Jesus, what he did to my heart. Anson Hawkins had wrecked me. “Come here.” He turned around and pulled me into his arms. We stood there and held each other. I was tired too. I wanted this, wanted him, the way that was best for him. “I’d like to see you wait. I know it’ll be a hard season, but I do think it will be easier to manage if you come out at the end of a season rather than the beginning. And your contract…”
“Loving you shouldn’t be something I have to manage.”
“No, it shouldn’t, but we both know in some worlds it is.” I hated it and felt like a fraud for saying those words to him. For years I’d prided myself on living my truth, on being out and proud and thinking everyone who could come out safely should, and now I was telling Anson I thought he should wait. “Whatever you choose, I’ll support you.” He pulled back, and I held his cheek in one hand, brushing my thumb back and forth over his skin. “You have completely ruined me, and you didn’t even have to try.”
He frowned. “That doesn’t sound like a good thing.”
“It is. The best. I don’t want to go back. I don’t ever want to recover.”
Anson leaned down and kissed me. “I don’t want to recover either.”
We went back to bed after that, our bodies entwined, knowing soon it would be time for me to leave.
“The updated housing bill has been rejected by the Senate,” the man on television said.
I clicked the button on the remote, fighting not to throw the damn thing against the wall. Why in the hell had I thought it was a good idea to turn on the news when I not only already knew the vote, as I’d been there, but I was seconds away from exploding? I wanted to get the hell out of DC. I wanted to be with Anson. I was over all the red tape and lack of action.
My phone buzzed. I looked toward where it sat on the coffee table and smiled.
Bashful: You free? Call?
That must’ve meant he was alone. He was at training camp, and why in the fuck anyone would choose a career where they got hit so frequently and had to go through the kind of training camp he did, I had no idea. It was brutal, and he was beat every night. We weren’t talking daily, but he called when he could. We were at an impasse when it came to him coming out. It was his choice, and I would support him regardless, but he knew I had concerns—though not all of them. Not the fact that I was selfish and feared his mom would blame me.
I hit the button to call him, and he answered with a soft, “Hey, baby.”
“You sound tired.” I stood and walked toward the bed in my DC apartment.
“I’m exhausted. I can’t move.”
I lay down, wondering where Darren was if Anson was calling. Their facility for training camp wasn’t in Atlanta proper, and they stayed at a hotel until the end. “You can go if you want. I know you need your rest.”
“I don’t want to go. I saw on the news… I’m so sorry.”
I rubbed a hand over my face. “Yeah, I’m sorry too. My father was the deciding no vote. I know I shouldn’t take that personally. He’s doing his job and voting how he believes. We don’t see anything the same way, and we never will. He can’t vote to make his son happy, but still…”
“It still hurts because you care about people, about doing what you think is right, about him.”
“Yeah…yeah I do.” Anson got me. He understood. “I don’t want to talk about that, though. I wish I was there with you.”
“What would you do to me if you were?” His voice was still soft, laced with exhaustion, but sounded slightly more perky.
“Well, I figure you need a full-body massage, right? To work out all those tired muscles. So first I’d strip you naked and do that, using my hands and my mouth, because I think biting you would help too.”
Anson chuckled. “God, I miss you.”
“I miss you too.”
“I’m fucking beat—”
I heard someone say, “Oh shit. I didn’t know you were on the phone,” in the background and frowned.
“Is that Darren?” I asked. Anson never talked to me when Darren was in the room. Texting, yeah, but not phone calls.
“Yeah,” he said to me, and then, “It’s fine,” I assumed to Darren.
“I can let you go,” I told him, even though I didn’t want to.
“No. I want to talk to you. So how does it work? Does that mean it’s completely dead in the water? Is there anything you can do?”
He was back to speaking about the bill, and I knew that was part of why he wanted to talk—he knew I was having a hard night. And I had to trust Anson, trust that he knew what he was doing.