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“Is that why you get headaches? Because of your eyes?” Anthony asks, bringing me back to the present.
“Partially. I went headfirst into the boards, so I also came away with a concussion and a cervical vertebrae fracture. The migraines are probably borne from that, but are helped along by how hard I have to strain to see.”
“Jesus fuck,” Anthony mutters under his breath, and I nod. That about sums it up. He looks a little angry, which I appreciate. I’d hate to see sympathy in those dark eyes. “You said your right eye is the worst?”
I nod. “Imagine having a field of vision similar to looking through a straw. No peripheral sight at all. The left is…better. I do okay unless I’m tired, or I have a headache, or I’m in an unfamiliar place. Honestly? I think it would have been easier to be completely blinded in the right eye. At least then the left would be able to focus. Earlier, I missed that damn wall because I was looking to the left and wasn’t watching in front of my feet.”
Shaking his head, Anthony gets up to check on the grill. When he passes behind me, he brushes a hand along the top of my spine. I’m pitifully grateful for the touch and hopeful that there might be more where that came from later, after dinner. When he opens the cover, a mouthwatering billow of smoke blows my direction and reminds me I’m starving.
“So, that’s why you rode here with me,” he says, suddenly, still facing the grill.
“Yeah, I can’t drive.” I do a pretty admirable job of keeping the irritation out of my voice. Losing my license, and a great dealof my independence, still chaffs. I hate having to rely on others, but there is only so much I can do on my own when I can barely trust my own two feet.Nothing needs to change, my doctor had told me, soothingly. But everything had changed. Everything that had been easy before felt fucking impossible now.
“Oh. Right,” Anthony says, and there is something strange in his voice. He comes back, joining me at the table with a sheepish expression on his face. “I thought you wanted to hang out, and that was your way of doing it.”
My initial reaction is to shut this line of thinking down. To remind him of our arrangement and make a cutting remark. But the sun is warm on my skin, and I feel unburdened after telling him about the accident. Hurting him would be cruel beyond even my capabilities.
“That just happened to work out in my favor,” I say, and watch as his eyes light up.
“Does anyone else know? On the team, I mean,” he asks, and I’m shaking my head before he even finishes his question.
“Administration knows, obviously. But Avery doesn’t, nor do any of the players.”
“I won’t say anything,” Anthony says, quickly, as though he expected me to doubt it.
“I know,” I say, quietly. “Thank you.”
We eat in his backyard, in the slowly waning light of the day. Anthony doesn’t ask any more questions about the accident, and Martin Tremblay doesn’t come up once. Instead, we talk about South Carolina University and Carter Morgan, and the college hockey world. Regardless of how it started, it ends up being a pleasant evening. It’s not lost on me that this might be a regular occurrence—afternoons like this—were Anthony and I to form any sort of lasting relationship. It won’t happen;can’thappen. But a nice thought, nonetheless.
Plate empty in front of me, the sky throwing shafts of pink and orange light across the sky, I stretch my legs out. I feel oddly peaceful, and relaxed in a way that is unfamiliar to me. I spend so much time coiled tight with anxiety, I can hardly recognize comfort when it’s presented to me. Next to me, Anthony is reclined in his chair in a way that should look sloppy, but only makes me want to jump him. His eyes are closed, and the last vestiges of sun are angled onto his face. He needs a haircut—soon enough he’ll have to tie it back in order to see the puck. As if pulled there by an invisible string, my hand reaches out and tugs on one of those stray curls. His eyes open.
“You need a haircut,” I tell him, but run another loose coil of hair between thumb and forefinger. His eyes are dark, even in the sun, and fixed on mine.
“I know. I keep meaning to, but…” A small shrug and an even smaller smile. His jaw is stubbled with black hair; it takes no mental strain to remember how it felt scratching the inside of my thighs. I drop my hand back onto the armrest of my chair.
“Do you want to go inside?” I ask, as if I’m the one who lives here.
In answer, he stands and pushes his chair out. Grabbing our dishes, he strolls toward the door, kicking the deflated soccer ball out of the way with a mutteredI need to remember to put air in that. I wish I didn’t find this man as endearing as I do. I really, wholeheartedly wish it. This sort of relationship, born in hiding and tainted by the rampant homophobia of professional sports, will never survive. I follow him inside anyway, because I’m a masochist.
“The upstairs might be a little messier,” Anthony confides, as he puts the dishes into the washer. I take a moment to observe the room, glancing around the way I should have done earlier.
It’s a big space: the kitchen, dining room, and living room all flowing together under vaulted ceilings. The rooms areundeniably masculine in design, with the massive dark leather couch and the equally large flatscreen TV. The dining room table looks heavy and expensive, possibly reclaimed wood. I run a hand over the smooth surface and notice there are blank pieces of paper and pencils strewn over one end. I grab the closest one, turning it over between my fingers. It’s charcoal.
“Do you draw?” I raise my voice a bit, to be sure he can hear me over the banging of cleaning up. There’s no immediate response, but I hear footfalls behind me that warn me he’s coming over.
“Yeah,” he says, sounding embarrassed. I turn to look at him, silently offering the pencil which he takes gently. “I have a degree in art. It was supposed to be, like, an academic degree. So that I’d have a job to fall back on if hockey didn’t pan out, or when I retired, you know? But I’m shit at the book stuff, so I ended up just taking all the practical courses. Not exactly a lucrative degree, or skill, for the job market.”
“Can I see?” Squinting, I look around at the walls. He’s got a lot of abstract paintings, some landscapes, and quite a few pieces that look like they were painted by a child. “Is any of this yours?”
He blushes. Actuallyblushes: a sudden bloom of color over his cheeks.Jesus Christ that’s fucking adorable.
“No. God no. I would never hang anything up that I did.” He runs a hand through his hair.
“Can you show me, though?” I ask again, because I really do want to see. I’m fairly desperate for it. If someone had asked me to guess what his hobbies were, drawing wouldn’t have even made it to the top ten.
“Okay.”
Instead of pulling out a portfolio, which is what I expect him to do, he sits down at the table and tugs a blank piece of paper toward himself. Snatching up several of the pencils, heinspects each one and then lines them up according to size. I wait, intrigued, and try not to hover over his shoulder in case it makes him nervous.
