"Same time next week?" he said.
"Same time."
"Bring a puck next time. The phantom passing is getting weird."
"You started the phantom passing."
"And you went along with it because you're too nice to tell me I'm being weird."
"I'm not too nice. I'm appropriately supportive."
"You're a pushover, Park."
"I'm your pushover."
The smile broke through. Not the grin. Not the full Cole Briggs broadcast smile that powered fan accounts and Sports Illustrated covers. Something smaller. Private. The smile of a man who has been through something hard with someone he loves and has come out the other side and is choosing to keep going.
He bumped my fist. The second fist bump. Stronger than the first. The ice was under our feet and the twenty years were between us and the world was different now, different in ways that could not be undone, but different was not the same as worse.
Different was just the new direction. And we were skating in it together.
I went home. Ren was awake, sitting at the kitchen counter with coffee, waiting. He looked at my face and his eyes searched for the verdict.
I grinned. The grin told him everything.
"Told you," he said.
"You told me."
"He came around."
"He came around."
"Are you going to cry?"
"Absolutely not."
I cried. Ren held me. The coffee went cold. The morning light came through the window. And the apartment, which had been heavy with worry for a week, felt light again. Light and warm and full of the specific, stubborn, indestructible love of three men who had decided that the bonds between them were worth more than the fear, and had chosen accordingly.
The choosing was everything. The choosing was the whole game.
And the game was far from over. But we were winning. And we were winning together.
-e
JONAH
Telling the team was Ren's idea, which was fitting because Ren was the braver of us in the ways that counted.
"Not a speech," he said. "Not an announcement. Not a moment. Just... be."
"Be?"
"At the next team thing, hold my hand. Sit next to me. Don't perform distance. Let them see what they see and respond how they respond."
"That's terrifying."
"It's also exactly what Mik and Cole did. Mik kissed Cole on the ice and let the world figure it out. Wes stood up in the locker room and said a sentence. Neither of them made it a production. They just let the truth be visible and trusted the room."