I stare at her, feeling my pulse pound as her words reverberate in my heart and through my limbs. Not that losing our self-control and getting physical was objectively “good,” but I think about how good it’s felt since Gavin and I came to blows on the field—the relief it’s been since the tension I’d compressed and compounded inside myself cracked my kill-him-with-kindness facade and spilled into pranks and honesty, trust and even a little laughter…and pleasure, even closeness. Just a bit of closeness. Somewhere we’d never have gotten if I’d just kept gritting my teeth and smiling my way through my misery.
I think about how long I’ve told myself I couldn’t have those good things with someone if they so much as brushed shoulders with soccer. And I think about how unsatisfying it’s felt to live such a compartmentalized life. Because that’s not who I am, or…if it was, it’s not who I always want to be. For a time, putting my head down, pursuing my goals with single-minded focus, served me, but that doesn’t mean it always will or that what was right for one season is right forever. Ziggy’s right. You outgrow parts of yourself, and maybe this way of dealing with my fear is something I’ve outgrown. That doesn’t mean my fear, my very real reservations about mixing pleasure and my profession, has just evaporated, but it feels…freeing, to acknowledge how I’ve been handling it might need to change, might bear reexamination.
Peering down at Ziggy, I tell her quietly, “Yeah, Zigs. I know how you feel.”
The kettle starts to whistle, and while I fill our mugs, then carry them to my living room, Ziggy stares out my window to the moon, a heavy pearl, low and glowing in the sky.
“I’ve been feeling such…restlessness,” she says as I sit close to her, set down our mugs of tea, then hold out my hand. She sets her hand in mine, and I clasp it firmly, reassuring her. “I’ve been so angry lately. But I didn’t know who I was angry with, or even exactly why.”
I squeeze her hand gently. “Do you feel like you’ve figured it out?”
She nods. “I’m angry with myself. I’ve been holding myself back, believing things about myself that aren’t true, that make me feel frustrated and misunderstood and stuck. I hate feeling stuck.”
Again, my stomach knots. I remember what our brothers told me in Freya and Aiden’s backyard, that they didn’t recognize me, that maybe all that anger I thought was caused by Gavin was caused by myself, too, because of what I’d been denying, hiding, suppressing, all in the name of doing what I thought would protect my dream of succeeding on the team, would keep me protected from ever experiencing the pain and mess that my relationship with Bryce wreaked on my college career.
“What are you going to do?” I ask her quietly.
Ziggy turns toward me, her sharp green eyes holding mine for a rare moment, before they slide away again to the moon outside. “I’m going to make a change. I’m going to be brave and change. Somehow.”
I sit with her in silence as we sip our tea, wrapped in the hush of night and a blanket woven by moonbeams. Mulling over our conversation, I’m grateful Ziggy came, even if not for the reasons I first thought.
In the span of one conversation, I’m on the other side of where I began. When she got here, I was relieved that it stopped Gavin and me from doing something that would irrevocably alter and potentially threaten the stability of our team, our play, our success as co-captains. Now, I’m relieved to recognize how miserable following through on that thinking would make me once again.
Ziggy’s wise words have, even more so than my brothers’, reminded me that I’m going to be dissatisfied so long as I keep lying to myself, living only a sliver of my full life because I’m so focused on what I could lose that I’m not seeing everything I’ll never gain if I keep living like this. What if there’s a way to be intentional and, yes, cautious, but also honest and real and…alive to all of myself?
I don’t know what that means for when I see Gavin tomorrow, but I do know we’re not going back to what we were. I know that we’re grown men who can talk about what’s going on between us, about what we did tonight.
The memory of him touching me in the kitchen floods my brain, and heat rushes through me. I don’t want to think about that when my sister’s snuggled up next to me on my couch. Thankfully, Ziggy wrenches me from my thoughts before I can start to worry that I don’t know how to escape them.
“Thanks for talking with me,” she says, nuzzling her head against my shoulder. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Ollie.”
I press a kiss to the crown of her head. “I’m always here for you, Zigs. But just so you know, everything you said tonight, everything you figured out, I only listened. The wisdom was all yours.”
