by A. E. Wasp
Kissing Robbie would never be something Paul regretted. “So, if I’m a self-hating closet case, what does that make you?”
“I’m nobody,” Robbie said, the answer too quick and too practiced for Paul’s liking.
Paul scoffed. “Right. You won the Hobey Award and Defensive Player of the Year last year because you’re nobody.”
Robbie grimaced. “Yeah, I’m real good at hitting things with a stick. I should be getting my Nobel Peace Prize any day now.”
Paul shook his head. He wasn’t letting Robbie get away with that. “The Hobey is also for demonstrating ‘strength of character on and off the ice’ remember?”
“Oh, yay. So I didn’t smoke cigarettes or, I don’t know, curse around nuns.” Robbie waved away the suggestion that he’d done anything remarkable.
“Day-um,” Paul said, stretching the word out to two syllables. “Talk about self-hating. And I thought I had issues.”
“Oh, you do,” Robbie said quickly but with a small smile.
Paul crossed his arms over his chest and examined Robbie. “So why do you do it? Why play hockey if it’s just ‘hitting things with sticks’? What’s the point?”
Robbie looked down at the floor. A car slid quietly out of a spot from down the row. Another Prius, Paul noted. Damn things were too quiet; Paul didn’t trust them. The driver looked at them curiously as he drove slowly past.
The guy looked vaguely familiar. He’d been introduced to so many people that morning; it was going to take a while for him to remember who was who.
Paul thought it was one of the guys from the equipment rooms, probably wondering why he and Robbie were talking and not fighting.
Finally, Robbie looked up. “Hockey is the only thing I’m good at. And I love doing it. When I’m on the ice, when the crowd is cheering…” He trailed off, shaking his head.
“You feel like somebody,” Paul finished for him.
“Yeah,” Robbie said, “I feel like somebody. Pathetic, isn’t it?”
Jeez, between them they had enough baggage for a month-long holiday. Paul grabbed Robbie’s shoulders and shook him. “You are somebody,” he said forcefully. “‘You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars.’”
Robbie looked at him wide-eyed. “What is that from?”
“It’s from my mom’s favorite poem-thing. She was always quoting it to me.” He let his hands fall from Robbie’s shoulders instead of pulling Robbie in for a hug the way he wanted to.
“Wow. Is there more?”
“Yeah, it’s kind of long. I’ll find it and email it you.”
“Okay.”
The silence stretched awkwardly. Paul wasn’t sure where to go from here. They weren’t really exes, no matter how it almost felt like that. They weren’t college rivals anymore, but although they were teammates now, they weren’t quite friends.
Robbie jangled his keys, the electronic beep of the unlocking doors echoed sharply in the underground garage. “I guess I’d better get going,” he said.
Paul grabbed his arm. “Wait. I really am sorry about what I did.”
“Which part?”
“All of it?”
“Really?” Robbie raised one eyebrow. “You regret all of it?”
Paul shook his head quickly. “No. Never. Not that night. But the next day.” He sighed remembering. His fear always had come out as anger. It was something he was working on. “I shouldn’t have hit you, and I shouldn’t have called you that.”
“Faggot,” Robbie said with no inflection.
“What?”
“Say it. Say the word.” Robbie stepped closer, almost chest to chest with Paul.
“I don’t want to.” He glanced down at the dirty parking lot floor, suddenly fascinated with the rainbow sheen of an oily puddle. “I really am sorry. I was,” he shook his head, and kicked the puddle, disrupting the colors. “It was a really, really bad day.” He looked right into Robbie’s eyes. “Right after the best night of my life.”
Robbie sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What do you want from me?”
Absolution. Reassurance. Things he couldn’t have, that was for sure. God, if they couldn’t work this out, it was going to be a crappy three years. “I thought that maybe…I don’t know. Maybe we could be friends?”
“Sure. Because what we have is a solid foundation for friendship.” Robbie ran his hands through his thick auburn hair, pulling it back from his face then letting it drop again. “Don’t worry, Paulie, I’m sure the other kids will like you. Just share your candy with them. You don’t need me.”
