Page 102 of The Quarterback
This time silver candelabras, some as tall as six feet, stood sentinel over the banquet hall and the dance floor. Cream silk bunting cascaded from the three-story ceiling between the massive arched windows. Moonlight tangled with the candlelight and the glittering chandeliers as couples swayed to the sounds of the band.
He and Justin had done it, with a little help from Wes and Nick. They’d pulled off what Justin called “the wedding of a lifetime” and what ESPN said was “the NFL’s most important wedding.”
They’d chosen oakwood, cream, and buttercup yellow. Justin had embraced Texas charm, filling the ceremony and the reception with yellow roses. Yellow roses laid on top of old oak branches were the centerpieces, with scattered tea lights casting a golden glow on everyone’s faces. Justin and Wes wore boutonnieres of yellow roses with baby’s breath, along with, inexplicably to Colton, sprigs of lavender. Justin had also dotted lavender bunches throughout the reception hall, and the arch they married beneath was woven with white and yellow roses and hints of lavender.
As the best men, Nick and Colton had worn yellow roses, too. Their cummerbunds were yellow. Justin and Wes’s were white. Nick danced the parent-child dance with Justin before Wes stepped in and took Justin into his arms for their first dance together as husband and husband.
There were actually two weddings planned. In two months, Justin and Wes were going to have their smaller, second wedding, with family and close friends, at the ranch in West Texas. It was going to be a weeklong affair, their loved ones coming out to celebrate the start of the rest of their lives. Celebrate, too, by then, Wes’s new NFL team.
Justin wanted a wedding before the draft, and neither he nor Wes wanted to invite all the bigwigs to the intimate reception they wanted at the ranch. Instead, they threw a big bash in the city and invited everyone.Everyone, even people Justin and Wes didn’t know and didn’t care to know, like the university president and the marketing director and the head of the athletic department. The head of ESPN and the NFL commissioner, too. The first wedding of a gay NFL player had to be perfectly attended.
Two years ago, if Colton had a gun to his head and was asked which of them—him or Wes—was going to enter the NFL, he would have figured things would work out exactly the opposite of the way they had.
Wes had made it clear he was entering the NFL draft as the Texas season wound down. He and Justin told Nick and Colton first. Apparently, the summer at the ranch had rekindled Wes’s love for West Texas and his family’s land, and Justin—surprising everyone—had fallen hard for the ranch life, too. They’d made a plan while sitting on top of a mesa: a few years in the NFL to save up, and then they were going to buy the ranch and put all the money into it that it needed. They’d build another house out there, near Graham’s—Wes’s childhood home—and they’d be ranchers and, in Justin’s case, a part-time emergency nurse, too. They had their lives planned out, years charted all the way to the future. Joyful certainty in their choices radiated from them both.
Colton was delighted for them. As for him and Nick? They’d said forever and said I love you, but they still had to navigate the day by day. His heart had been going a thousand miles an hour the first time he touched Nick in public like a boyfriend would.
They didn’t so much come out as they just… didn’t stay in. It didn’t feel right to Colton to make a statement and come out as something he didn’t know whether he was. He didn’t know if he was gay or if he was bi, because there wasn’t anyone else he loved or wanted or craved. He was Nick-sexual, he joked.
The truth was, he’d fallen in love, and it didn’t matter to him that Nick was a man.
Their former Thursday night beer sessions turned into twice-weekly double dates, and if Colton thought it was going to be awkward to be on a date with Nick in front of his son… it actually wasn’t at all. He had to give Justin the credit for that. Colton had been nervous, and so had Nick, but Justin acted like it was nothing at all when Nick laid his arm across the back of Colton’s chair or when Colton took Nick’s hand on top of the table after dinner.
People picked up on their relationship in waves. When he boxed up all his things and moved out of the jock house completely, his friends wanted to know why and where he was going, and he told them he was moving in with Nick.
“You mean Justin’s dad?” Art had asked. “You, like, renting a room from him?”
“No. Not moving in like that.”
Art’s eyes had gone as wide as the sun, and his jaw dropped as he stared at Colton for a full minute. “I… I didn’t know you were…”
“Neither did I.” He’d shrugged as he finished packing a box and sealed the lid. “Kind of a surprise to me when it happened.”
“I bet it was a surprise to Justin, too. You guys cool?”
“Yeah, we are now. It took a minute. But we’re good.”
“Good.” Art had walked into Colton’s room—Wes and Justin’s room, as soon as he got his stuff out—and held out his fist for a bump. “Get it, sugar baby. Found yourself a daddy, ye-ah.”
He’d laughed, and Justin had appeared at the bedroom door just in time to hear what Art said. “Never, ever, say that again,” he’d said, gripping his chest like he was trying to hold back from puking. “My dad. Isnot.Adaddy.”
“I mean…” Art threw his hands up. “He’s, by definition, a daddy. And I’m just saying, Colton apparently likes a li’l salt to his lovin’—”
“Oh, God. I need air.” Justin had fled as Colton fell sideways in helpless giggles, and Art took off after Justin to keep teasing him. He’d roped Orlando in on the way, hooking his arm through Orlando’s elbow and dragging him backward to Wes and Justin’s old bedroom. Colton heard Orlando’s “No fucking way” and Justin’s indignant squawk, and then the chorus to “Father Figure” shook the walls.
After that, everyone in the house knew.
The team found out after practice in September, when Colton said hello to Nick with a kiss, right there on the sideline, after working with Clarence on passing drills. His friends had wolf whistled while the rest of the team stared. Two players, looking at Colton instead of their route, plowed into each other. Everyone was happy for him, though. So happy, in fact, they gave him the nickname Sugar, for sugar baby.Thanks a lot, Art.
The media picked it up slowly. Headlines filtered across the smaller blogs first. “Former Quarterback Colton Hall Seen in Intimate Embrace with Older Man.”
“Father of Wes Van de Hoek’s Boyfriend Seduces Former Texas Quarterback.”
“Was Wes Van de Hoek Covering for the Real Gay Texan Football Player?”
Beyond blogs, a few message boards, and the comments sections of articles, no one in the sports industry seemed to care. Colton had made it clear, early in the season, that he wasn’t aggressively recuperating and wasn’t planning on entering the draft or trying to join the NFL as a free agent. His football career was done, and he was hanging up his pads. And since he wasn’t headed for stardom… no one cared what he did with his life. No one wanted to videotape him and Nick after practice, like the university kept hounding Wes and Justin for. ESPN wouldn’t want to send a videographer to record his wedding.
Which was just fine with him.
