He was drinking coffee from the travel mug I kept in the truck. My mug. In his hands. The domesticity of the detail was so intimate that it made my knuckles white on the steering wheel.
"You're gripping the wheel like it insulted your mother," he said.
"I'm driving."
"You're strangling a steering wheel. There's a difference. Relax."
"I am relaxed."
"You are vibrating. I can feel it through the seat."
He was not wrong. My body was operating at a frequency that was incompatible with casual behavior. I was a man who had just had the most significant sexual experience of his life with a person who was sitting three feet away from him smelling like my shampoo because he had used my shampoo this morning, which was a detail that should not have been erotic and was devastatingly so.
We pulled into the facility parking lot. I turned off the engine. The truck went quiet.
"Okay," Ren said. "Rules."
"Rules."
"At the facility, we are Jonah and Ren. Friends. Roommates. Colleagues. Nothing in your behavior or mine suggests anything beyond professional warmth."
"Professional warmth."
"No lingering looks. No accidental touches. No standing too close in the hallway. No texting anything that can't be read aloud by Coach Callahan at a team meeting."
"That eliminates approximately ninety percent of what I want to text you."
"Save the ninety percent for the drive home."
"That's a lot of texting energy to sit on for eight hours."
"Consider it training. You're an athlete. Delayed gratification is literally your profession."
I looked at him. He looked at me. The parking lot was empty except for Gerald's truck and Mars Santos's black sedan, because goalies and security guards were the only people who existed at this hour.
"One kiss," I said. "Before we go in. Then I'll be professional."
"One."
I leaned across the console and kissed him. The kiss was supposed to be brief. The kiss was not brief. The kiss was thorough and warm and tasted like the coffee from my mug and the particular, private taste of Ren that I had discovered last night and was now addicted to with the speed and totality of a first-time user encountering a substance designed specifically for his biochemistry.
He pulled back. "Professional."
"Professional."
"Starting now."
"Starting now."
We got out of the truck. We walked to the facility entrance with the careful, calibrated distance of two men who were not together. The distance was approximately four feet, which was reasonable for colleagues and excruciating for lovers.
Inside, the locker room was beginning to fill. The morning energy of a hockey team: tape ripping, music playing, the constant low-grade banter that served as social lubrication for thirty men who spent more time together than most married couples.
Cole was at his stall. He looked up when I walked in and grinned and said "Park, you look like you slept well," which was both accurate and the most unintentionally loaded statement of my life. I had slept well. I had slept incredibly well, for approximately three hours, after spending the preceding four hours doing things that would end our friendship if Cole ever found out about them.
"Good mattress," I said.
"You've had that mattress for two years."