“I kind of wanted to fly out of there.”
This time he inches closer, reaching for my hand.
My eyes float closed as he links my fingers with his, squeezes them. “You and your birds,” he says gently.
When I open my eyes, I crack a small smile. “The day I met you I warned you not to engage in a bird throwdown.”
“You were right. I backed away.”
I heave a sigh and trudge into the emotional quicksand. “My parents split up soon after that. My dad left, but he’d reappear in my life now and then, wanting to take me for the weekends.”
“Did he?”
I nod. “I saw him once a month, then once every other month.”
“Did he ever get sober?”
“No. He tries.” I flash back to his latest text. “He got his one-month chip right before I saw you in September, then his two-month recently. But I don’t know if it’ll last. He’s earned them before, and he usually relapses. And that’s what happened when I got to Florida.”
Grant waits for me to keep talking. I blow out a long stream of air, psyching myself up.
Because here it comes—one of the worst days of my adult life.
“As soon as I put on my Comets uniform and headed out to the field, he was there.” Shame crashes over me like a wave. Shame for who my father is and what he’s done, but mostly what I let him do to me because of his addiction.
Grant runs his thumb over my knuckles, gentle and comforting. Something I never knew I wanted.
Or needed.
“What happened then?”
I wince, trying to push words past the barbed wire in my throat. “Do you remember that picture the fan took of us at the hockey game?”
He gives a small smile of recognition. “Sure. Yeah. She was in between us.”
“Right. My dad saw it online, and the day before I left for Florida, he called you my boyfriend in a text to me.”
His brow furrows. “Why? Did he know about us?”
I shake my head adamantly. “No. The only people who knew were Emma and Fitz.” I clasp his hand tightly. “You believe me, right?”
He clasps back. “Of course I believe you.”
That’s a relief. I haul in a big breath and let the bulldozer get back to work. “Anyway, he got it set in his head from the picture that we were involved—the picture and because we’re both gay,” I say with a sarcastic snort. “He just assumed, even though I told him we weren’t.”
“Is he homophobic? Is that why you told him we weren’t together?”
“I told him we weren’t involved because it’s none of his business and because I don’t trust him with my business,” I say, my tone rising, voice harsh. Then I soften. “He’s not homophobic. At least, I don’t think so. He’s just . . . a mess,” I say, my throat catching because that’s the truth—my father is a mess. One I’m left to clean up when I barely have the tools. “I think he’s trying to be super supportive and cool about his gay son, almost like he’s trying to make up for how he handled it when I came out.”
“When he told you to stay in the closet,” Grant supplies.
“Yes. Exactly. Like, now he’s doing what he thinks is the opposite. It’s totally messed up, but he probably means well.”
“Like Frank thought he meant well when he outed me,” Grant says, a sharp edge in his voice, then he holds up his free hand, shakes his head. “Sorry, not about me. Keep going.”
“Yeah, it’s kind of the same. And when I stepped onto the field, he was there giving hitting tips to Tucker and Brady, and one of the first things he said to me was, ‘And do you already miss your boyfriend?’”
His jaw drops. “Oh, shit.”
“And I swear. It put the fear of God in me. It put the fear of the devil in me,” I say, reliving that afternoon. Recalling how the world shook under my feet, how all my protective instincts kicked in but backfired terribly. “He kept at it, saying boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend. He never used your name,” I say, curling my hand more tightly around Grant’s. “But he came close, announcing how he gave batting tips to my boyfriend.”
Grant jerks his head back. “What? How?”
I scrub a hand over the back of my neck, wishing I could speed through this conversation to get to the other side. “Remember when I said your weight was too far back on your knees?”
“Sure.”
“That was his advice. He’d said that to me in a text. He watched my last Cougars game online. He’d seen the photo of us, and he said, ‘Tell your boyfriend his weight is too far back on his knees.’ So, I passed it on to you,” I say, hating that I somehow sound like a liar.