"Mik kissed Cole on camera in front of eighteen thousand people. That's a production."
"That was an involuntary production. The planned version was much quieter. The point is: the room already knows, Jonah. They've known for weeks. We're the only ones still pretending."
He was right. I knew he was right because Luca had mouthed "careful" at me at a restaurant and Wes had noted that I was"less tense" and Cole, who had survived the initial revelation and was now in active reconciliation mode, had started giving Ren and me a specific look at team events that combined big-brother assessment with grudging, amused acceptance.
The room knew. The room was waiting for us to catch up to what the room already understood.
The opportunity came on a Thursday. Team dinner at a restaurant near the facility, the monthly bonding event that Coach Callahan mandated because he believed, correctly, that teams that ate together played together. The restaurant was loud and Italian and the kind of place where families brought children and tables were pushed together and the noise level made privacy impossible and intimacy inevitable.
Ren and I arrived together, which was not unusual because we lived together. We sat next to each other, which was not unusual because we were friends. What was unusual, what was new, what was the seismic shift disguised as a tectonic murmur, was that I put my hand on the back of Ren's chair.
Not his shoulder. Not his back. The chair. The wooden rail behind him, where my fingers rested with the casual, proprietary ease of a man who was claiming proximity without making a statement about it.
Ren looked at me. His expression said: that's it?
My expression said: give me a minute.
The dinner progressed. Pasta was consumed in quantities that would have alarmed a nutritionist and delighted Luca, who treated every team meal as a referendum on Italian culinary supremacy. Cole was across the table, sitting with Mik, and he caught my eye once and the look he gave me was steady and warm and said: I see what you're doing. I support it. Go.
The moment came during dessert. Ren made a joke about the tiramisu being inferior to Luca's grandmother's recipe, and Luca erupted in passionate agreement, and in the chaos of Italianculinary debate, Ren turned to me and laughed, and I did the thing I had been wanting to do in public for three months.
I kissed him.
Not dramatically. Not the cinematic, movie-poster kiss of Mik and Cole on the ice in front of eighteen thousand people. A brief, casual, unhesitating kiss on the mouth, the kind of kiss that couples exchange a thousand times a day without thinking about it, the kind of kiss that is notable only for its normalcy.
The table had a range of responses that played out in approximately three seconds.
Luca, who had been mid-sentence about the proper ratio of mascarpone to espresso in tiramisu, stopped talking. This was, in itself, a historic event. Luca Moretti voluntarily ceasing speech was the emotional equivalent of a fire alarm. His eyes went wide and then his face split into a grin so enormous it was visible from space and he said "FINALLY" with a volume and emphasis that caused two neighboring tables to turn around.
Wes, next to Luca, looked at us with the flat, evaluative stare that he applied to everything and then returned to his bread with a nod that was so minimal it barely qualified as movement but which, in Wes Chen emotional math, was the equivalent of a standing ovation.
Mik, from across the table, made eye contact with me. The nod. The Russian nod. The one that carried the full weight of his own journey from closet to ice to Cole's arms. Welcome, the nod said. To the club. To the light. To the specific, radical freedom of being seen.
Cole, next to Mik, looked at his brother. Then at me. Then at his brother again. His expression was complicated in the way that family expressions are complicated, containing simultaneous and contradictory emotions that only siblings can produce. Pride. Protectiveness. Acceptance. The faint, lingering echo of hurt that was fading like a bruise.
"So this is happening at the team dinner," Cole said.
"You told me not to make a speech," Ren said.
"I didn't mean to do it during the tiramisu."
"The tiramisu was a natural opening."
"The tiramisu is sacred, Ren."
Mik put his hand on Cole's arm. The touch said: let them have this.
Cole exhaled. Looked at me. "You good, Park?"
"I'm good."
"You look terrified."
"I am terrified."
"That means you care about it. Terrified is fine. Indifferent is when you worry." He raised his glass. "To Park and Briggs. The other Briggs."
"Hey," Ren said.