The Nature of the Game (Stick Side Book 2), page 18
Ash’s eyes narrowed. “It doesn’t?”
“I’ve never been into public displays of affection. My feelings are my business and my partner’s, not anyone else’s.”
“Being with someone who can’t be out, though . . . that’s different. I couldn’t take you to benefits and fundraisers, and—”
Dan cupped his cheek. “I don’t care.”
“You say that now, but—”
“Ash. I don’t care.”
“You don’t understand.” Ash was getting agitated, but Dan very much understood: live with the secrecy or lose Ash. “This isn’t short term. Unless I get injured or my contract doesn’t get renewed and I don’t get picked up by another team, I’m going to be playing for a long time.”
“Ash. I know. You’re not saying anything I haven’t heard from my brother. I get it.”
Mouth working, Ash rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. “O . . . kay? That means when I go back to Syracuse in a few weeks, we’ll keep seeing each other when we can?”
Dan kissed him gently, slowly. “I’m not losing you. I’m not. If that means we keep this a secret for five years, ten years, twenty years, then so be it.”
Ash wiggled closer until their foreheads were touching. “I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You didn’t ask. I’m telling you—that’s how it’s going to be.” Dan didn’t say the words. Didn’t know if he could yet even though he often felt them so deeply that it made him want to laugh and cry at the same time with the overwhelmingness of it all. But he could give Ash something else. “I’m yours. Always.”
SEPTEMBER 2009—PRESENT DAY
Dan knocked on Ash’s door after lunch the next day. After his early morning jog, he’d spent the remainder of the morning alternately putting together a report for his boss and on a conference call with the analyst from the Chicago satellite office. He’d had the television on in the background and had stopped everything—even moving—when a live interview with Ash had played on the sports network.
“What made you decide that now was the right time for you to come out as gay?” the interviewer, a gentleman in his fifties with a full head of dark hair—totally dyed—had asked.
“Bisexual,” Ash corrected mildly.
“Of course, sorry. Are you seeing someone that you wanted to show off to the world?”
“No, it’s nothing like that,” Ash had explained, appearing comfortable and relaxed in front of the camera in jeans and a polo shirt. “Truth is that if I’d had an out NHL player to look up to as a kid, I might’ve been more comfortable with my sexuality growing up. I never thought my sexuality was wrong; but neither did I act on my attraction to men except for once a few years ago. If I can show the youth of today that you can be true to who you are and still make your dreams come true, I’ll have done something right.”
“Speaking of the youth of today”—the interviewer looked into the camera—“we’re standing in an athletic and recreational facility that caters to underprivileged and at-risk youth in downtown Tampa. Ashton, can you tell us a bit about Try Out Center for Youth?”
Oh, he was brilliant, his Ash. Conducting the interview at Try Out meant it a) kept the focus off himself, and b) highlighted Try Out’s desperate need for donations.
Ash had taken the interviewer around the facility, pointing out the different areas that required repair and how donations were needed for the renovations.
“Without this center,” Ash had said, “a lot of kids don’t have anywhere to go after school.”
Dan was so damn proud of him it was overwhelming at the same time that it made him furiously happy, and he’d grinned during the entire interview, hugging the pillow to his chest.
He was jittery when he knocked on Ash’s door, unable to stand still. His feet kept moving forward as if Ash had opened the door already. If he didn’t stop, he’d end up on top of the damn thing and—
The door swung open and—“Whoa!” Ash jerked back . . . because Dan had pretty much been on top of the damn thing. “Eager beaver,” Ash said around a grin.
And Dan almost did it. Almost leaped at Ash, who stood there holding the door open in shorts and a tight T-shirt, his feet bare on the hardwood floor. Something about those feet made Dan’s vision go swimmy, and he was still staring at them when he followed Ash inside and into the living room.
“Do I have toe fungus or something?” Ash asked, staring perplexedly at his feet.
“Huh? What? Who has toe fungus?”
