Chapter Three
Layton
I couldn’t breathe again.
Not just because Adler appeared at my doorway quickly and with no warning, but also because the man was naked. Not entirely naked, of course. He wore tight-fitting shorts, but his shirt was around his shoulders, his skin slicked with sweat, and he looked like he’d run the entire way here from a very long way away.
Breathing was hard because of the shock, plus the fact that I’d honestly never seen anything so perfect as the acres of skin, hard muscles, and that V with the treasure trail vanishing into his shorts. The whole porn-worthy scene was more than I could handle and remain coherent. So I had to try damn hard, which put me off-balance. Adler was my first meeting that morning, but the one I was most worried about given our two previous meetings and the amount of crap the man spoke.
“Hey,” he said at the door, and waited.
“Come in,” was about all I could muster up to say. “Sit down,” I added.
He crossed the threshold, and with his hand on the door handle made a gesture that I assumed was a question whether he should shut the door.
“Shut the door,” I confirmed. Okay, so this was going well. Come in, close the door, sit down, and so far he’d done everything I said. He shrugged on his T-shirt, shimmying to get it to fall into place then tugging it down. Through all that, all I could do was watch. There’s nothing sexier in my opinion than a man stretching to dress or undress, where glimpses of skin are on display, teasing and suggesting what else there might be. My last lover had got pissed at the time it took for me to undress him, kissing every exposed inch, but that’s who I am. I focus hard on tasks in hand to the point of obsession.
And I could spend a lot of time obsessing over the body of the player sitting in the chair opposite me. Shame that jocks had the bodies, and very often the looks, but in my experience a lot had mean, self-obsessed streaks.
Apart from Ten and the others I’d already spoken to the day before; they seemed cool, intelligent, sensible, focused. Whereas Adler was a brainless idiot who liked to talk about genitalia. Shame, because he was gorgeous, and I was still hard from his reverse striptease.
“Adler Lockhart, 62 left wing, I want to apologize,” he said in one long sentence, before I could start with my introduction to who I was and what I wanted from the team and mention anything about confidentiality. “It was out of line commenting on your bladder, and cocks in general.”
“Okay.” It would have been fine if he’d left it there, but no, the man carried on.
“I tend to overtalk, and when I don’t know exactly what to say then I come out with all kinds of shit, like commenting on your small bladder. Which I’m sure isn’t small. I mean, no man wants to be told they have a small anything, right? I’m sure your bladder is very much in proportion with the rest of your body. And as to the sex thing in the parking garage, well I get uncomfortable debating the various places my teammates stick their cocks, and I don’t really want to think of Ten that way. I mean, he’s a nice guy, not that I know him really well given that I haven’t been with the team long since the trade, but he’s a good player. Thinking about his cock isn’t something I really want to be doing. Or Coach Madsen’s either, to be honest. What they do with each other’s cocks in their spare time is up to them.” He stopped his speech at that moment and bit his lip, a flush on his cheeks. “Well, shit,” he added.
At that moment I could have happily waved away the overtalking and the inappropriate subject matter, signed off on having spoken to him, and been on my way. But that wasn’t my job, and I took a moment to look down at the paperwork in front of me.
“I think you would benefit from some sensitivity training,” I began.
“Hell no. I’m sensitive. I can be sensitive.”
“It’s standard procedure,” I reassured him and lied at the same time.
“Oh.” He deflated a little. “You mean everyone has to do it?”
I wish at that moment I’d just said yes, because that would have stopped Adler in his tracks. But no, I had to be all cagey. “That’s confidential.”
He frowned. “So not everyone, then.”
“Like I said, confidential.”
“What about Arvy?”
I couldn’t for the life of me think why he was picking on Arvy as an example, so I missed another opportunity to cut this dead. “Confidential,” I said.
“I see, so he has this gay cousin, which gives him an out from an entire day wasted listening to shit about what I can and can’t say?”
“Mr. Lockhart—”
“So if you know someone who knows someone, then you have an out. Right?”
“That’s not how it works—”
“I know Arvy,” he said, and sat back in his chair. “I have to think about what I say in front of him, so that’s me being sensitive.”
“You’re missing the point,” I began patiently, and then I really screwed the pooch. “Wait, Arvy was there when you were handling your junk in the parking lot.”
“Oh,” Adler said and sighed noisily. Then he scrubbed his eyes with his fingers. “Hate that political correctness shit,” he muttered.
I assumed he meant the sensitivity training, but I wanted to move on from this. “It’s all common sense, and with the changes on the team it’s vital we present a united front to any and all media inquiries.”
