“Oh, shit, Sissy. Um, I…” How much had she heard? What was she thinking? What did she know? Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Tears filled his eyes. He couldn’t bear it if she hated him.

He couldn’t catch his breath. “It’s not…I mean…”

“Paul,” she said sharply. “Stop. Just stop. I can hear you panicking clear across the country. You’re panting like a hound dog in the sun” Her voice was calm, soothing, and more serious than he’d ever heard her sound. “Just breathe. Can you do that?”

He forced himself to take a deep breath in, then another. Blood pounded in his temples, making him dizzy and he dropped down to the sofa.

“Oh, God, Sissy.” He tried to get his breathing under control before he passed out. “Say something. Do you hate me?”

The silence stretched until he thought he was going to puke.

“Oh, big brother,” she finally said. “I could never hate you. Not in a million years.”

Paul let out the breath he had been holding. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“So, just to be clear, is something going on between you and this boy?” Her tone brooked no equivocating.

“Yes.” He was still whispering as if that would somehow lessen the impact of his words.

“And is he a nice boy?”

“He’s a good man, Sissy. Really good.” His leg shook nervously as he debated how much to tell her. “But he’s…I think he’s an atheist.” It was the first time he’d said that out loud, too. What a day for confessions.

To his vast surprise, Sissy laughed. “Honey, I think at this moment that is the least of your problems. You’re okay with being in love with a man, but him bein’ a nonbeliever is a problem?”

“I’m not…It’s not that.” Paul sank back into the sofa cushions. “I don’t know.” Was it a problem? With everything going on, Paul hadn’t even thought about that aspect of their relationship. He was just so used to everyone around him being Christian, in the back of his mind he kept forgetting Robbie wasn’t.

“Well?” Sissy asked sharply. “Is it gonna be a problem?”

Was it? Paul searched his heart as best as he could. “No. I don’t think so. It’s not like he makes fun of me, or tells me not to believe what I believe. He kind of just lets me be who I am, you know?”

“I do know. And that is good to hear. Do you love him?”

“I’ve only known him for a little over a month,” Paul hedged.

“Don’t matter. Not what I asked. Do you love him?”

Paul scrubbed his face with the hand not holding the phone. “Yeah. I think I do.”

“And do you love me?” she asked as if that was a real question that needed answering.

“’Course I do! What kind of a dumbass question is that?”

“I’m not a believer. Not anymore. Not for a long time.” It was her turn to whisper as if that would soften the blow.

“What?” Paul sat up ramrod straight on the couch. “Since when?”

“Since Jasper died and the pastor told me that he wouldn’t be in heaven with me ‘cause he was just a dog.” Jasper had died twelve years ago, and Sissy sounded as angry as if it had happened yesterday.

“Aw, Sissy. You can’t let something stupid like that make you stop believing. Maybe the pastor was wrong.” The reflexive need to comfort his sister made the words come out automatically.

“Yeah, Paulie, maybe he was. And then when little Rachel Bloomfield died when she was only eight, remember that?”

“Of course.” Sissy’s best friend at school had been hit by a car at a street crossing. After she died, the city had finally put up the stop light people had been asking them to put in for years.

“Same pastor told me that I wouldn’t see her in heaven either, on account of she was Jewish. I decided right then and there, that if they weren’t going to heaven, then neither was I, because it sounded like heaven sucked.”

“Sissy, don’t say that.” Paul needed to believe that he would see his mother again in heaven. “I don’t think God would…”

“Would what? Send a child to hell for being born into a Jewish family? Not let dogs into heaven?” she challenged.

“Jeez Louise, I don’t know, Sissy! Maybe that pastor was just wrong. Maybe he don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.” Paul never thought he’d hear those words come out of his mouth.

“Exactly. So either God is kind of a douche—”

“Cecilia Jean!” What had happened to his sweet baby sister? Maybe he didn’t know her as well as he thought he did.

She ignored his outrage. “—or his minions are just fallible humans who are making it up as much as the next person. Either way, I’m not interested.”

Paul had to walk around. He couldn’t sit still with this. He paced the room, phone to his head. “Okay. Let me think.” He’d been brought up to respect authority. To be an obedient, good son, and not to question his betters.