A smile lifts her cheek as she snuggles in and stares up at the moon. “It was, wasn’t it?”
The last thing I expect to see when I walk out the door the next morning is Gavin Hayes leaning against my car, wearing a scowl, head-to-toe black, and a pair of matching Ray-Bans.
The old me would flash my widest smile and hide my unease with a cheeky, cheery salutation, mask my anxiety behind my gift for mindless, pithy chatter. But the new me who Gavin nearly made come undone, whose sister inadvertently whipped my existential ass into shape last night, can’t seem to force any of that this morning.
Instead, I stop a few feet away and say, “About last night. I can explain—”
Gavin holds up a hand. “Don’t.”
I narrow my eyes in frustration, but the effect is lost on him since they’re hidden behind my own pair of sunglasses. It is unearthly bright this morning, and after having lain in bed until 3:00 a.m., ceiling-gazing while trying to sort through all my feelings, I’m functioning on so little sleep, this much sunlight is too much for even me.
“It’s tomorrow now,” he explains. “We agreed it would be behind us.”
I hike my bag higher on my shoulder. “Yeah, except it never progressed past i-, and leaving that much unresolved is making me uncomfortable.”
Gavin stares at me, gaze hidden behind his sunglasses. I feel it all the same. “Unfortunately, Bergman, I don’t see how your discomfort is my problem, given you’re the one who left things so unresolved.”
The innuendo is clear. And, unless I’m way off, there’s also a deeper subtext. I know he’s a crank and a foul-mouthed, often rude one at that, but there’s a softness inside Gavin Hayes that, like any human, he hates to have poked, or worse, abandoned. I think he feels like I’ve done both. I left him last night, and here I am kicking up that fact this morning, when he just wants to move past it. I’m starting to theorize that his soft spot is even more tender than most, given how deeply he guards it. And I’m worried that behind all that scowling and snapping is someone who uses those defenses to protect a very raw, very vulnerable part of himself.
I understand, and yet there’s so much that I don’t. There’s so much I don’t know about Gavin, about why he is the way he is, about why I don’t see any of his friends from England showing up for his games or on his doorstep. Why I’ve never heard a peep about a family in his entire career. I have no context to make sense of his behavior, his sky-high cold walls, his roughness and readiness to keep his distance from everyone except a few sweet old guys who play poker with pennies at his house, sing karaoke, and clear out his pantry every week.
Bottom line, I don’t know Gavin. And, in all my kill-him-with-kindness, always-be-fine-ness, I’ve made sure he doesn’t know me, either.
I know I’m attracted to him. I know he’s attracted to me. There’s a stadium’s worth of sexual tension between us. But there’s also I-want-to-smack-you-upside-the-head-because-you’re-pissing-me-off tension, too. And I don’t know how to even begin to go about sorting that out if Gavin’s just going to shut me down and go back to being his grumpy, gruff self.
“Do you mind?” he says, pointing to the car. “I don’t have all day for you to stand there, stewing in your unresolved feelings.”
“Fine,” I concede, popping open the trunk. “I’ll just have to deal with those unresolved feelings myself, then. I mean I already dealt with one of those unresolved feelings pretty thoroughly last night in the shower.”
His head falls back. He rubs his eyes beneath his sunglasses. “You can’t say shit like that.”
“Why not? It’s a fact. Just reporting information. Yesterday was a high of sixty-six degrees. Last night, the moon was a waxing gibbous. Before bed, I rubbed one out in the shower.”
A low growl rumbles in his throat. “Fuck off.”
“I just told you I already did. And given the state of your pants last night, Hayes, I sincerely hope for your mental and physical well-being, you did, too.”
Shaking his head, he slowly pushes off the car, then walks toward the trunk. “You’re an utter pain in the ass,” he mutters.
I watch him chuck his bag into my trunk, then round the car to the passenger side. “Given you feel that way, may I ask why I have the honor of driving your grumpy butt to practice? I know I strong-armed you into carpooling, but given how not-pleased-to-see-me you seem, I would have bet a lot of money on you driving yourself today.”