“Hell, I don’t care what Ten and the coach do.” He looked at me, and I waited for more, because he seemed like he was going to add to that sentence. Only he didn’t. His lips thinned like he was trying very hard to hold something back.
I took that as a sign that he was about to say something crass, and almost felt proud that he’d held back. I looked down at my sketched notes.
“This is a question you don’t need to answer, but it would be helpful to know if you have any religious objections to the situation that we should make a note of.”
“Christ, no,” he said, then snorted a laugh at his own joke. He quickly stopped and schooled his face into all serious business. “Sorry, couldn’t stop myself.”
And that is your problem, Mr. Hockey Guy.
I mentally crossed through religion; put an extra tick in the sensitivity training column because this guy seriously had no filter.
“Do you have any questions for me?” I asked, attempting to bring the mercifully short meeting to an end.
“That’s it?” he asked, and looked surprised.
“This was just to touch base, get to know the team sort of thing.”
Adler crossed his arms over his chest again, and I saw the muscles bunch; this man was strong. “You don’t want to ask any questions about me?”
“We’ll talk at length later, post sensitivity training.”
“Honestly no more questions?”
“No. My primary focus is building a social media presence that supports the team as a whole and has the face of equality.”
He nodded slowly. “So you mean to the outside we’re all fucking happy-clappy praise be to the sexual alphabet in all its iterations?”
I wanted to say that was why he needed training on what was appropriate. I didn’t.
“This is an explosive situation, Mr. Lockhart. The Railers could make a really positive mark here.”
“Will you quit calling me that? My name is Adler, or Ad, or Adzee if you want to go the whole hockey nickname route adding zee on the end of every last name. Which would make you Foxxzee, which is cool.”
I ignored that. “Adler, you may not understand the situation in full, but this is the first NHL player making a strong statement about who he is so that he can live openly with his partner.”
“I get it,” he said defensively. “I’m not fucking stupid, I just don’t get why it has to be a thing.”
He looked genuinely puzzled, a typical example of someone who has never had to fight for recognition. I bet he’d never been beaten on for his identity in any way, bet he’d never had a day of fear. I wanted so much to say all that, but this wasn’t the forum for that type of discussion. It was a preliminary meeting, and nothing to do with countering ignorance. It was about a baseline, about a quick face-to-face with every player to see what work I needed to do to present a united front as a team. Education, awareness, sensitivity—that was what this was about.
“Thank you for coming in,” I began, but he waved the words away.
“Love is love, right? I mean, I’ve never been in love with a man, have you?”
Wait up. Where did that come from? Isn’t he contradicting himself there? One minute he’s saying love is love, and then he picks up on loving a man.
“The first session is tomorrow after morning skate,” I said, ignoring what he’d said.
He looked frustrated. “I don’t get this,” he snapped. “Why it’s even a thing. Hell, it’s worse that a player is fucking a coach than that it’s two men.”
Okay, none of what he was saying was making sense now, and I really needed him out of this small office space, because, hell, this impassioned, nearly angry man was making me feel incredibly uncomfortable. I stood up and shuffled around the desk, opening the door.
“Thank you,” I said, hoping he’d get the hint.
He stood up and faced me, far too close for comfort, and I could see his expression had changed from confused to utterly focused. He moved to the door, but instead of walking out he leaned on it until it closed and we were both inside.
I didn’t like this; I could feel my chest tightening. No one had said that Adler Lockhart was the sort of man to intimidate, but hell, I felt like I was back in school.
“You missed off one vital question on your list,” he said, his hands on his hips, his large frame completely blocking the only exit from the room.
Pushing through the rushing noise in my head, I stepped back a little until my ass hit the desk. I rested my hands behind me, feeling for the stapler. It wasn’t big, but it was enough to make my fist a weapon.
“What was that?” I asked, waiting for the vitriol and the flash of violence.
“You never asked how I identify myself; you need to add that to your list before you push people into training about how to be fucking sensitive to a sexual orientation situation. Then you need to say something about it not leaving this room.”
“The training will cover—”
“Ask me now,” he interrupted, his hands dropping from his hips and hanging loose at his sides. They weren’t fists, he wasn’t tight with anger, and he was literally requesting that I give him the question. “Go on,” he continued. “Say, ‘Adler Lockhart, who do you like to sleep with in your spare time?’ and see what I say.”
“This is ridiculous,” I snapped. “You need to leave.” His body posture screamed relaxed and teasing, but his challenge scared me.
“Ask me.”
I just wanted him out of the room. I was confused and stressed and he was digging for something from me, God knew what. “For goodness sake. What is your sexual orientation?”