Head tilted, Ash regarded Dan for a moment like he’d never seen him before—or . . . maybe like he was contemplating kissing Dan too? The lines around his eyes got more pronounced when he smiled. “Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” Dan whispered back, heart beating madly. What was that expression on Ash’s face? Ash hadn’t looked at him like that in six years. What had changed?
And how could Dan ensure it wouldn’t go away?
“Saw your interview this morning.”
“Yeah?” Ash grabbed the key to the storage room from the counter and gestured upward. “What’d you think?”
“I think holding it at Try Out was a stroke of genius,” Dan said, frowning at Ash heading for the door. “Wait. Aren’t we going to clean up your backyard today?”
“Nah. That hunk of metal—” Ash nodded in its direction. “—is too heavy. Alex and Carlie are coming over tomorrow to help us move it.”
“Speaking of Alex.” Dan trailed Ash out of the apartment and down the hallway to the stairs. “How damaged is his place?”
“Pretty damaged. He had some flooding, so the baseboards and the flooring on the first floor are going to need to be replaced, and his backyard’s way worse than mine. A lot of debris. He’s staying at a hotel for now.”
Dan pushed on the handle of the stairway door; Ash pushed the button for the elevator.
They stared at each other for a second.
“I don’t take elevators,” Dan eventually said.
“Ever?”
“Ever.”
“Since when?”
“Since the day we met.” Dan’s tone held a heavy dose of duh.
“But . . . Don’t you work on the eighteenth floor of that building?”
“So?”
“So?” Ash mimicked. He followed Dan up the stairs. “What if you wanted to go up the CN Tower or something?”
“Why the hell would I ever want to be up that high?”
“You really haven’t been on an elevator in six years?”
“Nope.”
Exiting the stairwell onto the sixth floor, Dan led the way to the storage room and held his hand out behind him for the key.
“Is that why you jog?” Ash asked, slapping the key into Dan’s hand.
“I’ve been jogging since high school.” Unlocking the door, Dan pushed it open and flicked on the light. “All that cardio came in handy, though. Where do you want to start?”
“Well.” Ash surveyed his belongings, hands on his hips. “Might as well leave the patio stuff here since the yard’s still a mess. Guess we’ll just bring the rest of the boxes down.”
They grabbed a couple of boxes each, relocked the storage room, and went back downstairs. Dan stared at Ash’s back the entire time—his wide shoulders that could handle anything, his strong back that flexed as he readjusted his hold on the boxes, his waist that led to hips that led to a firm butt.
There was an itch under Dan’s skin. A temptation to touch, to stroke. To run his hand down Ash’s arm, over the warm skin, and twine their fingers together. To lean against Ash’s shoulder. To unburden himself of everything that still weighed on him—how he’d treated Mitch the past few years, his discontent with his job, his need to build and create, the anger at his mother that was always there, simmering under his breastbone. Ash wouldn’t be able to fix anything; Dan didn’t want him to. But it would be nice to talk to someone about everything that sometimes made it hard to motivate himself to get out of bed in the morning.
Ash’s arms had always made Dan feel safe.
But Ash had thrown a wall up between them from the get-go. Dan didn’t know how to knock it down except to keep proving to Ash that he wasn’t going anywhere. It was what made him follow Ash to Tampa in the first place—he needed to show Ash that he was here to stay.
After bringing down the remaining boxes, Ash announced that he wanted to clean his place before unpacking. Probably it was something they should’ve done before bringing the boxes down. Too late now, though. So they dusted everything from the top of the coffee table to the top of the fridge, vacuumed every corner and under every piece of furniture, moving the boxes to one side of the apartment to vacuum where they’d been, and then moving them again to get into that corner.
Obviously they hadn’t planned well.
They dusted between and on top of books, vacuumed closets, rearranged furniture, destroyed dust bunnies Ash hadn’t known he had, and purged the kitchen junk drawer.
“I think there’s something growing in this dust bunny.” Dan stood on a stepladder and reached into a corner of the ceiling next to the TV with a long Swiffer duster thing.
