like brunch – and Nick had offered to clean up.
Colin was flabbergasted. He’d not expected Nick to instantaneously agree, but he’d expected more hesitation, and less absolute certainty than no, he would not be going as Colin’s plus one to the fundraiser.
He’d done everything he could to guarantee a positive response from his boyfriend, including dragging his butt out of bed way too early in the morning and grabbing donuts from Randy’s, because that was Nick’s favorite.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Nick continued, “I’d love to go with you. But it’s a bad idea.”
“Why? Because you wrote about me coming out? By the fundraiser, nobody will care.”
“That’s probably not entirely true,” Nick said slowly, “but that’s not really why.”
“Then what?” Colin demanded, a little more harshly than he’d intended. He’d come out, to way more positive fanfare than anyone had ever predicted. Why couldn’t he go with his boyfriend to an important fundraiser?
“People were way nicer than any of us expected, yeah, but that’s only because you haven’t publicly dated a man yet. The moment you do that, everyone who reserved judgement, who sort of expected you to end up with a woman, is going to come down on you like a ton of bricks.”
“That is what being bisexual means,” Colin said. He’d heard this argument from Nick before, but he still found it hard to swallow. He’d absolutely picked up on Nick’s protective streak. It wasn’t that he believed Nick’s concerns weren’t valid; more like the situation wasn’t nearly as grave as Nick was presenting it as.
Nick turned back to the sink and shrugged, his shoulders tense under his loose t-shirt. “I don’t have to like it to know it happens.”
“It doesn’t even have to be a date,” Colin said, hating how desperate he sounded.
Nick glanced back at him, expression tinged with bitterness. “But we are dating. I’m not going to go to an event and pretend otherwise. I’d rather not go than lie.”
Normally Colin might have agreed with him, but he hated the idea that he’d been through all of this damn publicity and personal exposure and he still couldn’t take his boyfriend as a date to an event.
“Fine. But don’t expect me to like it,” Colin said, hearing a bitterness in his own voice that echoed Nick’s.
Nick sighed, and dropped the dish towel on the counter. He walked around it and wrapped his arms around Colin’s middle, laying his head on his chest. Colin resisted for about half a second, then gave in, his own hands sliding across Nick’s shoulders. “I don’t like it, either,” Nick murmured. “I hate it. But we’ll figure it out. Just give it a little more time.”
Patience had never really been one of Colin’s strong suits, despite all claims to the contrary. He’d had to teach himself, through intense repetition and mental control, the patience to wait through his progressions without just throwing the ball down field to the first receiver.
Learning patience had sucked, and exercising it now felt even tougher, but then Nick--the culmination of so many hopes that Colin had carried through the hard years--was worth it, and more.
Colin let out a sigh, trying to empty the frustration out of him along with the extra air. It nearly worked. “You’ve got your time. I’m sorry I keep trying to push.”
He wasn’t really sorry, and Colin knew by the way Nick chuckled that he knew it, too. “No, you’re not,” Nick pointed out wryly.
“No, I’m not,” Colin admitted.
Later that afternoon, they met up with Gabe and Jemma at Nick’s favorite taco stand outside the city, along the 101.
The sun was setting as they sat on the wide veranda, drinking beers and shooting the shit. And if Colin scooted a little closer to Nick, let his arm drape over his shoulders, Colin told himself that Nick knew he was pushing and if he didn’t like it, all he had to tell him was to stop.
Nick didn’t tell him to stop and so when he got up to get another round, it felt natural to lean in and brush a quick kiss across Nick’s lips. It wasn’t anything different than what Gabe had done with Jemma just a few minutes before.
The problem was that neither Gabe nor Jemma were an NFL quarterback who had just come out of the closet, and who had spent the last two weeks inciting a fury of gossip on just who he was dating.
It was the witching hour, just between dark and dawn, when Colin’s phone rang. He picked it up on the third ring, vaguely sensing through his sleepy brain that Helen calling him at 2:39 am was probably not the best sign.
“Secret’s out of the bag,” Helen said shortly. “There’s pics of you kissing Nick. And Deadspin found some other clubbing pics, from that place you went in Miami, and they’ve published it all. Everybody knows.”
“Oh,” Colin said stupidly, still mostly asleep.
“Buckle up,” Helen said, “we’re in for a shit storm.”
Any chance Helen might have been exaggerating ended after Colin hesitantly shook Nick awake.
He wore a truly impressive scowl on his face, his hair standing straight up on one side. “What?” he asked first, then turned to grab his phone, then tablet, muttering to himself. Finally after a tense minute, he swung his feet to the floor and stalked off in the vicinity of the second bedroom he’d set up as his office.
Colin lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, replaying that single moment at the taco stand, when he’d leaned in and kissed Nick. It had been less than a second, and the sort of off-handed kiss you gave someone when you weren’t thinking about it.
Had he really been thinking about it? He went back and tried his best to remember what had been in his head at the time. Would he have done it if he’d known there were paparazzi stalking them? If he’d known there was a fan with a camera only a few tables away?
Before Colin could decide for sure one way or the other, Nick returned, laptop under one arm, a frown marring his handsome features. “I
’m not mad,” he said. “I’m mostly confused.”
“Why?” Colin wasn’t confused at all. He’d whipped the media into a frenzy of speculation about his love life, which was why he’d spent the last six years of his life avoiding personal subjects. He’d been asking to get bitten; it didn’t really seem fair to complain about the pain after the fact.
Nick glanced up from his laptop, which he’d settled back in his lap. Colin glanced around and saw Nick’s phone, tablet, and now the laptop arranged in a semi-circle around him. A veritable wall. “Deadspin can be dicks, yeah, but they’re usually dicks with an agenda. And permission, of a kind.”
“Do you think Helen okayed this?”
Nick looked unsure. “I’m sure she wasn’t happy about it.”
“She wasn’t,” Colin interrupted. “She said, get ready for a shit storm. Shit storms are not typically things you invite.”
“I don’t think she invited it. I think they came to her with the story and something worse and she agreed to publish this to bury the bad.”
Colin continued to stare a hole in the ceiling. If his eyes were lasers, he’d be halfway to the sun by now. “Helen traded some pictures of us for a story about one of the Piranhas fucking up,” he stated baldly.
“It’s a strong possibility. But we’ll probably never know for sure.” Nick shrugged. “I guess it really doesn’t matter. Everyone knows now.”
“Some player beat his wife or crashed his car or needed his stomach pumped. And I pay for it.”
Nick shot him an inscrutable look. “Wasn’t this what you wanted?”
“Not like this,” Colin said, trying to contain the anger that was threatening to boil over. He’d never considered himself to have any kind of temper, but now he understood how people punched walls. It was impossible, feeling helpless this way, like he wasn’t even in charge of his own damn life.
Nick was typing madly on his laptop, and his fingers barely missed a beat. “We could still do something else, if you wanted to.”