“I do need you. You’re the only one.” Paul blushed scarlet. “You’re the only one who knows about me.”
“Knows what, Dyson? Just spit it out.” Robbie pressed the car key fob again. The locks thudded into place, the car beeped, and the lights flashed. Robbie cursed under his breath and unlocked the car.
Paul had to say something quick or Robbie was going to leave. “Knows that I’m gay.” He whispered it, then looked over his shoulder to make sure they were still alone. A few cars were pulling in. They were full of parents with kids.
“Are you?” There was a challenge in the look he gave Paul.
“You know I am,” Paul whispered. “You of all people.”
Robbie shook his head. “I don’t, actually. All I know is that we fooled around two years ago, you seemed like you enjoyed it a lot, and then the next day you turned on me. That doesn’t scream out and proud.”
“Yeah, well, just because I don’t, can’t, do anything about it doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”
Robbie scoffed at him. “You mean won’t do anything about it.”
“I mean I can’t. Not everyone is like you, Rhodes. Not everyone believes the same things.” Robbie just didn’t get it. Everything came so easily for him. His parents loved him just as he was. As a non-believer, he didn’t have the threat of eternal damnation hanging over his head. “My father saw you dropping me off that morning.”
“So, your dad saw you? So what?” Robbie shrugged. “Did he say something to you?”
“Oh, he said a lot of things.”
All these years later, and Paul still felt trapped between the carrot of paternal love, conditional though it might be, and the stick of excommunication. Thanks to his new hockey contract, his father couldn’t use withholding financial support as a threat anymore.
“He said a lot of things,” Paul repeated. “All variations on the same theme. If I keep choosing to be a deviant, then I’m out.”
“Out of what?”
“Everything. The family, the Church, the whole circle of our friends.”
Robbie scowled. “If the people who are supposed to love you kick you out because you’re gay, how can they pretend to love you? What kind of religion does that? Tell them to shove it.”
“They do love me. They’re trying to save me.” Paul knew that was true for his father, at least. However, he was starting to have some doubts about the motives of some of the other members of the congregation. More often than not he’d felt disgust and smug superiority more than love coming from some of the more vocal opponents of gay rights.
Robbie’s face went through several expressions as he obviously stopped himself from saying a few different things. “I want to understand,” he finally said. “I do. But I just don’t.”
Paul rolled his eyes. He was seriously tired of having to justify the way he lived his life to everyone. As if he needed their seal of approval on his choices. “Really? You don’t understand why someone might not be ready to walk around waving a rainbow flag? That’s why I saw pictures of you and your boyfriend on the cover of Sports Illustrated? Because you’re so out and proud?”
“You sound like Drew,” Robbie frowned. “Just because I don’t want my relationships dissected by the fans and the media, doesn’t mean I’m in the closet. If I were dating a woman, I’d feel the same way. Probably. Besides, everyone who needs to know knows,” he said defensively.<
br />
Paul shoved him back with a finger to the chest. “That’s bullshit. You don’t know who needs to know. Some kid down in the bible belt might need to know he’s not the only one, so he doesn’t go trying anything stupid.”
Robbie pushed Paul’s finger away. “Like what?”
“Like trying to freeze himself to death in the middle of fucking nowhere Minnesota,” Paul spit out. “You’re a fucking condescending ass, but you saved my life that night.”
Robbie’s jaw dropped. “You were trying to kill yourself?”
Paul crossed his arms and looked away. “No. Not directly. Kind of. I don’t know. Suicide is a sin, too.” Paul’s laugh held no humor. “A literal ‘damned if I do, damned if I don’t’ situation.”
Robbie grabbed Paul by the arm. “What? But you were so - ”
“So what?” Paul asked.
Robbie frowned. He signed words and phrases with his arms too quickly for Paul to follow.
“Too fast,” Paul said and signed simultaneously.