God was the top of the pyramid. The Word of God was not up for debate.

But there did seem to be a lot more to consider than he had let himself realize.

What if that pastor had been wrong about Sissy’s dog and little Rachel? If they were wrong about that, and Paul found himself hoping they were if only for Sissy’s sake, then they could be wrong about other doctrines. Like that one that said all gay people were damned.

“Sissy?”

“Yeah?”

He loved the way she drew the word out to two syllables. Yeah-uh? Suddenly he missed home something fierce, missed the South in general. He wanted waitresses to bring him sweet tea without asking. He wanted long summer nights at the river and tailgate parties in some farmer's field.

Most of all, he wanted back that childhood certainty of knowing for sure what was right and what was wrong, even if he were on the wrong side.

Sometimes being an adult felt like trying to navigate a swamp, never really sure if it were solid ground or quicksand up ahead.

“You still there?” his sister asked.

“I’m still here. Tell me right out, do you think all gay people go to hell?”

“No, I do not. Are you telling me you’re gay?”

“Damn, Sissy, you know I am. I just told you I was in love with Robbie!”

“Don’t you yell at me, Paul Stonewall. I am trying to help you here, but if that’s the attitude you want to have, I might as well hang up right now!”

Paul could see her clear as day in his mind’s eye, scowling at him with her hands on her hips, and it made him smile despite everything.

“Okay, Sparky, calm down. I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s just a lot, you know?” He opened the fridge, not really looking for anything. All he saw was beer and leftovers.

The freezer held some healthy frozen meals from the nutritionist, but he wasn’t hungry. Just restless.

He checked the clock. Eleven a.m.? Maybe not beer then. They did have a game tomorrow. He’d make coffee. It would give him something to do with his hands.

“I don’t know what to do.”

“About what?”

“About Robbie.”

“What do you mean, exactly?”

Paul sighed deeply and then gave voice to his biggest fear. “If I don’t come out, be with him in public, eventually he’s gonna leave me.”

“Oh, honey,” she said. “Bless your heart.”

“I don’t hear you saying not to worry about it.” He tried to smile.

“I ain’t gonna say that. I think you should pray on it.”

“What?” He set the coffee pot down on the counter with a thud. “I thought you said you didn’t believe in God anymore.”

“I don’t. But you do. So talk to him. Remember what that poem Momma always read to us said? ‘Be at peace with God, whatever you conceive him to be.’”

Of course, he remembered. “My favorite part was always ‘You are a child of the universe.’ I love how that sounds. I loved thinking I was a child of the universe.” He smiled thinking of it. He missed his momma in so many ways. He wondered if she would have liked Robbie. If he could have told her about him.

“You’ve always believed, Paul. Since you were a baby. Heck, you’re the only thing that kept me going to church as long as I did. It made you so happy. I kept searching for that feeling, but I could never get it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You got nothing to be sorry for. That faith, it’s in you. It’s a shining part of you separate from any dogma. Don’t go throwing the baby out with the bath water. Pray on it.”

“Well, look at you all wise.”

“That’s me. So, do you feel better telling me about your flaming gayness?” She laughed.

“Sissy!” She was something. “So you really don’t care? You don’t hate me, don’t think it’s weird?”

Somehow he could hear her shrug. “I always had my suspicions. I mean, you and Eubee…” she trailed off.

Paul busied himself making the coffee. He only had a regular old Mr. Coffee coffee pot, so it wasn’t anything that required a great deal of concentration. Still, he gave it all his attention. “Yeah, me and Eubee.”

“He was a great guy,” she said.

“He was.”

“So, tell me all about Robbie,” Sissy said brightly.

He loved his sister so much. Why hadn’t he talked to her before? “I love you, Sissy.”

“I know,” she preened. “Now tell me all about your hot boyfriend before he gets back with your dessert.”

They talked for almost an hour. It was the longest he’d talked to his sister in probably two years, and Paul vowed to make it a regular occurrence. By unspoken agreement, neither one of them mentioned their father.

Paul was just saying goodbye when Robbie came back with a slightly greasy paper bag in his hand and a concerned expression on his face. “We have a problem,” he said as soon as he was in the door.

