I must have tried on every combination of clothing I owned seventeen times before finally settling on a pair of khakis and a powder blue button down, and even that I was starting to second guess the longer I wore it.

Every inch of my body was wrought with glee and self-consciousness. I had never been on a proper date with a boy before and I had absolutely no idea what to do with myself. Part of me longed to get on the phone and call up all of my friends for advice like a giddy school girl in a teen rom com. Alas, besides Mark, there were only two other people in the whole world who knew and acknowledged the fact that I was gay; Peter, and also my mom. I didn’t think I was quite ready for the level of commitment that telling either of them would require.

This blooming thing between Mark and me felt fragile, tentative and new; like there was a bright shiny object floating in front of me, just within arm’s reach and I desperately wanted to chase after it, but was also terrified of scaring it away.

I was patting down my shirt and considering changing when I heard the knock on the door. My heart gave a painful lurch. There was no going back now.

I shoved my phone and my wallet into my pockets and grabbed Mark’s jacket off of the nightstand before rushing to get the door. Mark was dressed in one of his usual band T-shirts and a distressed pair of jeans. His eyes raked over me from head to toe.

“Wow,” he said. “You look really nice. Now I feel underdressed.”

I stuffed my hands into my front pockets and shrugged, uncomfortable.

“It’s nothing. You look nice too. Here’s your jacket back.”

Mark took it and put it on, pausing for a moment to straighten out the collar. I bit the inside of my cheeks and tried not to think about what I’d been doing with it last night.

“Thanks. Are you ready to go?”

I started to nod, but then looked down at my shirt, suddenly longing to be more casual.

“One sec,” I said and then ran to grab my red hoodie off of my desk chair. I put it on in a rush, feeling infinitely better once I was hidden under its familiar threadbare fabric.

“Okay, let’s go.”

The coffee shop that Mark took us to was the textbook definition of hipster. It had big puffy bean bag chairs in every corner and a self-policing library along the far wall facing the counter. There was a small handwritten note taped to the top shelf that read, “Give a book, take a book. Them’s the rules.” There wasn’t a ton of floor space in the shop, but nearly every inch of it was filled with colorful mismatched furniture, most of which was so ugly it was cute. The walls were adorned with a mixture of quotes from feminist icons and framed pictures of internet memes.

We approached the counter and Mark placed his hand on my shoulder.

“Order whatever you want,” he said. “Everything’s good here.” 

I glanced up at the menu and was instantly lost. All of the pictures were of milky sugary things that white girls always got made fun of for carrying around with them during the winter time. I didn’t particularly want to go the less sugary route and consume a shit ton of caffeine either, but it seemed like the lesser of two evils.

“Uh, I’ll take one black coffee,” I said. The barista nodded and then called it out.

“And for you, sir?” she asked Mark.

“I’ll take a dirty chai latte and two fresh croissants, please.”

The barista narrowed her eyes at the word fresh, but I didn’t say anything about it.

“That’ll be eleven fifty-seven, sir.”

Mark handed over his card and gave the woman his name. Then he led me to a small iron table at the end of the room. I sat down on one of the fold out chairs, both of which looked as though they had been patio furniture in a previous life.

“So, how did you sleep?” Mark asked, sitting down across from me.

I flashed back to the constant tossing and turning and many sex-fueled anxiety dreams.

“All right,” I lied. “How ‘bout you?”

“Not great. I have a hard time sleeping when the campus is so quiet. I need a little background noise to distract me from my thoughts I guess.” He shrugged.

“Order for Mark!” someone shouted before I could fully process his statement. Mark smiled at me and got up to retrieve our drinks.

This guy didn’t like peace and quiet? It’s like we were opposites in every way. What did he even see in me at all?

Mark returned and carefully set down my coffee and one of the croissants in front of me before returning to his seat. He immediately tore off a piece of the flaky pastry and popped it into his mouth, chasing it down with a sip of his latte.

I stared down at the coffee and worked up enough courage to take my first sip. Bitterness exploded across my tongue as I choked the hot liquid down. When I looked up, Mark was biting his bottom lip, trying not to laugh, but he was kind enough to rein it in and let the incident slide.

“Try the croissant,” he urged.

I took a deep breath and tried to tell myself that one three-hundred calorie strip of bread wasn’t going to kill me. I’d more than work it off by the end of the day. I picked it up and nibbled the tiniest bite off of the corner. My eyes immediately fell closed in delight. The outside was slightly crispy, but the inside was packed with soft warm buttery goodness.

“Oh my God,” I said.

Mark grinned. “I know, right?”

I took another bite. It was just as magical as the first. I could practically feel my religiously maintained low-carb, high-protein diet flying out the window.

