Page 2 of The Poster Boy
“Marek? You okay?” Kelsey walked up behind me and put her hands on my shoulders.
“I’m good. Just… I can’t do it, Kels. I can’t make this go away and pretend that I’m something I’m not. I can’t go back in the closet. I can’t go through this shit again. All morning, I’ve felt like I was going to be sick. It’s like I’m right back there with Mom and Dad yelling and crying and cutting me off.”
She dropped into the seat next to mine and flicked my ear. Hard.
“Hey! Ouch.” I had to untuck my hand from under my leg to protect my ear and I scowled at my sister. Kind of. It wasn’t a real scowl. No matter what, I knew Kelsey had my back. She’d been there for me when our parents cut me off. Kicked me out. Pretended they never had a son to begin with.
Kelsey was a few years older than I was, and she’d worked three jobs to keep me in hockey. She was there at the draft when I was picked. When people asked where myparents were, I said they couldn’t make it. I didn’t want to tell people that my own family had thrown me away.
“Now that I have your attention,” Kelsey said. “No matter what you decide to do, I’m with you all the way, okay? I don’t care what you say or do, you’ll never lose me.”
I nodded. Until I knew what the plan was, everything still felt big and scary. Unable to sit still anymore, I got to my feet and started pacing. My apartment was on the small side, but I’d never cared because I spent most of my time out of it, either at the rink or the gym, or out of town at someone else’s rink. But right now I wished for more space. Or an exercise bike or something to get the pent-up energy out.
Kelsey was used to my pacing. I’d practically worn a hole in her floor when I first moved in with her. I’d slept on her couch up until I was drafted and got my first real paycheck. Kelsey followed me to a new city, and we rented units in the same building. But she’d built a life here now. We’d been here for over a year and she’d found friends. Put down roots. She had a small part in a local theater production. I’d even managed to go watch a few rehearsals. If I got traded, I couldn’t ask her to give all that up for me. I wouldn’t let her.
Leaving town was a fresh start for us both, she’d said when she told me she was coming with me. Despite their efforts, Kelsey had cut our parents off the night I showed up on her doorstep with a bag of hockey gear and a broken heart.
I hadn’t heard the buzzer for the building or the knock on the door, but suddenly a familiar face was in my kitchen. Faye Andrews, the publicist for the team. I’d not had many direct interactions with her, but from everything I could tell, she was good at her job, and she seemed to care about the guys.
Faye’s red hair was piled on the top of her head in one of those messy buns that Kelsey had tried for years in high school to perfect. She had her signature oversized glasses on; today the frames were green. She set her bag on the table and pulled her tablet out of it.
“Okay, Marek, what’s the plan?”
I looked at Faye and blinked. “Plan?”
“Well, if you want this to go away, we can work with you to make the story disappear. It won’t. But we can be tight-lipped about it, and eventually people will get bored. Maybe.”
“I don’t want to hide. I want to be out. Other players have come out.” Even saying the words calmed me. Yeah, it was scary as hell to think about the reactions of the other guys, the other teams, the fans. But the story had already exploded all over the internet. The only way out of this mess was to come out and let people get bored of the whole thing.
“Okay, we can work with that, but you do know that the other players who came out weren’t linked to a celebrity. You’re hot gossip right now.” Faye was already tapping away on her tablet. She was like a wizard with that thing.
“I don’t want it to be a big deal.”
She looked up from her tablet, then set it down and crossed the room to where I was. I’d somehow paced myself into a corner without realizing it, and it was Faye who took my hand and tugged me toward my couch. I dropped onto one of the cushions as she sat at the other end.
“It’s already a big deal, Marek.” Faye gave me a sympathetic look. “I’m not going to sugarcoat this and pretend this is the easiest option. There’s going to be a lot of media attention. Not all of it will be good, but I’ve done some digging into your life, Mr. Myers. I know that wheneveryou can, you join the floor hockey games down at the youth center. I know you donate a not insignificant amount of money to that place. I know you personally sponsored one of the kids who couldn’t afford hockey but has potential.”
“Jesus, do you know what kind of underwear I buy too?” I asked, not offended but impressed, and a little terrified that Faye knew all of that. “Should I ask how you know so much about me? It’s not like I run around advertising these things.”
“I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.” Faye grinned at me, then added, “Your sister is a snitch.”
I turned to look at Kelsey, who just shrugged. “What? It’s not like I lied about you. All of that is true.”
“When did you two even have time to discuss this? Kelsey’s been here all morning.” I watched the two of them exchange a look and then Kelsey let out a sigh.
“I was with Faye when the news broke.”
“It was first thing in the morn—oh. Oh! Kelsey, you never told me.”
“To be fair, I didn’t really know. Until I met Faye, but we can talk about that later. Right now we have more important things to deal with beyond my bisexual awakening.” Kelsey turned to Faye. “What’s the plan?”
“Well, because Marek wants to be out, I think we run with it. We address the way he was outed, which was despicable. I’ve prepared a statement to release to the press. Pass me my tablet please, Kelsey.”
Kelsey grabbed the tablet from the table and brought it to Faye, who swiped at the screen a couple times and handed it to me. I shook my head. It wasn’t that reading was hard, or comprehending, but when I was stressed, retaining enough focus to get through a whole-ass document wasn’tsomething I wanted to waste my energy on. I got frustrated easily when I was under pressure.
Faye rolled with it and read it to me, then gave me a summary. “Basically, it expresses your sadness for the way you were outed. You make a moving statement on how everyone deserves to come out in their own time. We make you look like a puppy, and people don’t kick puppies.”
Come out. Use the way I was outed to gain the sympathy and support of the general public. Leak my good deeds to the press to highlight what a nice guy I was. Play hockey. Move on with my life when all of this went away.