“It’s not a spider, is it?” Ash said, swiftly relocating to the other side of the room.
“I think it’s a whole colony of spiders.”
Ash made gagging noises.
By the time they were done, they were sweaty and dusty and hungry, the place was sparkling, there was a bag of trash by the front door, the spider colony had been transported outside and across the street as per Ash’s directions, and they hadn’t even started to unpack the boxes.
Dan collapsed onto the armchair in the living room. Ash dropped face-first onto the couch.
“I’m starving,” Dan said, wiping his filthy hands on his shorts.
“I—”
“I swear, if you tell me you have cauliflower pizza, I’m gonna come over there and beat you.”
Ash chuckled into the couch cushion. “I was gonna say that I can make pasta.”
“What do you have to go on it?”
A pause, then, “Cheese?”
Dan sunk deeper into the chair.
“We could go to The Tavern,” Ash suggested.
“’Kay.”
Ash yawned. Dan lifted his feet onto the coffee table.
“Do they deliver?” he asked.
“Sadly not.”
“Tell me about your favorite meal.”
Ash heaved himself onto his elbows to stare at Dan.
“What?” Dan shrugged lazily. “I figure if you tell me about good food, it might motivate me to get up and find my own.”
“Medium rare steak,” Ash said with a smirk.
“Mm.”
“White wine peppercorn sauce.”
Dan’s mouth watered.
“Mashed potatoes with chunks of garlic.”
“Gargh.”
Laughing, Ash rose to his feet and grabbed Dan’s hand. “Come on,” he said, pulling Dan off the chair. “Let’s get some dinner.”
The Tavern on the Bay was packed with singles, couples, groups of friends, and families alike. A table to their right, against the window, opened up. An older couple and what was presumably their granddaughter were rising, and Dan and Ash inched their way closer, ready to snag it before someone else could.
Once they were seated, the remainder of the previous guests’ debris moved to the end of the table for the server to remove—a couple of rolled up napkins and water glasses—Dan plucked a menu from between the salt and pepper shakers and turned it to face Ash.
“This,” he said, pointing at the restaurant’s logo. “You want to talk about unoriginal names for establishments?” He tapped the logo.
“The Tavern on the Bay,” Ash mused. He reached for his own menu. “It’s about as unoriginal as Greyson’s Woodworking.”
Dan gave him the finger.
“I did think of a new name, you know.”
Dan flipped his menu open. There better be steak in it. “For what?”
“Your woodworking studio. I did tell you I’d find a new name for it,” Ash said when Dan blinked at him blankly.
“Oh. Right! What is it?”
“I’m not telling you.”
“You—” Dan’s jaw dropped. “What? Why not? It’s my studio.”
“But it’s my name.”
“Why would you tell me you had one and then not tell me what it is? Asshole.” He threw one of the dirty napkins at Ash.
Ash caught it and threw it back. “I’ll tell you on one condition.”
Dan put the napkin into one of the used glasses. “What’s that?” What was Ash up to?
“You start making things again.”
“I already have.”
Eyes narrowed, Ash played with a corner of his menu. “When?”
“A few weeks ago,” Dan said, quietly, because it felt like something crucial had shifted between them. Leaning forward with their forearms on the table, inches of space between them, neither of them acknowledged when a busboy cleared the debris off their table. “When I got back from Toronto. I’ve been stuck in a rut the past few years, just trucking along, doing what’s expected of me. Working with wood again was like bumping into an old friend.” He scoffed. “Sounds cheesy, I know.”
“It doesn’t,” Ash said. “That’s how I feel every time I step onto the ice for a game.”
“Speaking of the game . . . any news on the contract?”
“I spoke with my agent yesterday.” Ash stared at his hands. “He says they’re revisiting my contract.”
“What does that mean?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” He threw Dan a partial smile. “On the bright side, I just signed a contract to shoot a series of commercials for Sport U Apparel.”
Dan’s eyebrows winged up. “Shut up.”
Ash sat back with a grin. “I kid you not.”
