Page 73 of I'm Your Guy
Smiling, he shakes his head. Like he can’t quite believe whatever he’s about to say. “One of my teammates is planning to come out as bisexual in the next couple weeks. He’s in a relationship with a man. And he’s going public.”
My heart leaps. “Really? Rigo and Buck will lose their minds.”
“You think? This is in the vault, by the way. It’s not my secret to tell.”
“Oh, hell yes. It will mean so much to gay sports fans if there’s a living, breathing queer athlete in professional hockey.”
“You mean one who’s out,” he says pointedly.
I flinch. “Yeah, sorry. There have to be other queer hockey players.”
“What do you think will happen?” he asks quietly. “When people hear his announcement? Tell me the good stuff.”
“Because you’re worried about the bad stuff,” I realize.
“I am,” he admits. “Players can get thrown out of a game for a racist or homophobic slur. But there’s a lot the refs don’t hear. A lot.”
“Okay. Yeah.” I swallow. “And that sucks. But this player probably knows that. He knows how to handle himself, right? And he’s looking forward to being honest about his life and finding out who his real friends are.”
Tommaso nods slowly. “Yeah, okay.”
“And the fans…” I can’t help but grin. “This guy will be a legend down at Sportsballs, for starters. Every queer hockey fan will be walking on air, okay? They better order a truckload of jerseys with this guy’s name on the back.”
He tips his head back against the wall, looking thoughtful. “It will mean a lot to some people.”
“You have no idea. New hockey fans will crop up everywhere, because one guy had the balls to let the world know that a queer hockey player looks and plays just like the rest of his team. He’ll never pay for another drink again.”
Tommaso barks out a laugh. “That definitely didn’t occur to me.”
“You’ve been stewing about this?” I ask.
“I might have been,” he says, crossing massive arms over his chest. “People can be ugly. And hockey is so insular. We listen to the same music. Have the same days off. Drive the same three car models.”
“And you literally wear matching outfits all the time.”
He laughs. “There’s that.”
“But I’m guessing—maybe this is out of line—a guy in that situation might spend years unable to picture what it would be like to be the only gay guy on the team.”
Tommaso drops his head. “Yeah, he might.”
“And maybe his cousin uses a lot of gay slurs?”
He blows out a breath, staring at the carpet as if there’s something written there. “Yeah. And maybe his uncle spent a decade calling him a faggot and a homo.”
I gasp.
“And,” he continues, “maybe a guy still hears those words in his head whenever he makes a mistake. Like they belong in there.”
“Oh God.” My chest hurts. “Jesus.”
He shrugs his big shoulders. “I don’t even know how they knew. Maybe it was just a lucky guess.”
“Oh, it was,” I assure him. “Guys like that find your sore spot and then jab it. I bet you reacted one time, and that’s all it took.”
“Maybe,” he says slowly. “It shouldn’t matter now.”
I make a noise of dismay. “You say that. But we carry some of that shit around for years. I still have dreams about being bullied in high school.”
