I want to keep arguing, because I have no doubt he’ll be grabbed by any sporting magazine looking to hire, but then it occurs to me that no one might be hiring, and if I was staring down the end of my hockey career, I’d be high-strung too.
Still, I don’t want to leave him. I want to stay in this room and prove to him we’re not a delusion. What we have is real whether he’s ready to see that or not.
If he’s not ready, and I push, I’m gonna lose him. If I keep telling him it’ll be fine when he doesn’t believe it, I’ll lose him.
He’s right that if this had happened the other way around and I lost my career tonight, I’d be inconsolable and would most likely take it out on anyone and everyone who tried to rationalize it to me.
And that’s why I know I have to give him space, even if I don’t like it.
I turn on my heel, and head downstairs.
“God, again?” I complain as Soren and I come up on the screen again as soon as I sit down. “Don’t they have like other shit to report on?”
“You’ll get used to it,” Matt says. “At least y’all got each other. I’m still waiting for someone else in football to say somethin’.”
Jet feeds me another drink, and when I down that one, he runs off to get me another.
Matt and Noah talk about shit like nothing’s wrong, but they can all obviously sense the tension after Lennon’s and my fight.
He called us a delusion. Like he has no faith in us ever working out. That it’d be impossible to have a relationship with me. And as much as I keep telling myself he doesn’t truly believe that—it was said in the heat of the moment and in the middle of a freak out—I can’t help running worst-case scenarios in my head.
What if he really can’t forgive that I’m partially responsible for him losing his job? What if he decides being in the limelight isn’t worth it? What if he thinks I’m not worth it.
Ash realized I wasn’t worth waiting for. Maybe Lennon will realize I’m too much effort. Especially if being with me will interfere with his career.
I figure when he calms down he’ll come to find me, but he still hasn’t, and it’s getting late.
“You know, you could always take my seat,” Jet says from where he sits across from me.
“Huh?”
“Well, with how many times you’re turning your head to watch the stairs, I’d say it’d be safer to prevent injury.”
Matt stares at me, concern etched in his scrunched brow. “How was he when you went up there?”
“I’m surprised you didn’t hear him yelling at me.”
All three of them suddenly lose eye contact with me.
“You did hear.”
“It’ll be fine,” Noah says. “Matt and I made long distance work.”
Jet coughs and splutters. “For a few weeks when you were all mopey and broken up. Then you moved for him.”
“Long distance isn’t even the issue right now,” I say. “He’s ready to throw us away because of a possible job that could possibly be in another city. He’s lashing out at me because it’s my personal shit that cost him his job. And the more I think about it, the more I think he has a right to be upset. I just don’t wanna lose him over it.”
“Maybe he needs some space,” Noah says. “Time to clear his head.”
“And what if when his head clears, it tells him to walk away?” I ask, but it’s more to myself than the others. “We’ll be over before we’ve even really started.”
“Then maybe it’ll be better that way.” Noah shrugs. “Because once you’re in, you’re all in, and then it’s so much harder when you have to walk away.”
I stand quickly, because I need to fix this, but I come to the conclusion Jet’s been feeding me doubles as my legs wobble more than after a grueling skate. But I’m not belligerent drunk or angry drunk. I’m just sad drunk.
Sad because the same night I come out to everyone, the rest of my world crumbles.
Sad because we should be celebrating, and instead, I’m worrying about the future and what it could possibly hold for Lennon and me.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
LENNON
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. That’s the sound my panicky brain makes as I check my bank balance and work out how long I can survive while being unemployed.
It’s funny. Until I got the call from Harry, I thought I held all the cards. We’d beaten them to outing Soren, so I thought it was over. Apparently, that makes me “not a team player” or whatever.
In retrospect, I should’ve seen it coming. If Harry’s going to stoop low enough to out someone, he wouldn’t bat an eye at firing someone even if I was pulling in more views than Kevin. The gap between our readership isn’t big enough to argue the better reporter defense.