“So,” Mark said. “Tell me about yourself. I feel like you know all kinds of stuff about me, but I don’t know anything about you.”

I thought about it for a second. It was hard to come up with traits that didn’t involve hockey, and I wasn’t sure I wanted him to know about that yet, if ever.

“I don’t really like coffee,” I began.

“Clearly,” Mark said, nodding at my full cup.

“And... I don’t normally go out to parties or get drunk.”

He narrowed his eyes, no doubt thinking of the day he’d had to drag my drunk ass home.

“I believe it,” he said finally. “What else?”

I tapped my thumb against the side of my pants, considering. What else was there? Who even was I?

“Coronado wasn’t my first choice of schools,” I settled on.

“What was?”

“Boston,” I said truthfully, tacking on a silent please don’t ask me why.

Mark seemed to perk up at that.

“East coast,” he said with appreciation. “I like it. You got family over there or something?”

I shook my head.

“Nah. All of my family lives in Phoenix. What about you?”

Mark’s face went somber for a moment and then flattened out.

“Shannon’s the only family that I’ve got.”

I took in a sharp breath and held it for a second, nodding. It made sense. It completely explained his and Shannon’s complicated relationship and Mark’s intensely negative reaction toward Steve. It would also explain why he was staying on campus over the break.

“Is your sister still here too?” I asked.

Mark’s eyes clouded over.

“No. She’s spending the holidays with her boyfriend.”

He said the word boyfriend as if it were an infectious disease. I secretly hoped he didn’t feel that way about all boyfriends, just his sister’s.

“She’ll be fine,” I told him. “Steve’s a huge douche, but he’d never hurt Shannon. He knows how lucky he is that a girl like her even gives him the time of day.”

Mark nodded, though he didn’t seem convinced.

“Yeah. I know she can take care of herself.” He looked down at his hands. “Doesn’t stop me from worrying about her though. I’m sorry again for that by the way. You let me into your room and I must’ve put you into a really awkward position.”

I choked on a laugh.

“Well, I’m sorry that I got irresponsibly plastered and required your assistance in getting myself home safely. So, I guess we’re even.”

Mark shrugged.

“I guess so.”

I reached across the table and placed my hand on top of his, hoping to erase some of that far off sadness from his gaze. I momentarily forgot about my fears and the fact that we were out in a public restaurant. I wanted to see Mark smile again.

“I’m not doing anything important this week. Maybe we can hang out some more. To...um...take your mind off of things?”

The words did the trick. Mark smiled warmly and brushed his thumb against the side of my hand.

“I’d like that a lot.”

And thus, the focus of my vacation quickly shifted from hockey to Mark.

Mark lived in a small quad across the street from the main campus in which the other three tenants had gone home for the holidays. We spent a lot of time sitting in his shared living room watching movies on his roommate’s TV with our thighs touching and nothing else. Mark also took me out to all of his favorite restaurants in town and paid for me each time. I couldn’t tell if he was doing this because he could tell that I didn’t have any money or because he just really liked me. Either way, it was a nice gesture and a good enough excuse to get me to eat whatever ridiculously delicious and unhealthy food was placed before me. I think he got a kick out of trying to fatten me up.

It took some time, but slowly I stopped feeling like I was going to hyperventilate every time I saw him and I began to come out of my shell. I still hadn’t told him I played hockey. It just never seemed to flow naturally into our conversations, and with my hang ups about making the league and never coming out and living the rest of my life as a closeted pro athlete, it just didn’t feel right to blend the two parts of my life together. 

Instead, I talked to Mark about my classes and how I felt about each of them. I talked about the friends I’d had growing up and the kind of shows that I used to watch. I talked about my diet and exercise routine. I told him about my mom and how she was the most supportive person on the face of the planet. It was actually mind boggling the amount of conversation topics I was able to come up with that didn’t involve hockey. Each time I discovered a new one, I felt a little bit more like a fully fleshed out human being and less like a robot.

All this, plus I was learning new things about Mark as well. For one, I knew that he loved music and concerts and had at one point in his life, sung and played guitar in a band. I also learned that he worked part time in the school’s bookstore when classes were in session and that he would sometimes just start reading random textbooks on slow days whenever he got bored.

I also learned that he had totally noticed me stalking him the first few weeks of school.

“You weren’t exactly subtle,” was how he’d put it. I was absolutely mortified and apologized profusely, but he seemed to think the whole thing was cute more than anything. He kept comparing me to a puppy, which with my size and demeanor was not something I’d ever heard before. I liked the idea of someone seeing the softness in me. It was a nice change from descriptions like “hockey brute” or “awkward thug.”

