Page 87 of Two for Charging

“You can stop glaring at me,” Hayes muttered to Luca from across the aisle. Vanderbilt, next to him, was dead asleep with noise-canceling headphones on. Mooney, on Luca’s other side, texted Mara furiously while listening to reggaeton with the volume turned up so high Luca could hear the beat through his earbuds.

Luca examined Hayes—a typical straight, white man, doing the bare minimum in an ugly suit, acting as if everyone ought to thank him for showing up at all. “Old habits die hard.”

Hayes huffed out an aggrieved sigh through his nostrils. “You’re better than me, okay? Your talent pisses me off. It’s possible I didn’t react in a super mature way. I’m not ready to slip down the lineup and lose my ice time yet. But I’m not—” He glanced around to make sure no one was listening. “—a bigot or whatever you think.”

“You are a racist though,” Luca pointed out.

Hayes closed his eyes. “I made one dumb comment in the heat of the moment. I don’t even really believe the whole ‘Mexicans are stealing our jobs’ bit.”

“Only being racist when you are angry doesn’t make you less racist.”

“Well, I’m sorry I said it. I can’t help that no one believes me.”

Luca opened his mouth to tell Hayes he was sorry because it had gotten him in trouble with the team but not sorry he’d said it. Then, he thought better of it. Luca had come a long way this season in terms of no longer believing the worst of everyone on this team just because his Juniors team had been full of idiots who bullied people for fun.

It had made him a good enough person to admit to Chris, albeit obliquely, how he felt.

Living with the consequences—Chris not meeting his eyes for all of yesterday; Chris not talking to him on the way to the airport; never getting to touch Chris or kiss him or feel his arms around Luca again—felt like it would destroy him now, but he hoped it would bring him closure. Someday.

So, he asked himself, again, what would Chris do?

He wouldn’t continue to play the blame game. He’d try to find a way to connect instead. The thought of connecting with Hayes made Luca’s lip curl in disgust, but he studied the man to find a way in. Hayes had bags under his eyes and his suit was rumpled. Luca wouldn’t term him a stylish dresser, so he hadn’t noticed before, too busy turning his nose up at the drawstrings on his suit pants. But now, as Luca looked, he could see a hundred signs that Hayes wasn’t doing well.

“Are you all right?”

Hayes’s eyes widened, and he looked at Luca, aghast.

Luca sighed. “I do not like you either, but I will admit you have not been a shithead for the past week when I expected you to be, and you look as though you could use…help.”

Looking down at his lap, Hayes said, “Thank you.”

He didn’t elaborate immediately, and Luca thought perhaps he had been saved from an emotional interaction with a man he didn’t respect. But then, so quietly Luca had to strain to hear him over the hum of the plane’s engine, Hayes said, “Allie had a miscarriage right before the season started.”

Oh God. What would Chris do, what would Chris do, what would Chris do?

He would give Hayes a hug.

A shudder ran down Luca’s spine. Absolutely not.

“I am so sorry,” he said instead.

“Yeah. Me too.” Hayes scrubbed aggressively at his eyes with the base of his palms. “It’s just been hard, you know? She doesn’t want to come to team stuff because there are always kids and babies and dogs running around, she’s been moping around the house alone. I can’t make it better for her. I don’t know what to do.”

Experiencing sympathy for Jimmy Hayes, who had done his best to make Luca hate him for the last year or more, was not on Luca’s bingo card for the day.

“I have no idea how you must feel,” he began, wishing, once more, that his teammates spoke Italian so finding the right words would be less of a chore. “But I do not think that is a situation you can fix. Being there for her, and perhaps encouraging her to talk to other people and go out sometimes, might be all you can do.”

Hayes’s lips twisted in an approximation of a smile. “Yeah. Thanks. I know it’s my own fault, but I’ve missed having friends on the team, you know? He’s great—” He jerked his head at Vanderbilt, which, debatable. “—but he has a new baby.”

Luca recoiled. “We are not friends.”

Rolling his eyes and shaking his head, Hayes said. “No, I know. I know it might not mean much to you, but I’m trying to do better. I can support the shit out of every guy on this team who decides to be gay, even if I don’t get it.”

Where to start explaining every wrong thing Hayes had said? It would be easy to begin with “decides to be gay,” but Luca did love ripping into idiots about bisexual erasure as well. Would it be too audible for the rest of the plane if he did though? Would it remind Chris of how uncomfortable Luca’s unrequited feelings clearly made him if he overheard? When Luca felt down, decimating someone comforted him, but for some reason, today, the mere thought made him picture the disappointed face Chris would make.

At least Hayes was trying. Luca had expected less.

He patted Hayes once on the shoulder and let him go on believing he was trying hard enough.