Page 86 of Two for Holding
Tom inhaled, startled.
“And I’ll only say this once.You deserve to be happy, Tom.You’re settling for safe, but you can have both.You will have both, someday.Even if it’s not with me.”
Jax nodded once, more to himself than to Tom.“I’m leaving now.If I stay, it’ll only hurt more.But if you care about me at all, if you care aboutyouat all, think about it.”
He left Tom’s apartment feeling as though the inside of his chest had been scooped out with a grapefruit knife.It hurt, but the weight had lifted.
seventeen
San Francisco Sea Lions Launch Sponsorship Program with local LGBTQIA+ Shelter
A week ago, San Francisco’s NHL hockey team announced its partnership with local LGBTQIA+ shelter for homeless queer youth, Pot of Gold.Today, the first posts about it hit social media.In it, we see the young core of the team, center Jax Grant, defenseman Chris Calabrese, and left wing Diego Lunes, handing out pucks and sticks, playing street hockey, and getting mercilessly roasted by queer teenagers.The pushback on social media has been exactly as stupid as could be expected, but we at sfhockeyftw are happy to see our team engaging with the local community and taking a stance on important issues.
Top comments:
CLions2010: Spare me the mushy social justice bullshit.These guys are hockey players.I want to see them playing hockey.
Susannah Lindenberg: Anyone can play hockey!
(Posted on http://sfhockeyftw.blogspot.com on 12/13/2024)
On Tuesday, Tom downloaded Instagram.
He tried to follow his normal off-day routine first.He hit the gym and did a light weight routine.He ate lunch, a prepackaged, precooked wild rice pilaf with tilapia and green beans.
Jax was right.The food contained hardly any salt and no fat, and it tasted of very little.
After, he had no idea what to do with himself.Restless energy filled him, leaving him jittery and by turns excited and miserable.His body hadn’t caught up with his brain.His restless limbs still sanghe could love me, he could love me,forcing him into action, while his mind chantedI can’t give him what he needs,dragging him down.
He didn’t want to be alone, but the only people he knew were other hockey players.He wanted to tell someone about this massive, life-changing thing that had happened to him (sex, love, heartbreak,Jax), but he couldn’t without doing the exact thing he wanted to avoid so badly it made him let Jax go.
At two, he went for a run.
The spinning bike wasn’t cutting it, he needed the cool breeze off the bay and the light drizzle in the air.He needed to be part of the world, not somewhere off to the side while life happened around him.
He regretted it soon enough.After twenty minutes, his calves were killing him from the uphill stretches, and the impact to his ankle on the downhill parts jarred his bad hip.After forty, he called it quits and went home.Showering reminded him of Jax, standing under the spray with his heart in his throat while Jax waited for him in bed, so he kept it quick.
When he got out, the digital clock at his bedside table read three thirty, and six and half hours stretched out ahead of him before he could reasonably go to bed.If he hadn’t slept after Jax’s departure last night, he might have been able to justify a nap.But the truth was, after the travel, the sex, and the emotional upheaval of it all, he’d slept like a rock if only to escape reality.
So, with half a day’s worth of time to kill, he opened his phone, toggled to the app store, and downloaded Instagram.
Beyond basic messaging, he mostly used his phone to follow the news and track stats or watch YouTube compilations of other NHL players.It stubbornly insisted on sending him recommendations to watch his own highlights as well, but he ignored those.If being present for his own goals wracked his nerves, watching them back, with running commentary about how good he was, made Tom want to curl up in a ball and never leave the apartment.The commentators couldn’t see his thought process, which was mostlyoh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, did I make it?
Having to watch himself in the short videos Kayleigh shot of the team would be even worse.He relied on his teammates to show him when something noteworthy showed up on Instagram or TikTok, such as the video of Tyson Fuller badmouthing Jax.But maybe he’d been missing out.When the app finished installing, he chose the username “sealionsfan8216” as if he were a teenage girl scrawling his and Jax’s jersey numbers in the margins of her notebook with a heart around them.He didn’t add a profile picture or any photos of his own.Instead, he followed everyone on the team he could think of.Finally, when he couldn’t put it off anymore, he followed the official team account.
The top post showed Jax in a Sea Lions hoodie and shorts, holding up a hockey stick wrapped almost entirely in Pride tape.More images popped up in the post: Breezy surrounded by teenagers, blowing a whistle, wearing the most ridiculous rainbow-colored knee socks Tom had ever seen; Mooney peeking out from behind a stack of boxes full of snacks he was carrying while a woman with multicolored hair directed him.
A long, explanatory post scrolled under the photos, but Tom didn’t bother reading it.He knew what it would say; he’d gotten the emails.He clicked on the profile picture—the Sea Lions logo, of course—and watched the stories.In one, Breezy explained an around-the-world drill while a loud-mouthed kid with a sky-high Afro interrupted him every other word.In another, Mooney played goalie, which he was truly terrible at, while the kids rained pucks down on him.
Finally, he swiped to a video of Jax, giving everyone a handshake at the end of the game.
One of the kids grabbed his hand and pulled him into a hug instead.
It was only then that Tom realized Jax’s smiles for the camera had been fake because it was only then that Jax smiled for real.
Good.They’d made the right choice if these kids made Jax smile properly.Some deep, achy part of Tom’s psyche that wanted to legitimize his heartbreak turned his pain to satisfaction.Jax’s happiness was the only way to make sense of what he’d done in turning Jax down when he’d offered everything Tom wanted.
He watched the video six times before he made himself close the app.
