Page 46 of I'm Your Guy
We sign off, and I set my phone down and click off the designer lamp I made Rigo buy.
I lie there in the dark, heart thumping. Is there some kind of spark between us? Am I crazy?
Probably.
Nonetheless, I fall asleep wondering what it would feel like to kiss a big, strong hockey player with a carefully trimmed beard.
A guy can dream.
SEVENTEEN
Tommaso
Our practice starts at noon the next day, and judging from my coach’s pinched expression, I can tell he’s still angry at me.
I guess I deserve that. If I were a better player, I wouldn’t have let that punk rattle me.
So I pour everything into our workout, and then I scrimmage as if there will be a quiz later. But when practice ends, it’s only four o’clock, and I’m faced with more free time than a guy can really use in a strange city. I play a little poker with the boys in the lobby bar, but I keep winning, and by the time I’m up four hundred bucks, the other guys get bored.
“You have the best poker face in hockey,” Kapski grumbles. “How ’bout you take us out for Italian food with your winnings?”
“Sure thing.”
Dinner eats up another couple of hours. Stoney tells jokes, and Newgate gets razzed for ordering the chicken at a restaurant that’s famous for its pasta, because he avoids carbs.
Inevitably, Kapski asks me about the fight. “Why’d you go nuclear on that guy?”
I’m prepared for this. “Illegal hit on Stoney. Then he had the balls to brag about it. I thought he needed a proper welcome to the big leagues.”
Kapski shrugs it off. After all, it is hockey.
Eventually we’re back in the hotel bar, nursing beers, and guys start to turn in for the night.
Newgate takes a call from his boyfriend. “Hey, babe.” He gets a soft smile on his face and drifts away from the bar.
“I might hit another bar,” Stoney says to everyone and no one. “You in?”
A couple guys take him up on it, but I return to my room. It’s only ten o’clock, which means ten more hours of solitude.
I sit down on the bed and check my messages.
Nothing. Not even a missive from Carter asking me to look at dish towels, or whatever.
But now I’m thinking about him. I’d be Googling the best gay bars in Boston. His statement had stirred me up inside, for a variety of reasons.
I can’t help but picture Carter in a crowded bar, surrounded by men who find him as attractive as I do. Hell, he might be at his favorite Denver pickup spot right now. Jealousy zings through me.
Carter’s life is so different from mine. I’ve never googled “best gay bars in Boston.” Or St. Louis. Or Buffalo. Or any of the other places I visit in a year. Because I feel like I can’t.
Hell, I know I can’t.
Still, I open the browser on my phone, and I type the words into the search bar. Just to see how the other half lives. Best gay bars in Boston.
And wow. The first link is to the top ten gay bars in Boston. As if some of them didn’t make the cut. Ten. Isn’t that a lot? It sounds like a lot. And when I scroll, I notice that one of them is in the same neighborhood as my hotel.
I delete the tab. Then I push my phone away and do a face plant into the pillow.
There’s no way I’m going to one of those bars. There’s no point, because I don’t want to meet a stranger, and I don’t even know how to flirt.
