Page 43 of First Puck

“Yeah, I had to pause in the middle of a campaign, and I don’t want to lose my streak. We can talk about it more if you want, but you look seriously uncomfortable right now. I mean, I wanna talk some time, obviously, but I won’t force you to tell me shit you don’t want to.”

All my energy, all that worry and fear which had drowned me for years. Everything I’d obsessed over, became depressed over, even the times I thought about running away from home just to escape my feelings.

And he just swept it away with a simple conversation.

And, in the end, it was exactly like Brad. The Brad I’d grown up with, who only cared about tits and hockey—and me. The Brad who was happy to let everyone get on with their business as long as he could have fun. That was the Brad I’d fallen in love with. And I’d somehow convinced myself he would hate me as soon as he knew.

“So, do you wanna play?” he asked as I heard aclickand he dangled my blue controller in front of me.

He was acting like nothing was wrong, like I hadn’t just confessed my second biggest secret. He had no idea what kind of hurdle we’d just leaped.

“Yeah.” I relaxed, threading my fingers through my hair again. Even after everything Brad had done to dress me up, my date was over, and it didn’t matter if it got messy now that I was back home with him. As long as he was smiling at me, or not looking at me like he was disgusted with me, it was all good.

I grabbed my controller, and Brad took us back to the menu to add me to his campaign.

“I got to the enemy barracks, but I keep dying. I fucking suck when you aren’t here.”

“That’s your problem, not mine,” I teased as I flicked through my options.

“Well, yeah, it is when you’re out. You were gone for ages.” He pursed his lips. I nearly groaned how stupidly happy I was that he was pouting over the fact I left him alone.

“How about ‘that’s great that you had a fun first date, but now I really want to get my ass beat at COD’?” I said.

“Should you be saying ‘ass beat’ when you’re dating a guy?”

My heart jumped in surprise, and I turned to find him beaming at me with zero reservations.

“Alright, nerd,” he said so easily that all the tension in my body flowed away. “How about ‘pounding my ass’?”

“That’s even worse.” I snorted, looking back at the screen, ignoring the huge wave of heat which burst through me as Brad laughed, and we got into the game.

Brad

Istood outside our house, my key in the lock, trying to figure out what to say to Alex.

I was definitely playing it cool, but I really couldn’t let it go.

Alex and Lance were dating. It wasn’t really a big deal. Thinking about it, I should be more upset that he didn’t trust me to tell me he was gay, rather than him dating that asshole.

Except for the small smiles they shared at the rink today, or the way Alex kept looking for him while we were running drills.Or how Alex ran up to him straight after fucking practice with a seriously annoying smile on his face.

When usually he did all that stuff with me.

It was absolute shit.

Alex was meant to be there for me like I was always there for him.

I mean, apart from when I was partying with the guys or out getting laid or making him go to the gym by himself because I was too hungover or sexed out to move.

And Tommy watched them closely during practice with a different kind of scowl. We both shot each other looks like ‘can you believe this shit?’

Whenever Alex looked at Lance and not me, I got these stupid little spikes of jealousy that made me want to grab Alex and ask him what the hell Lance had that I didn’t.

Like, I pretended I hadn’t seen Alex kiss him last night, but that didn’t mean I didn’t actually seeit. I swear they were out there for half an hour, just making out right in front of our house. It only took me a minute to want to puke at the sight of my sweet, innocent Alex shoving his tongue down Lance Austin’s throat.

And then Lance just fucked off and left him by himself.

Seriously though, what the fuck?

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