“They’ll adjust,” I say automatically. “They always do.”
He doesn’t call me on the way that sounds like I’m talking about myself.
Across the yard, Cassius nearly drops a tray of buns, and Jayden heckles him. The kids erupt into a new round of screaming. Someone turns the music up. I stare at it and think about San Francisco. About fog rolling in over water. About streets where hopefully fewer people know my name. About walking down a sidewalk without scanning every face, every phone, every lens.
About the idea—stupid, hopeful, fragile—that maybe there, someday, I could be… open. Not just “rumors in comment sections” open. Not “carefully worded press release” open. Just a man walking beside his husband.
A few years ago, when Ryan Broadwater came out, the news hit me like a punch to the chest. I’d been in my kitchen, half dressed, phone in my hand, reading the headline over and over like it might rearrange itself into something else. A starting player. Still active. Saying the words out loud.
I’d sat down hard at my counter.
My first thought wasn’t about the League, or the media, or what it meant for anyone else. It was Rafe. I’d wondered if he’d seen it yet. If he’d expected my call. If he’d been sittingsomewhere, phone in hand, thinkingthis is it—this is when he does it too.
I’d stared at his contact for a long time, not even sure if he still had the same number. Then I’d locked my phone and done nothing.
Fear is a quiet thing. It doesn’t always look dramatic. Sometimes it just ties your tongue to the roof of your mouth and convinces you that silence is survival.
When the news cycle moved on and I still hadn’t said anything—hadn’t done anything—I knew. Knew in that bone-deep, can’t-lie-to-yourself way that I’d lost him.
For years, one of the carrots I dangled in front of myself wasDon’t be the first. Let someone else take the hit. Let the ground soften.
Then Ryan did.
And I still stayed quiet.
Retirement, I told myself.That’s the plan. Step out of the spotlight first. Make it easier. Cleaner.
Coward, a voice in my head had said.
A few weeks after Ryan, when Jayden and Sutton announced their engagement, my world tilted again.
Two teammates. Active. Happy. Loud about it. The locker room hadn’t exploded. The sky hadn’t fallen. Life… continued.
And still—I said nothing.
What I did do was call my therapist. I hadn’t been back in a while. I’d convinced myself I was “fine.” That compartmentalizing counted as coping.
Jayden and Sutton’s engagement cracked something open. Not jealousy—well, maybe a little—but something sharper. A realization that I was watching other people build lives I’d already chosen and then walked away from.
Therapy, it turns out, is less about being fixed and more about being honest. I learned that coming out isn’t some neatmoral equation where bravery equals goodness and fear equals internalized self-hatred.
I don’t hate myself. I don’t hate being gay. I don’t love Rafe any less because I stayed quiet.
If anything, loving him was part of why I froze.
The stakes were too high. Too real. Too much to lose.
My therapist said something that stuck:“Avoidance can look like protection when you’re scared enough.”
That one hurt, because I wasn’t protecting him. I was protecting myself.
“Earth to Ollie.” Dylan snaps his fingers in front of my face. “You went somewhere.”
“Sorry,” I say, blinking back to the yard. “Long week.”
“Mm-hm.” He doesn’t buy it, but he lets it go. “So. San Francisco. That’s random as hell.”
“California’s a draw,” I say, which is true. “And… it feels like a place you can just be.”
