Page 20 of Unforgettable Player

“I want a beer,” Scout says.

“Be a lady. Have a wine spritzer,” Naomi suggests.

Scout makes a face. “Urgh, no thanks.”

Laughing, Richard throws her a beer before passing me one, too.

I try to mask my wince at the taste of the frothy liquid inside the can, but when I glance up, Connor’s watching me and throws me one of those smiles that feels like he’s sharing a secret. When his dad isn’t looking, he pours some of his beer into the sand.

I try to tune into the beach’s peaceful ambience while everyone chats around me. The seagulls calling to each other over the water. The breeze rushing through the nearby trees. The sea lapping the shore. The voices of my second family chatting away. But they’re not my family. They never will be. I think about my dad, at home by himself. Locked away in his study, hiding in his books. Guilt consumes me until I feel sick.

“You okay, Eli?” Connor’s voice snaps me out of it.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I just have to pee.”

I push my beer can into the sand, stomach roiling as I stand. I don’t know whether it’s the beer or the guilt that’s making me feel so sick, but when I finally make it to the restrooms. I have to rest my forehead on the bathroom wall. I take a few deep breaths and splash my face with cold water before going back out to join everyone.

When I sit down, I notice my can is in a different place, and when I pick it up, it’s empty. I glance over at Connor and he throws me a conspiratorial wink.

7

CONNOR

Practice the following morning is a godsend. Something to take me away from the house. I stupidly believed that I could force things back to ‘normal’ if I acted the way I would usually act with Elliot on the beach. But the second I touched him, I knew it was weird. I had to just put on a show and go with it.

And then what was all that about with him looking sick and unhappy? I know it wasn’t just because he hates the taste of beer.

I don’t have time to think about it while I’m on the ice, chasing the kids around, urging them to push themselves. My muscles burn and my lungs ache, and it feels amazing.

I’m so buzzed from practice, I don’t even remember to check my phone until I’m pulling up outside the house. Brad and Chase are asking me to come over and hang out. A girl I gave my number to at that party is asking how I’m doing. I should reply to them all, and I will … later. Right now, I’m not in the mood.

I linger on the message from that girl—Casey. She was nice. I’ll text her back, but I need to find the right way to let her down. Because now I’m sober, I know I want to let her down.

These past two years have been all about experimenting with a side of my sexuality that I’d known existed for a while, but was too scared to explore. And while I was in college, that’s all it was—experimentation.

At first, I thought I’d ‘get it out of my system’ and eventually get a girlfriend. Now I know how stupid that was. That’s not how it works.

My teammates were cooler with it than I’d thought they would be. I’d planned to keep it to myself while I messed around, but then I got a little too drunk at a party and made out with some guy in front of everyone. They gave me good natured shit for it, asked me if I was gay. I told them I was bi and that was that. If we went out, they still played wingman, asking if I was looking for a guy or a girl. That final year of school, it was always a guy. I rarely needed a wingman. So many guys were looking for hook ups around campus and apps make that stuff painfully easy.

I thought maybe I was gay, but then I moved to California and into the adult world, where you don’t have to stress as much about what people think. While staying in hotels on business trips, I used apps to hook up with women and men. But it was always just sex. And there was always something missing, regardless of my sexual partner’s gender.

It’s different here, though, in my hometown, around all my high school friends and my family. It’s a bigger deal to them if I’m bi. College felt temporary and California might as well have been a different universe. Guys on my team were going to move on, people I met on business trips were complete strangers. It was as transient as it can get. But this, here, is permanent. Once I let the cat out of the bag here, there’s no putting it back. It changes things.

I don’t know if I’m ready for those changes. Not yet.

Scout’s VW is sitting on the driveway. It’s late, so I guess Mom and Dad’s cars are already parked in the garage. They don’t let Scout park that piece of shit in there. Mom always jokes that no one would want to steal it anyway.

The house is quiet when I let myself in. I find Mom and Dad sitting in front of the TV with glasses of wine, watching a nature documentary.

“Hey, honey. How was practice?”

“Good. I’m exhausted, though. Coaching junior hockey is harder than I thought it’d be.”

Mom looks up and smiles. “Come and watch TV with us, tell us all about it.”

I get myself a glass of water and take the armchair while Mom spreads out next to Dad in the corner of the big, L-shaped couch.

After I finish filling her in on my day, she starts telling me all kinds of gossip about the neighbors. Who got a flashy new car and what they’re trying to compensate for. Who’s getting work done on the house. Whose teenage son got his girlfriend pregnant and is shirking on his responsibilities. I listen with an increasing hum growing in my ears. I don’t care what the neighbors are getting up to, but Mom does. That’s why she battles with Marcie next door to have the best Christmas lights every year. And why she’s president of the Neighborhood Watch Committee and why she was president of the PTA when me and Scout were in school. Stuff like that is important to her. Sometimes I wish she didn’t care so much how things look to other people. I wish she wouldn’t stress so much about what the neighbors will think if we don’t have the hedges trimmed frequently enough.