“Sissy says hi,” Paul told him, waving the phone.

Robbie pulled off his sweatshirt and tossed it onto the couch. “You’re still talking to her?”

Paul nodded.

“Everything cool?” He looked worried that Paul might have been getting yelled at or preached at the entire time he had been gone.

“Everything’s great,” Paul said, smiling.

“Then tell her I say hi back and hope I can meet her soon.”

Paul did, ending with a promise to call her once a week at minimum.

“What kind of problem do we have?” Paul asked as he took the bag from Robbie.

“I did some searching around with what your sister showed us. There’s a lot more out there that I didn’t know.” He handed Paul his phone, pointing out the different things for him to look at.

He scrolled through Tumblr blogs and Twitter threads. Message boards and Reddit threads. There was a lot of discussion about Robbie’s sexuality and whether he and Paul were a couple. There wasn’t a lot in one place, no obvious mentions of them. But taken all together, it showed that they weren’t as under the radar as Paul wished they were.

Reactions seemed to be mixed.

Over on Reddit, a lot of younger hockey players seemed to be excited about the prospect, some didn’t see the big deal about it, and some people called them cowards for not coming out in public.

Some people were disgusted, but only a small minority went completely homophobic.

Over on Tumblr, the girls thought they were as adorable as a box of puppies.

Over the next week or so, things only got worse as far as Paul was concerned. It seemed like everywhere he looked, there were more people speculating on his and Robbie’s relationship.

“They’re mostly teenaged girls on Tumblr,” Robbie pointed out with a hint of exasperation in his voice. He was obviously hitting the end of his patience for Paul’s freak outs. “What are the chances of your father being on Tumblr, and would he even care? It’s not like you are making these people draw these things.”

Paul pressed his thumb hard against the bridge of his nose and squinted his eyes against an imaginary headache as he scrolled obsessively through the website. His head didn’t actually hurt, but he felt like it should.

“Oh, he would totally blame me. He would say that I must have been doing something to put the idea in people’s minds. And there are video clips of us here, too!” He couldn’t believe people had the free time to break their interviews down into two-second clips, caption them, and then assemble the clips into an internet-ready post.

He frowned at the screen as a long text post showed up under #RhoDy tag. Gun to his head, he would admit to thinking the name was cute. In his head, he pronounced it Rho-Dee. Was it Rho-Die? Whatever. Secretly he loved the posts about them, and had made his own Tumblr blog to keep them all in one place.

“Oh, holy moly!” he exclaimed as he read the post.

Robbie snorted. He thought it was hilarious when Paul used what he considered grandma phrases. He liked things that made Paul ‘clutch his pearls’ as he put it.

“What?”

“People are writing porn about us!” Paul handed Robbie his phone. He watched as Robbie scrolled through the post.

“That’s so hot,” Robbie said, handing the phone back. “And surprisingly well-written.”

“This is so weird.” Of all the things Paul had expected to deal with as a result of his getting called up, fan fiction hadn’t been one of them.

He was getting the hang of navigating Tumblr now, so he followed a few links until he came to the original source, HockeyFanfiction.com. “Holy crap!” This was getting out of hand.

With a sinking heart, he realized there was no way to stop people from thinking he and Robbie were together. Eventually someone was going to point it out to his father.

The worst thing about it was that it was one hundred percent true.

“It’s just a matter of time, isn’t it?”

“I think so.” Robbie poked at his phone with a frown. “Wait, I think I just saw something. Oh. Here. Look at this.”

He turned the phone so Paul could see what he was looking at. It was an Instagram post with a picture of him and Robbie holding hands behind their backs in the window of the Pucker Up on New Year’s Eve.

They weren’t tagged by name, but the original poster had asked if anyone knew who these ‘darling’ men were. The poster said they were sure that was the Thunder corner of the bar and they assumed it was two of the players.

Someone was bound to identify them sooner rather than later.

“I think we have to talk to the PR people,” Robbie said.

“Me, too.” Paul slammed his coffee cup on the counter. “Damn it. I just want to play hockey. Is that such a sin? Why does this shit even matter?”

Robbie could only shrug.