Not only was Sport U Apparel the biggest line of athletic wear in the country, rumor had it that they were about to branch out to sports equipment too. They had an excellent reputation for community engagement and sourcing ethical materials, and for the last several years a portion of their sales went to LGBTQ charities.
“I am so, so sorry.” Their server appeared, blonde hair escaping a high ponytail, sweat glistening at her temples. “It’s a zoo in here tonight and a table of eight just arrived . . . Can I get you something to . . . Oh my god! You’re . . .” She burst into quiet tears. “Oh my god, thank you.” She shook Ash’s hand so hard his whole body shook. “My sister . . . She’s been so moody and withdrawn the past few months and we couldn’t figure out what was wrong. And then earlier this week she told us she’s gay after reading your article, and, and, and thank you.” She put her small pad down and wiped her face with a laugh. “Oh god, I’m so sorry. I’m such a mess. What can I get you guys? Anything. Anything at all. It’s on me.”
“Oh no, that’s—”
“No, truly.” She sniffled hard. “You have no idea what the past few months have been like.”
Ash stared at her, mouth agape.
“Anything you want. What can I get you?”
Dan picked up his menu. “I haven’t even looked yet.”
“You want this.” Ash flipped back a page and pointed at something.
“Surf ’n’ turf? Yes. Yes, I want that.”
“Make it extra spicy,” Ash told the server.
Dan grinned at him.
After taking their orders, the server went away with another thank you and a promise to be back shortly with their drinks.
They chatted while they ate. About some of Ash’s most memorable games—some of which were memorable to Dan too, having followed Ash’s career and all—and some of the best cities he’d visited. About movies and travel and family. About the pros and cons of living in Syracuse versus Tampa.
“Less threat of hurricanes in Syracuse,” Ash said, toasting Dan with the last of his beer.
“True.” Dan gazed out the window. It had gotten dark while they ate. Some streetlights were lit; others weren’t. Bright fairy lights strung along The Tavern’s covered porch illuminated the area. This street corner would be pretty if half the shops and restaurants weren’t boarded up. Storm damage was everywhere.
The server returned to clear their plates. “It was such an honor to meet you, Mr. Yager.”
“It’s Ash, and really, the honor was mine. Thank you for telling me about your sister.”
“Just . . . Just . . .” She backed away with their plates, getting teary again. “Just have the best life.”
“She’s sweet,” Dan said once she’d gone.
“Yeah.” Ash smiled to himself, and it was both bewildered and beatific. Taking something out of his wallet, he placed it underneath the saltshaker. “Gotta use the restroom,” he said, standing. “Be right back.”
He’d left a one-hundred-dollar tip.
Running a hand over his face, Dan glanced over to the hallway Ash had disappeared down, and then kept staring, waiting for Ash to reappear again like some smitten teenager who couldn’t control his hormones.
He was so very cool.
Tearing his eyes away, he scanned the restaurant, his gaze snagging on a woman sitting with a group of friends. In her early twenties, she had brown hair to her shoulders and purple glasses were perched on her nose. She sunk into her chair with a grimace when Dan caught her ogling him, her lips twitching up in embarrassment. Dan smiled back at her despite the across-the-room flirting doing nothing for him. All he could think about was Ash. Ash’s arms streaked with dust; Ash’s muscles straining as they moved furniture around; Ash’s laughter when Dan nearly swallowed a dust bunny; Ash’s mad scramble to the other side of the apartment when Dan came down the stepladder with the spider colony; Ash’s expression when he talked about hockey; the emotion in Ash’s eyes when Dan had shown up earlier.
It was Ash. It had always been Ash.
Dan’s smile grew when the man himself reappeared next to him.
“Who are you smiling at?” Ash stood next to the booth, hands on his hips. His scowl would scare small children away.
“Um, you?”
Assuming they were leaving, Dan stood . . . and ran into a wall of muscle when Ash didn’t budge. Ash was warm and big and strong, and Dan forgot all his words. He swallowed hard and told himself the shiver was from the air conditioning.
