Page 130 of I'm Your Guy
“Shh,” he says.
* * *
The next thing I know, I’m adjusting my head on the pillow. Except the pillow is a very muscular shoulder. And when I realize I’ve nodded off on Tommaso, I jerk awake in the pitch dark.
“Easy.” A firm hand presses down between my shoulder blades. “I got you.”
I lift my head. Tommaso’s clock says two a.m. “Weren’t you sleeping?”
“I was at first. You’re awfully cuddly, and I drifted right off. But then I had a dream about the Trenton game.”
“Oh.” I find his hand under the covers and squeeze it. “Was it bad?”
“The worst.” He chuckles. “I dread that game. And I made it worse by waffling about the whole photo-op thing. I dragged it out, which was a stupid move. I kept wondering if it would help my family to heal the rift. But if my mom knew why we fought, I don’t think she’d want me to apologize.”
“Jersey,” I whisper. “What did he do?”
He blows out a breath. “I haven’t told a soul. It’s deeply embarrassing to me.”
“Okay, sorry. Forget I asked.”
“No, I want to tell you.” He clears his throat. “We were in the middle of a game, and it wasn’t going well. I was playing okay that night. But it was only a couple of weeks after my wife left me. I’d told a few of the guys on the team. Most of them were like, ‘Sorry, man.’ And that was it. We weren’t a very close-knit team. But my cousin…” He sighs.
“What did he do?”
“He was just a dick about it. Cracking jokes about how my marriage was shorter than my NHL contract.”
“God, I’m sorry.”
“He mixed it up with his usual bullshit. The night of that game, I was trying to shrug it off. I thought—I’ll focus only on hockey until the day I die. And we needed that win, so I was trying to coach Marco on how to shut down a winger that was giving us trouble.”
“But he didn’t want to hear it?” I guess.
He shakes his head. “Not from me, anyway. Marco said, ‘Why should I listen to you? You couldn’t even get it up for your own wife.’”
I suck in a breath.
“And I just snapped.”
“Of course you did! That’s impossibly cruel.”
“And also true,” he whispers. “I had a lot of guilt about it.”
“Fuck that guy! It’s none of his damn business. And you cannot apologize, or smile for a photo with him. I’ll punch him myself.”
Tommaso looks up at me and smiles, which is how I realize that I’m so lathered up with indignation that I’m sitting up and clenching my fists. “Calm down. I’m not going to do it. I just wish I could think of a good excuse. Because I’m never telling that story again. To anyone.”
“Okay.” I unclench my fists. Then I punch my pillow and lie down on it. I mingle my feet with Tommaso’s and try to relax again. When I close my eyes, I picture all the smiling fans at Sportsballs and the rainbow jerseys at the game tonight. That’s my happy thought.
And why not make more fans happy? “You know…”
“Hmm?”
“I have an idea, but it’s probably stupid.”
“Let’s hear it anyway,” he says.
“Okay. What if you tell your cousin that you’re willing to do a family photo, but it has to be a charity thing. You know—one of those photos with an oversized check? Only the check is made out to the Trevor Project. Or to a New Jersey charity serving LGBTQ youth.”