Things were also moving glacially slow between us, and I kind of liked that too. My only other romantic encounters had sort of happened of their own accord without me really having to think about them. With Mark, I got the sense that he really respected the fact that I wasn’t out and if I wanted anything to happen, I was going to have to take the first step myself. Until then, we were just feeling each other out. As scary as that was, it was also invigorating; like I’d been given back a type of control that I didn’t even know that I’d lost.

When Christmas came around we spent it together, lying on top of a blanket in the grass of a nearby park. Mark had ordered Chinese takeout just to see if they would deliver it to us out here, and they had. So we feasted on lo mein and mu shu pork until I felt sleepy and big in the gut and after our picnic was over, we decided it was time to exchange gifts.

“It’s nothing big,” I promised as he peeled back the plain brown butcher’s paper I’d wrapped his in. I’d gotten him a fiction book that reminded me of the things I used to see him reading when he was alone in the library. It was a worn secondhand copy, since that was all I could afford, but his eyes still lit up when he saw it.

He gave me one of his megawatt grins and said, “I’ve been meaning to check this author out! It’s perfect, thank you.”

I nodded happily and took the small, perfectly wrapped box he offered me. Inside it was a small to-scale replica of TJ’s skateboard from Rocket Daze as well as a printed-out picture of the two of us sitting in Mark’s living room. In the picture I had my eyes closed and my hand held over my stomach as I laughed. That explained why I didn’t remember him taking it. I couldn’t recall ever seeing myself look so carefree and happy. The picture was like getting a private glimpse into what it was Mark saw when he looked at me. It was easy to see how one might mistake me as soft in a picture like that. I wanted to believe that it was all there was to me; that I was just a normal guy who was well-adjusted and free of all worry. It was a beautiful lie, or at the very least a half-truth, perfectly captured on glossy paper.

I gently ran my fingers across the photo’s slick surface.

“Thank you,” I breathed.

He scooted closer and bumped my shoulder with his.

“I feel like I should be the one thanking you. Usually Christmas just makes me sad, but this has actually been fun.”

“It has,” I agreed, leaning against him and resting my head on his shoulder. So far, Mark had been a perfect gentleman when it came to touching me, especially out in public as we were now, but this was one of those rare occasions where he forgot himself and let his affection slip. I didn’t blame him. I was feeling pretty affectionate myself. Besides, the park was practically empty and everyone who knew me was miles away. I highly doubted that about half a dozen Jewish joggers and an adorable Muslim woman gave a shit that I was gay.

After today, Mark and I weren’t going to get to see each other for a while. His boss over at the bookstore had tasked him with taking in all of the new inventory for next semester and getting the shop organized and prepared for new and returning students. That, combined with the couple of holiday night shifts he had picked up at a local clothing store, was going to be taking up the majority of his free time. It was weird. All I had wanted going into this vacation was alone time, and now that I was finally getting it, it was incredibly disappointing.

“Have you talked to your mom today?” Mark asked suddenly.

I pulled away from him and nodded.

I got the sense that he wanted to say more, but he didn’t know how to phrase it.

“What are you thinking about?” I prompted, offering him a window of opportunity to speak his mind.

“You never told me why you were staying here over the break.”

My chest tightened. I didn’t know how I was supposed to explain it without sounding petty and awful. 

“I had some things I needed to work out on my own,” I said, and wasn’t technically a lie. “Plus, things with my family are awkward. They mean well, but they don’t really get me. I’m not out to any of them except for my mom. I tried coming out to my dad too once, but he pretty much flat out ignored it. It’s a big part of what gave him the courage to leave us I think.”

“I’m sorry,” Mark whispered. “I didn’t know.”

I shook my head.

“Don’t be. I’m sure he wanted to leave before then. I just gave him an easy out. Either way, they’re family. They might not always do right by me, but I’m happy to have them.”

When I looked back over at Mark there was a tear in his eye.

“Family is what you make of it,” he said. I could tell that he was speaking from personal experience.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, it is.”

I reached over and wiped away the tear. He caught hold of my hand and linked his fingers through mine before I could bring it back down to my side.

“There’s a party going on at my friend Rocko’s house on New Year’s Eve,” he said quietly. “Will you go to it with me?”

“I don’t know…”

“Please?”

Mark’s eyes were wide open and vulnerable in a way that I’d never seen them before.

“I promise nothing bad will happen,” he added. “I’ll be by your side the entire night.”

I worried at my bottom lip.

“I’m not going to drink,” I said finally.

“Does that mean you’ll go?”

I sighed and rubbed at the crease in my forehead with my spare hand.

“Yeah. I’ll go.” 

Because who needed impulse control when you were stupidly falling in love?