“Spill it, Tripp Mitchell.”
“It’s nothing.” I glance around the restaurant, but no one’s paying attention to us.
“Don’t make me video call the rest of the Collective and see if they think you and Dex fucking is nothing.” He takes out his phone, but I quickly grab it off him.
“Don’t. I … okay, fine. We’ve been fooling around, but it’s out of desperation.”
Oskar leans back in his seat. “Huh. So Anton was right? Dex would go gay in a prison situation?”
“Apparently,” I murmur.
“Think you can really do this without getting hurt?”
“Nope.”
“Do I need to lecture you?”
“Double nope.”
Oskar nods. “Fair enough. I will reserve my protective instincts for people who actually want it.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
I’m suspicious. “Why?”
“Why, what?”
“Why aren’t you hassling me like you normally would?”
“Like I said when we were at Lake Tahoe, I’m the only one fighting to protect your heart, which made me realize … maybe you don’t want to protect it. As one of your very best friends, I need to let you make your own mistakes and be there for you when everything shatters.”
I’ve never heard Oskar seem so sympathetic and serious and— I slump. “You want the details, don’t you? Where we’ve done it, how we’ve done it, how adventurous Dex is—”
Oskar laughs. “Well, I wasn’t going to come right out and ask, but since you brought it up …”
“No.”
“Please? Just a little? Does he bottom? I can totally see that happening. Dex doesn’t do things half-assed.”
“What happened to me being the total bottom?” I ask, still having no idea where he got that from while we were away.
“Yeah, but you’d do anything for Dex. Once he gets a stupid idea in his head—”
“Sleeping with me is not stupid.”
Oskar ignores me. “Damn. In my mind, maybe you sneak into the arena after dark. All those surveillance cameras. Making your own little sex tape for the world to see.”
“Seriously, what is your obsession with public sex? It’s going to get you into trouble one day.”
“I’m counting on it. I’m still waiting for Lane to call me into his office and spank me for being a naughty boy.”
“Lane …”
“The new PR rep for San Jose. He makes me want to do bad things so he’ll yell at me.”
“And you think I’m the fucked-up one for being in love with my husband.”
Oskar waves me off. “Please. There is nothing more fucked-up than you and Dex. You guys are … pucked-up.”
“Original and oh so funny. Hurry up and eat so I can get home to where Dex is sulking because he’s in a slump.”
“He’s not in a slump. You guys are always that shit. Which reminds me, you could’ve at least let me have a goal tonight.”
“You know that’s not how this friendship works. On the ice, you’re the enemy. Off the ice, you’re like that annoying big brother who’s annoying.”
“You wouldn’t have me any other way.”
Well, yeah, he’s right.
He’s right about a lot of things.
The main one being he’ll be the one to pick up my pieces when Dex inevitably wants to stop playing pretend.
We eat in relative silence after that—never come between a hockey player and his food—and then we look up our schedules for the season to see when each of us will be meeting up with the other queer collective guys.
I won’t cross paths with another member until mid-November, but one of Oskar’s first regular-season games is against New York. He’ll be facing Ollie Strömberg, who’s already admitted he’s retiring this year.
The only OG out hockey player left in the league is retiring. I can’t wrap my head around it. The entire reason guys like Oskar and me have a career is because of guys like Strömberg.
It’s the end of an era.
I skip dessert with Oskar because I want to get home. There was something not right with Dex’s behavior. We’ve had bad games before. Faced losses.
It makes me concerned it’s not the game but Fensby and Jessica that’s actually getting to him. I’ve been trying not to think about that all night because I didn’t want to spill my worries all over Oskar. He worries about me enough as it is.
But as I enter my apartment and find Dex on the couch, his head buried in his phone and his dark blond hair falling in his face, it comes flooding back.
I throw myself down next to him and then lean over, putting my head on his shoulder.
He quickly closes whatever app he was looking at, and I missed what was on the screen. My gut sinks. I can’t help reading into that too. Was it Jessica’s Insta account?
“I need to ask you something,” Dex says and refuses to look at me.
“What is it?” I try not to panic yet. It could be anything.
What he does say not only takes me by surprise, I didn’t even know he’d been thinking about it.
“Why haven’t we had sex yet?”
Twenty-Three
DEX
I turn my phone over and over in my hands, waiting for Tripp’s answer. The whole time he’s been out, the question has been eating at me, worrying me. Doesn’t he want to have sex with me?
All I know is if he’s having second thoughts about our relationship, I’m not sure how I’ll handle it.
Is he only following through with this because he feels like he doesn’t have another choice? Urg.
“Uh … Dex? What do you think we’ve been doing the past few weeks?”
“No, like …” I make a circle with my forefinger and thumb, then poke my other finger through it.
Tripp cracks up laughing. “Why aren’t we fucking, you mean?”
“Exactly.”
Hearing him laugh loosens some of that dread I’d worked myself up to, and I finally turn to face him.
He has a weird look on his face as he studies me. “I thought you liked my mouth …” Tripp reaches for my dick, and I quickly snatch up his hand. If he touches me, I’ll get distracted again, and nope. We are having this conversation.
“Tripp, I’m serious. Do you …” I clear my throat. “I mean, I read lots of gay dudes don’t do that, so do you just not like it?”
“Nope. I’m pro penetration.”
“So it’s me, then?”
“It’s not …” Tripp presses his lips together, and I think for a second that he’s mad. Then he smiles. “I didn’t realize what we were doing wasn’t enough for you.”
“No, it is. I love it all. But that’s why I want to try it.” And the grossness from today’s game finally starts to recede as excitement at doing this takes over. “Can we? Please?”
“Like I’d ever say no to you.” He grins, but I don’t return it.
“You can though. Always.”
“I know. That’s not what I—”