“I’m not.”
“Now you’re lying to me? Look, man, I get where you’re coming from with the media finding out and all that. I can promise it won’t happen again, and I won’t ask you about it anymore, but you have to stop pretending like you’re too busy for me. I don’t want a stupid night of drunken fun to come between us.”
He doesn’t understand that it wasn’t just a stupid night to me, and he never will.
“I can do that,” I lie.
“Okay. Problem solved. We go back to being you and me and pretend that night never happened.”
If only it was that easy.
Talon moves on as if the issue is now done and buried. “Now, how long do you think we should make Jackson suffer with pretending to be on the phone to his boyfriend?”
I manage a strained smile. “Until we finish off his food, at least.”
“Good man. There’s the Miller I know and love.”
I try hard not to show how my body tenses. If only he knew what saying that kind of shit does to me.
I’ve heard stories about queer guys crushing on their straight friends and how hard it is. But hearing about it and feeling it are two completely different things. The twist in my gut when he says something like that makes my chest tighter and tighter until soon his words will be like a tourniquet wrapped around my heart.
* * *
The best thing about training camp is we barely get time or have the energy to jerk off let alone go out or do anything. It’s made things between Talon and me easier because we can’t spend awkward dinners together weirding out Jackson too often. It’s only happened once since Hooters, but now Jackson is mysteriously “busy” when Talon mentions going for dinner. Says he spends his alone time Skyping his boyfriend who’s in the middle of moving from New York to Chicago for him.
We’re so exhausted a few weeks in that when Talon and I do go out to dinner, we’re generally too tired to do anything but eat, grunt one-word answers at each other, and leave. And while I’m doing my best to make everything appear normal between us, it’s not like it used to be. I think he knows it, but he’s dropped it since our last conversation.
I want to put us both out of our misery, but that would include coming out to him, and that’s something I haven’t done with anyone—not even the guys I hooked up with after Talon had left.
When he graduated, I was so lost I had no idea what was going on with me. There was a hole in my chest, and I had to figure out if it was a Talon thing or a guy thing.
Closet doors are heavy, and college campuses are surprisingly filled with lots of guys happy to experiment behind them.
So I tried, but it never felt the same.
When I made the NFL, I worried about one of my hookups coming forward, but they never did. The thought of the possibility scared me out of trying to hook up with another guy again, though.
Even though I enjoyed fooling around with those guys, I walked away each time satisfied physically but feeling hollow inside. Because while I was with them, I was picturing somebody else. When I’m with women, the ghost of Talon doesn’t haunt me.
Now that he’s moved here, he can haunt me in real life.
And as I walk into the weight room, and he’s over on the other side of the gym on the elliptical machine, I sigh because I can’t help it when I look at him. It’s a sigh of frustration, appreciation, and longing all rolled into one.
It doesn’t help I’ve never been more nervous on final cut day than this year. I’m only twenty-seven, I still have years of my career ahead of me—hopefully—but I’ve been off this training camp. The shit between me and Talon is affecting my game, and I hate to say it because he’s the best guy I know, but I wish he’d never taken the contract with the Warriors. He should’ve stayed with New England, or hell, there were rumors Denver wanted him too. He could’ve gone home to his family, and I could’ve continued to live without the constant reminder of him.
“You look like you’re gonna hurl, Miller,” Henderson says from spotting Carter on the bench press. “Someone scared of getting cut?”
For a team captain, he’s not very captainly.
I ignore him and tune out the world so I can make it through my workout, but when I’m on the leg push finishing my last set, Talon walks across the room, and I falter like I always do when he lights up whatever Goddamn space he takes up.
Something twinges in my leg, and I let out a grunt of pain—okay, might’ve been a manly screech—and catch everyone’s attention.