Page 100 of Line Change

He expects me to laugh. Any other morning I might. I can already hear how it would go once he got started: Ben’s sprint, my pants around my hips, the emergency Monster run. It would be a great story if it belonged to somebody else.

“Don’t,” I say.

Bobby’s smile stays in place, but only because he hasn’t understood me yet. “Come on. He left so fast I thought he was going through the wall.”

“I said don’t.”

That gets him. He looks at me instead of toward Ben.

“You say nothing about what you saw. Not to the guys, not to anybody.”

Bobby’s smile disappears. “I wasn’t going to tell anyone.”

“Don’t joke about it with me either.”

He shifts his stick from one hand to the other. “Okay.”

Protecting Ben is easy. I look down at the water bottle while I screw the cap into place because doing it after he called me an exception fucking hurts.

Bobby is quiet long enough that I look at him again.

His eyes stay on me. The grin is gone, and he no longer looks tempted to glance toward Ben.

“I didn’t know Ben was gay,” he says.

“He’s not.”

Ben said the same thing this morning, and hearing it in my own voice makes my stomach hurt. Bobby still doesn’t get to decide for him.

Bobby makes a small sound in his throat. “I’ve heard that one before.”

I look at him. “What does that mean?”

His face closes. Bobby, who will tell the room what he ate for breakfast and demonstrate how badly it went if somebody laughs, suddenly has nothing to say.

The whistle sounds from center ice.

Bobby pushes away from the boards. “I won’t say anything.”

He skates back toward the drill without looking at Ben once.

29

BEN

I don’t want either of the men fucking on my laptop.

They’re attractive. I can tell that much. One has broad shoulders and dark hair. The other is leaner, with tattoos down one arm. They’re naked and hard, and my cock remains completely uninterested.

This was supposed to help me figure out whether I’m bisexual.

It’s been two weeks since Nolan stopped talking to me unless a play requires it. The word breakup keeps showing up in my head, but that isn’t accurate. You can’t break up with someone you weren’t dating, right?

I miss him anyway.

I think I’ve hidden that well enough. Nobody on the team has said anything, and our line is playing too well for the coaches to care that Nolan and I barely speak off the ice. We keep winning. The playoffs are starting to look like somewhere we’ll actually be instead of something we’re chasing.

Bobby is the only person who might know more. I’ve said no more than two words to him since The Incident. One of them was nice after he scored. I don’t remember the other one.