Page 32 of The Official Problem
“You old enough to drink?” Kieran joked as he slid into the booth across from Kessler. The kid dropped his menu and flashed a toothy grin, making Kieran grateful he still had all his own teeth. “Bet you still wet the bed.”
Louis laughed, loud and a bit too abrasive.
“Kieran Lloyd! If you’d told me when I was sixteen that one day I’d be sitting across from you in a Red fucking Robin, I probably would have cum in my pants.”
“Overcooked burgers with shitty toppings get you that excited? Might want to see a doctor.”
Louis reached across the table for a complicated half-fist bump, half-handshake greeting. Kieran butchered it, his age shining brighter than a neon sign. Luckily, Louis didn’t call him on it.
They chatted about their seasons, team dynamics, and swapped locker room gossip while they waited for their food. Their over-eager waitress, who clearly recognized them, took a little too long to get the hint and leave them alone. Kieran could tell Louis hadn’t invited him here just to catch up, but whatever he wanted to say kept getting stuck behind his teeth.
Not wanting to let the night drag on, Kieran tried to nudge him toward the point. “What did you want to talk to me about?” It came out more blunt than he meant it, but Louis gave him a grateful look like he needed this forced out of him.
“My management team dropped me,” he muttered, pushing a fry through the last of his ketchup like it was the most fascinating thing in the world.
“Because of all the penalty minutes you’ve been racking up?”
Some agents decided a player wasn’t worth the trouble if all he did was cause problems. But as far as Kieran knew, the Boston fans adored him. Sure, his style of play wasn’t helping his career, but at least his trouble stayed on the ice. It wasn’t like he was in the tabloids every other weekend, drunk and disorderly. He had a quick temper on the ice, sure, but off it, at least the two times Kieran had met him, Louis was a total sweetheart.
“Officially, yes,” Louis said with a sigh.
Kieran could read between those lines. Obviously, Louis thought he could help, otherwise he wouldn’t be here. However, bratty managers were a bit outside Kieran’s expertise.
“And unofficially?”
“Ran into a tricky situation a few weeks ago in Vegas. Some fucking photographer caught me pants down in the backroom of a club. Was gonna splash the pics everywhere. My firm got tipped off and managed to bury it, but a few days later, they dropped me.”
“Well, that doesn’t seem fair. It was Vegas, for fuck’s sake.”
Kieran doubted any fan would care about Louis’ seedy hook-up, as long as it was consensual. Honestly, with some NHL fans, even that might not have been a dealbreaker. Plenty of older guys in the league had questionable histories with women, and still had the full backing of the NHL and their fan bases. It wasn’t right, but it was the way things had always been.
“I’m sure half your team was doing the same thing. The only difference is you got caught on camera, and for all we know, they did too. Covering that shit up is literally half your agent’s job.”
“You’re not wrong. That’s the problem—I’m done covering it up. I’m tired of hiding who I am.”
“A red-blooded man who has sex in backrooms of Vegas bars?” Kieran was starting to feel like he’d missed a major plot point.
“Gay, Kieran. I’m tired of covering up that I am gay.”
“Oh.”
“I figured out I was queer when I was twelve. I thought I’d have to choose between that part of me and hockey—but then you came along. Do you understand how much that meant to kids like me? Watching a star player be unapologetically out? For the first time, my sexuality didn’t feel like a price I had to pay to play the sport I loved.
“I came out to my family, who were supportive in the ‘we love you, but keep it to yourself’ kind of way. So I listened. I didn’t push that part of myself down, but I kept it quiet—afraid it would affect my chances of getting drafted. I keep telling myself, ‘This is the week I’ll do it.’ But the week passes, and I stay firmly in the closet. I didn’t want to do it anymore.”
Kieran blinked, caught off guard by Louis’ words. Sure, people had said similar things to him before. He hadn’t been the first openly gay player in the league, but somehow he’d become the most famous. Kieran knew he was a role model among queerathletes, whether he liked it or not. Which meant he should probably have something more meaningful to say.
Louis was wearing his heart on his sleeve, coming out to a guy he’d idolized since he was a kid. Heck, he still was a kid. Kieran’s inspirational speech skills, however, were sorely lacking.
“You knew those photographers were there?”
Louis nodded and took a long sip of his now-warm beer. “I saw them following me a few blocks from the gay bar, but I went in anyway. I didn’t mean to get photographed like that—maybe subconsciously I wanted to. I was sick of biding my time. I just wanted to be out as quickly and painlessly as possible. Nothing screams gay quite as loudly as getting caught sucking dick.”
Louis let out a broken laugh. His face was stricken, maybe even a little relieved. Saying it out loud seemed to have eased some of the pressure on his chest. Kieran held back the opinion that having photos of you sucking dick plastered across every media outlet might be the worst way to come out.
“So, you asked your agent to let them leak the photos?”
“No. They were bad. I told my team I wanted to come out and asked them to schedule a press conference. Two days later, they dropped me.”