Robbie signed, hand hovering near his chest, palm down, fingers wiggling. “So present. So there, I guess.”
Paul wrapped his arms around himself. “I’m good at faking things.”
“I guess you’d have to be.”
“I remember the first second I saw you, you know,” Robbie said. “I didn’t recognize you right away. I just thought you were a random idiot.”
3
Robbie
Two years earlier. Bemidji, Minnesota
The headlights of Robbie’s car slid across the face of the man standing in the one shadowy space of the Holiday Stationstore in time for Robbie to avoid hitting him.
Robbie cursed and yanked the wheel to the right. The whole damn gas station was lit up like Vegas, and this guy has to find the one dark corner to hide in? Robbie glanced over as he stomped past the guy. He wore a Huntsville Chargers sweatshirt and a haunted expression.
The look in the guy’s eyes followed him into the store, plucking at his memories as he debated between the brats rolling around under the heat lamp or a pre-made sandwich. He settled on a brat and a Gatorade and tried to figure out why the guy felt familiar.
Outside, it felt like the temperature had dropped even further. The idiot was still standing there, and he was going to freeze to death. That gray hoodie he wore might have been fine in Huntsville, but it was no match for the weather on December 30th in Bemidji, Minnesota.
The guy stood with his elbows braced on the short brick wall separating the parking lot from the small pond on the other side. He swayed slightly. Robbie couldn’t tell if it was from the cold, exhaustion, or if it had something to do with the crumpled brown paper bag at his side.
Either way, he couldn’t in good conscience pass by without at least asking the guy if he was okay. Even if he was a Chargers’ fan. The fact that he also had a great ass and broad shoulders, had nothing at all to do why Robbie was walking over to him.
Robbie walked up behind the guy, deliberately making noise. Why was he doing this? The guy was probably going to tell him to fuck off. But those southerners tended to underestimate the cold, and besides, no one stood in the parking lot of a gas station at eleven o’clock at night unless they had nowhere else to be. “Hey, are you okay?” Robbie asked.
The guy turned his head and looked blankly at Robbie.
Robbie frowned. The guy looked vaguely familiar. He had wavy blond hair, blue eyes, and an athletic build. If he was in Bemidji with Huntsville, maybe Robbie had seen him at the game earlier.
“It’s too cold to be standing outside,” Robbie continued. God, he sounded like his mother. But the wind was cutting through his heavy parka; it had to be passing through that hoodie like it wasn’t even there.
The guy blinked. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“You have nowhere to go? You here with Huntsville?” It was obvious from his accent that the guy was from somewhere in the South.
He nodded. Apparently, he was a man of few words. He clutched a bottle-shaped paper bag, but he didn’t seem particularly drunk.
“Then don’t you have a hotel?”
“I don’t want to go back there.”
“Well, you can’t stand here all night, you’ll freeze to death, and they’ll have to unstick your body from the parking lot, and that’s not fair to do to somebody.” He smiled to show he was making a joke.
The guy looked down at the ground, and then back up at Robbie. “Where are you going?” he asked, with the beginning of a grin.
Suddenly Robbie recognized him. “You’re Dyson, right? The D-man from the Chargers.”
“Shit,” the guy Robbie was ninety percent sure was Paul Dyson, muttered. The wind gusted across the open parking lot, and they both shivered. Paul’s teeth chattered.
Dyson turned to leave, and Robbie grabbed his arm. “You are Dyson, right? I’m not taking some rando back home.”
“Yeah,” he answered. “Paul. Or some guys call me Chip.”
Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. Chip was a stupid name. “Robbie,” He said. “Rhodes,” he clarified when Paul looked confused. “Beavers’ defense.”
Paul nodded. “Oh, yeah. Right. I remember you. You weren’t bad tonight.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“No.” For the first time, there was a little life in Paul’s eyes. “I think if you changed it up, just a little, you’d be amazing.”
“So, come with me, and you can tell me all about how I suck. You can get warm. And then if you want to leave again, I’ll drive you somewhere, okay?”
