Page 2 of Top Shelf
Clearing his throat, Derek said, “Well, anyway. You’re cool, dude. Just, you know, when you have someone over, put a sock on the door or some shit.”
And that was that.
I didn’t move into Kappa house until my junior year, and I was glad of it because the other fun thing about autism was being overly sensitive to smells. I’d learned to cope in the hockey locker rooms because good god, there was no getting away from that weird dick-cheese smell of dirty jocks and sweaty skates, but to be surrounded by the overuse of body spray and vapes all day?
It was a lot.
But I coped with that too, and eventually, it felt like home.
Then I got drafted over the summer, and I realized my entire life was about to change. I was amongst friends, of course. Even Colton—who turned out to be kind of an arrogant dickhead as I came to understand most soccer players tended to be—was cool with me living there.
No one made fun of me when I’d have anxious days where I didn’t get out of bed and found myself surrounded by tiny crocheted amigurumi animals by the time I came out of my spiral. Most of the guys kept them on their nightstands, and acouple of my teammates actually carried theirs in their pockets during games.
And no one asked why I was the only one who never brought anyone back to their rooms. They probably noticed, but the fact that they let me have this one secret to myself mattered.
In short, college was nothing like I’d been warned about, and neither was joining the frat.
I wasn’t sure I was ready to leave and join the real world. At least, not with the life I was living now. Even though the world didn’t know, I had no idea how the hell I was going to face the entirety of the NHL as a twenty-two-year-old virgin.
Graduation was looming over me,and everything was starting to become very real. In a few months, I was going to walk the stage, get my diploma, then throw all my hard work into a fire to let it burn because I was heading into the professional sports world with a nice, almost seven-figure contract, which was more money than I’d ever seen in my life.
I would no longer be an anonymous student wandering around campus, trying to make it to class on time without having a meltdown from sensory overload. I was going to be on my own, and my entire life was about to be dictated by a schedule I had no control over.
I sucked at coping with change, but I could do it. I was set in my ways, but I had my plan to handle what my social life would be like once school was finished.
No boyfriends until I was an established player with a team that wasn’t trading me every other season. When I did get aboyfriend, we’d keep it low-key so he wasn’t harassed all the time on social media.
No dating celebrities.
No dating athletes.
You know, a reasonable list.
But I wasn’t sure how realistic it was, and I wasn’t going to feel settled until I at least asked another one of the pros how they dealt with it.
Luckily, I’d participated in theQueervolutionphotoshoot last summer, right after I’d signed on to the Bruins. They’d sold me on being highlighted as a pro queer athlete, which was all well and good, except I wasn’t a pro. Yet. But the kind woman on the phone told me that being drafted counted, so I said yes.
And it was fine.
Well.
It was a lot, but I handled it.
I went with my frat brothers Cosmo and Colton, so I felt less panicked and alone. And they both promised to make sure if I felt like I was going to lose it, they’d help me get out. And when I got there, I realized I was going to be okay.
I met guys my age who had been on pro teams for a couple of years already. I met guys decades older than me who had been the first ones to come out, to face the harsh criticism of an ugly world so rookies like us could feel safe signing contracts while remaining true to ourselves.
And I also met him.
Quinn Rhodes.
The retired NHL veteran with a limp and a face that never smiled.
Quinn—the man I hadn’t been able to stop staring at during the whole thing.
Quinn—the man with dark salt-and-pepper hair, a tan that made him look like he lived on the beach, a cut jaw, and dark eyes that caught mine and didn’t let go.
He hadn’t said two words to me during the shoot, but he had smiled at me a couple of times, and my dick got so hard in my jeans I was actually dizzy from my blood rushing south. He paid more attention to me than most of the other guys, which was…unexpected. I had no idea what to do with that.
