It was slightly ridiculous because Wes was always around, like an overeager and overprotective puppy, but it had also netted him the phone number he thought he’d never get. The phone number he’d told himself he’d never want.
Now Nate sat in his contacts, taunting him with his unused existence. The messages between them empty except for the different drafts he kept typing out and deleting.
It was so stupid. He should just delete the contact, and with it, the temptation to say something to Nate that he shouldn’t.
He typed out one of his many drafts.Hope you got the advice you needed.
Then Ramsey deleted it a letter at a time, forcibly, pads of his fingers pressing into the screen like he could erase it from his mind.
It was the kind of painfully obvious text he’d have told everyone he knew not to send, ten out of ten times.
A flimsy excuse to make contact.
If you have something to say, just say it,the old Ramsey would’ve said.
Well, if he was taking that advice . . .
The next draft read:I can’t stop thinking about that night in June. I don’t think you can either.
That text he erased with a regretful melancholy, fingers lingering instead over each word.
He’d ask why he was like this, but he already knew. The therapist his billet mom had insisted he see, when he’d played in juniors, when she’d discovered that despite his foster kid status, he’d never been, had told him that he had a lifetime of reinforced walls that nobody could hope to get around.
At the time, he’d thought,yes, andgood.
Now, at twenty-five, that thought didn’t fill him with reassurance any longer.
He just felt alone. Even with Wes down the hall and Brody in his phone, all his secrets—even secrets from his best friends—threatened to bury him.
What he should really do wasleave.Go back to Buffalo. If he did, he wouldn’t keep running into the guy. Would be able to get somemuch neededperspective.
Back in June, he never thought he’d be hanging around Toronto in October. He’d assumed, maybe naively, maybe with an overdeveloped sense ofshit works out for methat he’d be back in Buffalo, back with the team.
Even if he wasn’t able to have contact or practice with the team, there was nothing stopping him from going back.
Back to his empty apartment. The empty life he’d built for himself pre-concussion that had seemed, at least on the surface, like what he’d always wanted. It had only taken a month on injured reserve to realize it was all meaningless bullshit.
If he was lonely now, even with Wes pulling his overprotective routine, Buffalo would be worse. Buffalo wasn’t a solution. Normally, he’d face that problem with a clear-eyed pragmatism that every adult he’d ever met had admired.
He typed out another text he wasn’t ever going to send.
Shit sucks.
That wasn’t a very Ramsey-like text. Hardly designed to make Nate actually want him.
He deleted it again and tossed his phone next to him on the bed, feeling the beginnings of a headache that might’ve had its origins in his fucked up brain, or his fucked up heart—it could be one or it could be both. Probablywasboth.
He stood up and walked down the hall.
Wes was lying in bed. “Hey,” he said, “everything okay?”
Ramsey ducked his head. “Do you mind—”
He didn’t have to say anything more. Wes just scooted over and patted the covers. “Of course,” he said, before Ramsey could figure out how to choke out the question.
Ramsey slid in next to him, settling down on the other pillow.
They did this sometimes—had done it more frequently when Ramsey had first come to Toronto—but it had always been totally platonic. It would never be anything else, Ramsey knew that now, one hundred percent for sure. He’d been ninety-nine-percent sure when he’d come to Toronto, because Wes was still painfully in love with Marcus, but after his night with Nate, he’dknown.