Paul nodded. “Yeah. Okay.” He followed Robbie.
“This your car?” he asked as Robbie opened the door to his fifteen-year-old Subaru Outback.
“It better be, or someone is going to be mighty pissed off when they come out and find it gone.”
Paul got in and looked around the inside of the car as if were some strange machine he had never seen before. “Kind of girly, ain’t it?”
“It’s a car. There are no boy or girl cars.” Robbie backed out carefully. “It gets great gas mileage.”
Paul raised one eyebrow and turned the heater vent to blow directly on him.
Robbie broke his brat in half and handed one part to Paul. “Want it? It’s probably ice cold by now, though.”
Paul took it with a shrug. “Yeah. Thanks.” He chewed thoughtfully, staring out the window as Robbie drove the dark streets back to his apartment.
Robbie’s apartment was in the back of an old house. It was a little small and dark, and tended to be cold in the winter and hot in the summer, but it had a pond in the back that froze over every winter, and the owner kept it skating-ready. That made up for every defect the house might have.
“What about you missing curfew?” Robbie asked his silent guest.
“LaRoux took care of bed check for me,” Paul said. “Guess I have to sneak in before breakfast. I reckon I didn’t have much of a plan,” he confessed.
Robbie flicked the lights on as he walked past the hockey sticks leaning against the wall, through the narrow kitchen, and into the living room-slash-bedroom. Two doors off the living room lead to the bathroom and a small closet. His futon/bed was pushed against one wall. The only other furniture was a bean bag chair and cheap wooden coffee table.
Hockey equipment filled up every nook and cranny.
Paul stopped in the doorway of the living room. He’d shoved his hands deep into the front pocket of his sweatshirt he looked oddly shy.
“Come on in,” Robbie said. “I won’t bite.” Maybe Paul was rethinking his decision. “Unless you want me to take you back after all?”
“No. I want to stay,” Paul said quickly and took the final step into the room. He paced around the small room, checking out the two tall bookcases lined with knickknacks, CDs, and DVDs.
Paul ran his fingers along the rows of CDs. “You have a lot of audiobooks.” He pulled one with a plain white cover off the shelf. “Finance 101?”
�
��I learn better from audiobooks. My parents’ friends were nice enough to record some of my text books for me.” He tried to make it sound like no big deal, but it had been. It had taken them days of recording and editing.
Robbie had almost killed himself trying to get an A in that class. It was the least he could do. Too bad he’d only gotten a C+. As if the plus made a difference.
Paul put the CD back and continued his slow exploration of the small room. The next thing he pulled out was a collection of American Sign Language DVDs. “Can you speak sign language? Are you deaf?”
“No. Not deaf. Did I seem deaf while we were talking?” He thought for a second. “Can you even play hockey if you’re deaf?”
Paul shrugged. “I don’t know. So why sign language then?”
Robbie had the feeling that if he moved too quickly, Paul would flee like a wild animal. He wasn’t sure why, but he wanted the guy to stay for a while. Sure, he was good-looking; tall and with those All-American looks, blond hair and blue eyes. But it was more than that.
Robbie couldn’t help but think of the sadness he remembered seeing in Paul’s eyes during the game.
“I have a couple of learning disabilities,” Robbie answered. “They make it hard for me to read and write. And talk sometimes. Some therapist suggested ASL as a way to maybe retrain my brain.”
“Does it help?”
Robbie shrugged. “Yeah. Sometimes I can think better in it. Doesn’t help me talk to most people.”
“I think it would be mighty interesting.” Paul pulled a DVD off the shelf, tilting it forward with one finger.
Even from across the room, Robbie could tell it was one of the seasons of Queer as Folk.
Paul let the DVD tip back into line, then turned back to the room.
Robbie followed his eyes to the rainbow flag stuck into the coffee mug that served as a pencil holder.
“I heard…well, some guys were saying that you’re gay. Some guys from my team.” Paul tried to sound casual.
