That’s the part that fucks with me. Not that we have to hide it, but that we’re so good at it.
She catches my eye for half a second when he turns away. Just a half. And I see the toll of what it means to stand next to her father and pretend the best thing in her life isn’t dripping in sweat three feet away from her.
Later, when the tunnel clears, she finds me for thirty seconds by the equipment room.
“You were good tonight,” she says, fast and low. “Not the hockey. After. When he said that thing about holding you accountable, like he did it. You didn’t correct him. I know that was for me.”
“It was for both of us.”
“I know.” She picks at the cuff of her sleeve. “I hated that you couldn’t be yourself. Say what you wanted to say.”
“Yeah,” I say. “But you know who I am. That’s all that matters.”
She nods once, smiles, and then she’s gone, back to being staff, and I stand there in the cold with my chest aching like a bruise.
I’m the one doing that to her.
That’s the thought that won’t leave me all night. Not that her dad might catch us, but that being with me means she spends her life going even smaller than she already was next to the one person whose approval she’s built her whole self around.
The shit doesn’t sit well with my spirit.
She texts me on Sunday. Our kind of texts. No words that mean anything if somebody looks.
Paperclip: You up?
And for the first time in three weeks, I look at her name, and I don’t answer right away.
I tell myself it’s for her. That a girl like that deserves a guy who will stand up for her no matter the cost, and that the kindest thing I can do is distance myself before this costs both of us everything.
I tell myself we haven’t crossed a line yet, not the kind of line there’s no returning from. I’ve been very careful about that.
Cold showers.
Private evening jerk off sessions with myself.
A little online porn.
I tell myself it’s discipline. The one thing my sperm donor swore I’d never have.
But I know the difference. Discipline builds something. What I’m doing is just putting a wall between me and the one person who ever made me consider unpacking my boxes.
And it sucks.
Caleb
I own one suit, and it fits me like a threat.
I’ve spent forty minutes of the Valencia U’s Booster Gala wearing it against a pillar, holding a club soda I have no plans to drink, doing the one thing I’m good at in a room like this. Watching.
Coach Dixon’s dead center, working the money, the men who keep a program like ours breathing. I keep him in the corner of my eye the way you keep an eye on a dog you haven’t decided about yet.
I came here to torture myself, if I’m honest about it. Two weeks of pulling back. Short answers, Tuesdays that ran late, that in actuality didn’t, a text Sunday, I still haven’t really answered.
I came to stand in a corner and watch her work the edges of the room in her favorite gray sweater and tonal colored earbuds, the smartest person at a party that has no clue she exists.
That was the plan.
I had it all mapped out.
