"You left hair in my sink."
"I cleaned it up."
"You missed a spot." Joel set the box down and picked Wonton back up, settling him against his chest. The cat went boneless, purring loud enough for the phone to pick it up. "Now you have your own. No excuses."
Even through the screen, the leather looked soft and expensive. The kind of thing Joel would pick out without thinking about the price, the kind of thing I would never buy for myself.
"Thank you," I said. "I mean it."
"You're welcome."
We were quiet for a moment. Wonton's purring filled the silence, a low, steady rumble. Joel's fingers moved through his fur in slow strokes, and his eyes stayed on the screen, on me.
"What's going on?" Joel asked. "You seem different tonight."
"Good different or bad different?"
"I don't know yet."
I watched him through the screen, soft in the lamplight, the cat rumbling against his chest. Four hundred miles away, and Icould still see the small crease between his eyebrows, the way he was studying me like I was a pattern he was trying to learn.
I wanted to tell him everything. About Derek, about what I was circling, about how tired I was of missing him in a way I couldn't say out loud to anyone else.
"Can you just stay on?" I said instead. "You don't have to talk. I just want to hear you."
Joel's eyes went soft, but his jaw tightened, like he was holding something back. "You want me to stay on while you fall asleep?"
"Yeah. Is that weird?"
"No." His voice was low, barely above the sound of Wonton's purring. "That's not weird."
I pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and draped it over myself. Joel was a small, bright rectangle on the coffee table, the only light left in the room.
"Okay," I said. "I'm just gonna close my eyes."
"Okay."
His breathing was soft through the speaker. The rustle of sheets when he shifted against his pillows. Wonton's purring was steady as a heartbeat.
"Red?" he said after a while.
"Mm."
"I miss you too."
I hadn't said it. I'd typed it and deleted it hours ago. But he knew anyway. He always knew.
"Soon," I said. The word was heavy in my mouth, thick with sleep. "I'll see you soon."
"Yeah," Joel said. "Soon."
I fell asleep with his voice in my ear and the shape of him glowing on the screen, four hundred miles away and closer than he'd ever been.
Vegas Aces' Robert Piper comes out as gayESPN | October 27, 2030
Vegas Aces center Robert "Red" Piper announced Sunday that he is gay, becoming the second active NHL player to come out publicly.
"I don't want to keep this part of my life private anymore," Piper, 26, said in a statement released through his agent. "I'm still the same player I've always been."