Page 39 of The Poster Boy
“Yes. Why? Do you need to know what brand of condoms we used?”
Boone threw a piece of popcorn at me. “No, idiot. I want to make sure you’re not fucking some fame chaserwho’s going to sell you out to the tabloids the minute you’re done dicking him.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that, so far, I’d been the one getting dicked. I’d let him keep his assumptions.
“There’s no worry about that,” I said with confidence.
“How can you be sure? People will do anything if they think they can make money from it. And even if they signed an NDA, if they outed you, yeah, you could sue, but the damage would be done.”
“Boone, stop catastrophizing. He won’t out me.”
“How can you be sure, though?”
Boone could be such a mother hen sometimes, which made him a great captain because he genuinely cared about the guys on the team, both on and off the ice. Coming from the family he’d come from, he had a way of making everyone feel like they were part of his family.
“Boone, relax. It’s okay.”
“I repeat—how can you be so sure?”
Sucking in a deep breath, I let it out slowly and weighed my options. On one hand, I could stay quiet and let Boone unravel with worry. Or I could give him enough information to make him understand that I wasn’t going to be outed by the person I was seeing.
“Look, it’s another player, okay. I won’t tell you who, but they know what would happen if people knew. So people aren’t going to know. And don’t ask me who it is because I’m not going to tell you, Boone. I’m serious.” Grabbing the bag of popcorn, I went back to the couch and sat down. I started the movie from where Boone paused it and, after a minute, he joined me.
Flopping down next to me, Boone slung his arm over my shoulder and pulled me against him, letting me rest against him like we’d done a million times before. I held thepopcorn bag toward him as an offering. Boone let out a sigh and took a handful.
“I suppose you’re right. I don’t need to know everything. But if you ever want to smuggle a guy into your room, just give me the word and I’ll make myself scarce.”
“Or we could meet elsewhere.” Which we hadn’t done since the road trip ended, and we were back on home ice.
Suddenly I wondered why. We’d been home for a few days now, and Marek had yet to reach out to me. Although, the same could be said for me. It wasn’t like I’d been Mister Chatty either.
I found myself wondering what he was doing. What his apartment looked like. Maybe he hadn’t wanted me over because he’d been busy having other people over. Which was fine. We weren’t anything to each other. But he’d said that he had a hard time hooking up since he’d been outed. Even though it was unlikely that he had a parade of hot men in and out of his apartment, the idea of it unsettled me.
Boone took the popcorn from me and removed his arm from around my shoulders. “Go call your boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.” I protested by resisting the urge to pull my phone out and text Marek. Myers was not my boyfriend. He was barely my friend. He was just a hot goalie with a great dick who’d recently started to annoy me far less than he used to. That’s all.
Boone rolled his eyes. “Okay, go call your not-boyfriend.” When I hesitated further, he shoved me off him. “As team captain, I order you to call your not-boyfriend.”
“That’s hardly one of your duties as captain.”
“It is when he’s probably responsible for your improved mood. On and off the ice.”
I scowled at Boone, but he made a shooing motion with his hand. “Offyou go.”
“Well, now I don’t want to.” I sat back and crossed my arms over my chest just as my phone buzzed in my pocket.
Boone grinned at me. “I bet that’s him.”
“It could be anyone.”
He scoffed. “Unlikely. Come on, I know you’re curious.”
The worst of it was I knew in my gut that it was Myers texting me and though it would make Boone crow with satisfaction for getting his own way, I stood and left him on the couch to laugh at me as I did as I was told and slinked off to my room to text my not-boyfriend.
The idea of me with a boyfriend was absurd anyway. I’d never even been on a real date. I had no idea how to be a boyfriend. My life was hockey from early morning to the moment my head hit the pillow every night. It left little room for other activities and explorations.
Not that it mattered because sex was all Myers and I were. It wasn’t like he was in the market for a boyfriend either. If he were, he’d probably date someone who was out. Someone who could handle the press that still seemed to hang on his every word, even though he’d cooled toward them since the other day when the fractured relationship with his parents had been revealed.