He nodded then, and pushed himself away from the door.
“I’m gay,” he announced.
I didn’t believe him, “You can go,” I said, and tensed in anger. This wasn’t him trying to assert authority or intimidate me; this was a huge fucking wind-up.
“No, I’m serious. I fuck guys, or they fuck me—mostly I fuck them. So I don’t need the political correctness training. And you can’t tell anyone that, because I’m not even out to the team.”
I looked at him and saw how earnest he appeared. The man was actually gay? Hell, if he was saying it to get out of the training, he needed to understand that words and lies hurt.
“Right?” he asked. “I can skip the training.”
Did he actually believe he wasn’t a walking disaster with a mouth that spewed garbage? Him saying he was gay? That didn’t mean a thing, although if he was telling the truth, then I needed to rethink the typical questions I should ask in the baseline assessment.
“You can go,” I repeated.
“But I said—”
“I’ll see you tomorrow at the session. All the information is posted on the board in the locker room.”
He sighed noisily and opened the door. But my relief was short-lived when he didn’t leave but hovered there in the open doorway. “I think it’s cool to see a couple like Ten and Coach who don’t seem to self-destruct after a few months. I hope they’re very happy, and I’ll attend the training so you can tick your boxes, but I won’t like it.”
He left then, closing the door behind him.
As soon as the door shut, I could feel the tension in my body leach out a little at a time as I attempted to sort through the feelings inside me.
Was it bad that once the fear subsided, in its place there was honest-to-goodness arousal? Was it wrong to feel a hundred kinds of confused about the man who’d just left?
Thankfully, next up was this big Russian called Stanislav Lyamin.
“Call Stan,” he said, and extended his big, meaty hand. I shook it, and he had a grip of iron. He also had a wide grin, soft dopey eyes, and a tattoo on his biceps of a yellow figure I could swear was a Pokémon. Interesting.
“Do we need a translator?” I asked in English. Not that I could have asked that in Russian. He stared at me blankly, and I opened up my phone and searched for Google Translate. I typed in “Do you need a translator?” and it returned “Вам нужен переводчик?” Which I could show him, or maybe I could use the phonetic-type thing under it. “Vam nuzhen perevodchik?” I asked.
He looked at me blankly again, and then just as I was considering phoning management and asking for a translator, he snorted a laugh.
“English good,” he said, giving me a lot of doubt about exactly how good his English was.
I cleared my throat, assumed Stan was what he wanted to be called, and played the delaying tactic of taking a long pull of my cooling coffee.
“Caffeine bad,” Stan said, then picked up the Snickers on my desk. He wrinkled his nose at it, then stared at me. “Lunch?” he asked, and dropped the offending chocolate bar back onto my paperwork.
Yep, a snickers and coffee was my lunch, but that was only because I didn’t have time to stop today. Chocolate plus caffeine equaled energy, which was what I needed.
“Yes.”
“Eat is shit, da?” he asked.
“Da,” I said, then shrugged in that “What can I do?” kind of way.
He frowned at me and leaned forward, and I braced myself for more Russian commentary. He said nothing.
“Okay,” I said, readying what I wanted to say next and clearing words from Google Translate.
“Okay,” Stan repeated cheerfully, stood up, and left the office, closing the door behind him.
Oh. That went well. Guess I really did need a translator.
Someone knocked on the door.
“Come in,” I called, and the door opened. Yet another big hockey player stood there looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.
Well, me too. I wasn’t sure I could handle another session in this small room with the door shut—not when the remnants of a tight anxiety refused to leave me.
I’m a professional. I can do this.
“Hi.” I extended a hand.
The player shook it but sat down quickly. “Dieter Lehmann,” he began, and moved from foot to foot like he was nervous. “My jersey number is 56, I play left wing,” He stopped and seemed to gather his thoughts, because the nerves slipped away and abruptly he was all confidence, “I’m kind of an all-around sex god.”
I loved the way hockey players identified themselves by name, position and number. The sex god part was a bit worrying, though. I looked at him steadily, but he didn’t retract the sex god thing. Great. He looked a little pale, and tired, but knowing a jock he’d probably been up all night partying. I really had my job cut out here.
“Have a seat, Dieter.”
Dieter sat, and wriggled in the chair like he wasn’t comfortable. Finally he looked up at me, and I saw that confidence hadn't slipped.
“Before we start,” he began, “I have the number 56 now, but if your records show me having 69 on my jersey in college, then you know it was only a joke. Right?”
I nodded but inwardly groaned. This was going to be a long day.