“It’s hard.”
“Hard.” I snort. “My dick gets hard. My abs are hard. Therapy is a Herculean fucking labor. God, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But apparently Pauline knows what she’s talking about. She fucking better, for how much I’m paying her. And she says this is where I start, so…here goes.”
Clearing my throat, I clutch his hand, feel him, remind myself he’s here, holding me. Still wanting me.
“There’s no one from my past that I miss, no one I ever let close,” I tell him. “Except one person. Fred.”
Oliver smiles. “Fred’s a good name.”
I nod. “When I met Fred, I was not in a great place. In fact, I was beating the shit out of someone who’d thought that being older than me was a good reason to try to beat the shit out of me. We were brawling in the park across from his convenience store. Fred came out, dragged me by the collar out of the fray. I was filthy and hungry and very, very angry.”
Oliver holds my hand tight, watches me, waits.
“He brought me inside his store. Gave me a granola bar and a juice and told me to sit my ass down and cool off. Then he went in back and brought out a soccer ball, set it in my hands, and said, ‘Next time you want to kick the crap out of something, you put that ball in front of your feet and kick it instead.’ He took me by the shoulder, pointed up to the television anchored to the wall, to some Prem game replaying on the TV. ‘See that?’ he said, ‘That’s a game of control.’ Then he tapped my chest. ‘That’s what you’re gonna do. Control that anger inside you and do something with it.’
“Then he walked me through his store, out to the back. It was this dead-end alley, the sun pouring down on it. It felt like walking into church, or what I imagined church was supposed to be: somewhere safe, somewhere you felt peace. Sanctuary.
“He pointed to a small net at the end of the alley, said, ‘You come here any time, shoot, dribble, get your anger out.’ I was skeptical. I’d already dealt with my fair share of men trying to take advantage of me, a neglected, unsupervised boy. I said something to that effect, all piss and malice. He got very quiet, searching my eyes, putting the pieces together.
“Then he said, ‘This place was my grandson’s. He’s gone now, and I just…haven’t had the heart to put it away. He told me not to, said someone else would need it.’ And then he just looked at me…like no one ever had before. Like he didn’t see a dirty, hungry kid too big for his clothes, too angry for his own good, and he said, ‘Now I know he was right.’”
I blink so the wetness pooling in my eyes won’t spill into tears. Oliver dabs the corners of his eyes.
“I barely ever went ‘home.’ My aunt and uncle were my legal guardians, but they…they were not good people.” I shudder, pushing away terrible memories, memories I’m not yet ready to talk about or deal with in therapy, though, one day, I know I will. “I wasn’t safe there.”
“Your parents?” he asks quietly.
“Never knew them. My dad was never in the picture, far as I know. My mom passed when I was a baby. I don’t even know what of. My aunt just reminded me she resented it.”
He squeezes my hand, presses a gentle kiss to my shoulder before resting his head there again. “I’m sorry.”
“Me, too. but I can’t change the past. That’s what Fred taught me. All I could change was my future. And so I did, thanks to him.”
We sit in silence for a long time as I stare up at the stars, unburdened, relieved to have told Oliver everything Pauline said I needed to. Damn her, she was right.
His voice soft and gentle, Oliver breaks the silence as he says, “I know you already have the world’s admiration. You know you have mine. But, for what it’s worth, knowing what I do now, I admire you so much more for this, Gavin: for having found something to hold on to when a lot of people would have understandably given up, for letting a stranger love you when the people who should have loved you best failed you most. That’s a greater courage, a deeper strength, than anything you have or will ever show on a field.”
My heart aches, love stretching it at the seams as I press my forehead to his. “Thank you.”
Tipping his head, Oliver brushes noses with me, then presses a kiss to my lips.
When he sits back, fingers threading through my hair, he says, “Fred inspired your support program for kids, didn’t he?”
“How do you know about that?”
He shrugs, smiling coyly. “I have my resources.” Scooting closer, he says, “Fred gave you more than soccer. He gave you hope, and you were brave enough to take it and run. That’s what you want to give kids.”
I grumble something noncommittal, feigning deep interest in retying my swim trunks’ drawstring.
Oliver kisses my cheek. “I’m sure he’s so proud of you, Gavin.”
“He was.”
“What do you mean by that?”
The words rush out of me, angry, unstoppable. “That…fucker didn’t tell me he was dying. He didn’t tell me. He kept it from me, until he was on death’s doorstep.”
“Oh, Gavin.” Oliver sits up straight in the water and faces me fully. “God, I’m sorry.”
“He said he was protecting me, that I had no business sitting around, pissing away a season, watching him die,” I growl, roughly wiping my eyes. “It’s been fifteen fucking years, and I’m still so angry with him.”
Oliver pulls me into his arms, until my head hits his shoulder, buried in the crook of his neck. “Of course you are.”
“He was the one person who was supposed to love me and not fuck it up, and he did it anyway. He kept his sickness from me. Because my career was what mattered more to him. My career was what made me matter. All anyone’s ever seen or cared about me is my brilliance in fucking soccer. My career ending, it’s so much more than just losing something I poured my heart into for decades. It’s taking away the one thing I’ve ever been able to count on. Except…”
I pull away, just enough to meet his eyes, to clasp his face as I tell him, “Except you. I need you to know this. I will fuck up. I will get growly and freaked out, and I will panic as I adjust to this next part of my life. But I love you. I choose you. I choose us. I will fight with everything I have for us. And maybe knowing this shit that is my past will make it a little easier when I’m a fuckup. That’s…that’s what I wanted you to know.”
Gently, Oliver eases through the water, straddles my waist, legs bent on either side of my hips. Now it’s his turn to cup my face. “I don’t scare so easily. I’m not going to dip the first time you bite my head off—newsflash, you already have plenty the past two years, and here I am.”
I grumble miserably and drop my forehead to his shoulder. Oliver presses a kiss to the crown of my head and says, “I love you, Gavin Hayes. Soccer or not. Fifty million bucks to your name or a five-dollar bill. And Fred loved you, too.”
“Some way of showing it.”
Oliver nods. “He messed up. Sometimes people do very foolish things when they love someone. It doesn’t mean he loved you less. It means he loved you imperfectly. I’m going to mess up, sometimes, and love you imperfectly, too. I don’t want to, but, hard as it is to believe, I am a mere mortal.”
I lift my head, eyebrow arched. “I’ve seen your set piece execution; I remember.”
A smile lifts his mouth. “We’re both going to mess up. And that’s scary. But I think it’s okay to be a little scared, maybe it’s even good. It means we know what’s in our hands, how precious it is.” He sets his hand over my chest, his palm warm and heavy. “Our hearts.”
I swallow roughly, jaw clenched, eyes wet. “I’ll keep you safe,” I tell him. “I’ll love you with everything I can.”
“I know. And I’ll keep you safe, too. And I’ll make sure you never doubt what you mean to me. I’ll tell you loud and often, as free as the wind on my skin, the sun and the stars lighting up the sky. I’ll tell you that I love you, your tired legs and your aching back. That I love you when you walk off that field for good and when you step onto it in a new way because you simply can’t walk away from it, not yet, maybe not ever.
“I’ll tell you that I love you when I’m old and you’re older. That I love how you hate color but you love it on me. That I love how you love the ones most people overlook: the incontinent cats, the lonely grandpas, the curious, chatty kids. I’ll tell you that I love how deeply you love others even when you are afraid to. That I love you for bravely showing me love when you didn’t know what it was, but you knew I needed it, and you needed it, too.