Page 78 of Punchline
“I thought… ” I cleared my throat and tried again. “I thought you didn’t want someone like me in the locker room.”
“Oh, that’s covered too. Page four, fifth paragraph. But don’t let your sense of self-righteousness interfere with your future, Jake.” With that, he turned and left the office. I heard him engage with Beth, but I wasn’t listening. I was picking up the folder and flipping through the contract.
Two years… per-fight pay, performance bonuses, endorsement deals… there was the potential for me to make anywhere from two hundred thousand dollars to—fuck, over twomilliondollars according to the terms of this contract.
And there it was, in stark print, the healthcare stipend, guaranteed coverage at eighty percent for incidents happening outside the ring, and if I was reading this right, space for a collective bargaining agreement to be reached if I could get the other fighters to agree.
That was a big offer. I turned to page four, paragraph five.
Ah. The no disclosures clause. Specifically, one saying I couldn’t be publicly out during my tenure at the EFC. No PDA at events, no social media posts either generally or specifically mentioning my sexuality, and no confirmation of anyone else’s questions about it. Deny, obfuscate,enshroud. Dimon wanted me back in the closet if I was going to fight with him.
Fuckthat. And yet…
I could make things better for a lot of fighters with this contract.
But Carson would never forgive me.
What was I saying? Carson would forgive anything. Especially if it meant fixing the problem that had nearly bankrupted him.
But I was dating Ethan, and I wasn’t about to give that up.
Dimon wasn’t asking me to, though. He just said I couldn’t confirm anything and couldn’t make out with Ethan in the stands for two years. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell for the EFC.
Shit. I needed to talk to Ethan.
Beth had the patience of a saint. She didn’t ask me anything, just made sure I could still teach and then took her office back, leaving the door open to air out the lingering smell of Dimon’s overly strong cologne. I taught class and did my best not to be distracted, and when it was finally time to get Ethan I maybe broke a couple of traffic laws on my way to the practice center. I waited impatiently for him at the door, pacing back and forth and holding that fucking contract in my hands until it was a crumpled mess.
“Hey!” He came out five minutes later—right on time, given that I had showed up early—with a huge smile on his face. “It went really well, and Jimmy said that—oh shit.” His tone changed as soon as he saw my face. “What’s wrong?”
“I… ” I was feeling so many things, it was hard to articulate what to tell him first. “It’s… ”
“Jake.” Ethan put his good hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay?”
Good question.AmI okay?“I don’t know.”
“What’s wrong, what happened? Hang on.” He opened the training center door and pulled me inside out of the heat, then sat me down in the first sitting area he could find. “There’s nobody else around,” he promised me. “They’re going to be on the ice for another hour. Talk to me.”
I still couldn’t quite figure out how to talk about this, so I handed him the contract instead. Ethan took it with a confused look and started to read. The further he read, the wider his eyes got.
“Holy shit,” he said once he reached the last page. “You’re being called up?”
“It’s not a perfect analogue,” I said, my tongue finally unsticking. “But… it’s a little like that, yeah.”
“But you hate these guys, right?”
“I do.”
“But they’re offering you a lot of money.”
“It’s not the money,” I sighed. “Look at page three again.”
He reread more slowly. “Oh, wow. Wow. That’s big.”
“I know.”
“That’s really big.”
“Yeah.”
