Page 33 of Tempting the Teammate
So I’d keep lying. Keep pretending. Keep pushing him away while promising I wasn’t.
Because losing Andrei’s friendship would destroy me. But having him know what I’d been thinking about him, what I’d done while thinking about him, would be so much worse.
And so I found myself turning away from the only guy who’d ever truly known me. As my back was turned to him, I realized I had just lost that, too. He no longer knew me. And not because he had neglected to ask. Not because he had lost interest. Not because he no longer cared.
He didn’t know me because I had changed, and he stayed the same.
Except I had changed for the worse. I had become a liar.
THIRTEEN
Griffin
I wishI could say I had worked up the courage to turn back on my heels. I wish I could say that something good in me forced me to turn around. But saying it would only prove further how incapable of telling the truth I had become.
What really happened was far less easy to define and impossible to fully understand.
Andrei didn’t ask me where I was going.
He was doing the very thing I had asked him to do. He was giving me the space I needed.
So, as I stepped toward the door, I heard him exhale, and I reached for the doorknob.
In one heartbeat, quiet and aching, it all made sense. For just one flash, for one instance in all of time, I saw clearly what lay ahead of me.
Andrei gave me the space that I would use to postpone the inevitable. Andrei let me go so that I could come back to him.
But I would never come back.
Coming back would require me to admit to my mistakes, admit to my fantasies, and admit to my newfound desires.Coming back would mean doing the very thing I was avoiding. And avoiding it forever meant never coming back.
As my hand wrapped around the door handle, I knew I was walking away forever.
Sure, I’d come back later tonight, hoping Andrei was asleep. I’d play hockey, I’d work out with him, but the gap between us would grow wider and wider until we both quietly understood that there was no bridge long enough and strong enough to bring us back together.
My tongue untied in the face of the most frightening vision of my future I’d ever witnessed. Words welled in my chest, coming right out of my heart rather than any place that had anything to do with reason. I abandoned reason. Reason had gotten me here in the first place. Thinking and thinking again about a very simple thing.
“I already lost you,” I said, my voice deep and airy, as if someone had punched the words out of me. They tumbled out, and I stood by them. I didn’t dare turn around. Not yet, at least. I didn’t dare see the grief ravaging his face, and I knew that it would be. “I might as well tell you the truth.” I bit my lip hard, preventing myself from letting out a sudden, inflating sob that choked me.
“I don’t…” But his words faltered, and he didn’t say more.
Then, I turned around, shoulders slumped and head hanging. I had pulled out the stitches quickly, and the damage was already done. “If I don’t tell you, we’ll drift apart quietly. Maybe it would hurt less.”
Andrei shook his head. “It would be hell.” His voice was small, childish, secretly frightened.
“I can’t keep lying,” I said. “I can’t keep pretending that the truth doesn’t matter.”
“Griff, whatever you think you know, you better ask me. Maybe I can explain,” he said, balling his fists in search ofbravery. He thought I would accuse him of something. God, how innocent my friend was.
“But it’s not you,” I said. “And you might be chill. You might just shrug it off and say it’s no big deal, but I’m about to make things real awkward between us.” Because it had crossed my mind that Andrei might just tell me to go out and try my luck with a willing guy. There were plenty in college, both the type that knew well enough what their interests were and the more confused type, like me, trying to figure it out. And when it had crossed my mind, I scratched it off the list of possibilities.
No matter what Andrei thought about me being a little gay or a little bi, I couldn’t see a world in which my sudden crush on him didn’t make it way too awkward.
Annoyance passed over his face, making the remainder of my spur of courage falter. He took a step forward, closing the short distance between us. As he stood a foot apart from me, his face revealed more than just annoyance. There was disappointment and defeat. “I knew it was a matter of time before you figured it out,” he said. “If you wanna call me out, just fucking do it and be done with it. I can’t keep playing this game.”
“Game?”
He shrugged, his shoulders moving violently up and down as he tried his hardest to contain the welling anger. “Say it to my face, Griff. I can’t move on until you do.”
