I woke up looking into Sal’s beautiful eyes. They were so deep and so brown, I forgot how to breathe for a moment or two.
Sal ran his thumb over my cheekbone. Lying here like that forever would have made me so happy. But the world, and all the shit that made it run was just outside the bedroom door. He caressed my face tenderly. The covers were warm and soft as they slipped off my shoulder. I saw his sight flicker down to the bite marks he’d left during a round of passion. Then his attention came back to my face.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Okay, considering.”
The smile that played on his lips was faltering but his eyes—oh man, those dark brown eyes, they told me everything he couldn’t verbalize yet. The alarm on his cell phone began to sound off. We both groaned.
“I do not want to do this. Can’t we just stay in bed today?”
“I’d love to, but you’re needed at the Rader, and I have to pay the rent on this magnificent abode.” He patted my cheek lovingly.
I sat up, my insides churning up with equal amounts of affection for Sal and worry over our future. After turning off the alarm, Sal sat on the edge of the bed, his head and shoulders up and straight, his back strong. I placed a hand to the middle of his back and felt the muscles roll like a gentle tide. He drew in a breath as if he were going to say something, but then he just let it out and pushed to his feet, his gaze coming to me over his shoulder.
“I’m going to get some food together,” he said. “Why don’t you shower first while I cook?”
“You have a good bedside manner. I bet your orderly patients are super happy to see you walk into their rooms. I know I am,” I told him, and saw a smile—a real one—light up his face.
“You make me really happy, August.”
He bent down to kiss my forehead, but I tipped my head to make sure his lips landed on mine. It was a brief and chaste kiss, but it held promise. A nice warm ember of adoration rested in the middle of my chest. Even after he’d left, for like two minutes, I felt a little giddy. I really liked loving and being loved, although my ass was not quite as happy about the loving as the rest of me.
Warm air whistled around the arena. I stood with my hand on the roof of my car, staring at the barn. We had a game in two hours. My life fucking rocked. My cell vibrated in my front pocket. When I saw who it was, my day got that much better.
“Mom, hi there!” I grinned widely as I admired the arena. “I know I haven’t called in a couple weeks. I’ve been super busy.”
“I know, August. We just worry when we don’t hear from you. Dad says to tell you he’s got both the laptops set up for the streaming shows.”
I had to smile. It must have been quite the to-do for them to get two laptops up and streaming. My mother had trouble figuring out how to make Spotify work right, and my dad…well, he was even worse, if you can imagine.
“You two are getting so tech-savvy.”
She giggled at that comment, then started talking about things in Martens Bay, my dad’s blood pressure, her sore hip, and how she wished they would stop making her shows come on so late.
“Who can stay up past ten at night?”
“It’s tough, Mom,” I replied with as much empathy as possible.
Being in their seventies with a twenty-two-year-old son was hard on them. Not as hard as it had been when they were in their sixties and I was in my teens. My time with them was limited. Maybe I should be honest with them about who I was. And then there was Sal. It would take years to get them to understand everything about him and me and the disease we both now lived with.
“Mom, when the playoffs are over, I want to come home and talk to you about my future.”
There was a pause. “August, are you leaving hockey to sell bottled water to city people?”
“I, uh, what?” I lifted a hand in a wave as Dan Arou pulled in beside me.
“Remember June Masterway’s son left hockey to sell bottled water to all those city people in Montreal?”
“Mom, Dudley worked for a bottled water company after he left the game,” I explained, my sight locking with Dan’s as he walked around his car to me. I mouthed “Mom” and rolled my eyes to the clouds. Arou smiled, then leaned on the fender of my Mustang. “This has nothing to do with hockey. It’s more personal things that we need to talk about.”
“Oh, well, okay, as long as you’re not leaving hockey to sell water.” The worry had left her voice, so that was good. Sheesh. My folks.
“Mom, I have to go. Coach Dewey will want to talk to me and Mitch before the game. Miss you. Love you. Tell Dad I love him too.”
“We miss you too, honey. Goodbye and good luck in the game. We’ll be watching!” She made kissing noises, then ended the call. I pocketed my phone. Dan was smirking at me.
“She still kisses me goodbye,” I sheepishly confessed. “She’s such a mom.”
“Hey, no need to explain. My mother still thinks I had a hand in the making of Victor’s kid,” he said with a shrug of a shoulder. “Sometimes it’s best to just go along.”
I chuckled at that, and at moms in general, as we walked into the Rader. Coach Dewey must have been waiting for me, because I was no sooner in the door than he appeared, his jaw firmly set. I think his glasses added to the look, but still, his mouth looked like a paper cut.
“Feeling better today, Miles?” Coach asked.
I knew a chewing out was at hand, and rightfully so. Coming in sick with a hangover during playoffs? Yeah, not the smartest thing I’d ever done. Dan slid around me, leaving me and my goaltending coach alone in the corridor. Male voices bounced off the walls.
“I’m sorry about yesterday, Coach. I don’t know what happened.” Honestly, I did, but his dark look was unsettling.
“Oh? You don’t know? Well, how about we give you the night on the bench to reflect on what you might have done wrong? That way, when you show up for drills you’ll have a good grasp of where you went astray.” He crossed his arms over his 60s-style suit.
My mouth dropped open. I snapped it shut. “I understand. Thank you for the discipline, Coach.”
He jerked his buzzed head in the direction of the dressing room. Seeing that I was dismissed, I moved cautiously around him, then stepped into the madness of the Cougars dressing room. I flung my duffel bag into my cubicle, then dropped my ass onto the bench. Should I have argued about the benching? No, probably not. That’s never a good way to handle a disciplinary action. Better to take it like a man and learn from it.
“Augie, man, I can’t believe he benched you for going home sick,” Mitch said while dropping down to sit beside me. “Seems pretty extreme.”
“I was hungover.”
“Oh.”
Yep. We all knew that was not acceptable. “Yeah, so, you go out there and win this game for us.” I slapped his shoulder, and then we started gearing up.
Ugh. Sitting out this game would suck. And my folks had been so excited too. I threw a wadded-up sock at Mario when he walked past, just because he had made me go. Yeah, I know. He hadn’t poured the beer down my throat, but hitting myself in the head with a sock would look weird. I did it anyway.
Sitting on the bench is tough. I’m competitive. I want to play. I want to win. I also understand why discipline is needed on a team. A miserable voice inside my head kept pointing out how unfair life was. As if I needed to be reminded. Sitting with a ball cap pulled down low on my forehead as my stand-in made himself a brick wall had been a vile pill to swallow. Pity his amazing play hadn’t gotten us a win. I’d put on the face of a happy team player while the press grilled Mitch about that one fumbled save. A fat rebound that had ended up sliding around his skate. We’d known that our opposition was desperate not to fall three games behind. Maybe we’d been a bit too cocky. Whatever it was, the team had faltered and the series was now 2-1.
An hour later I was driving home to Sal and feeling down in the mouth as my dad would say.
“Hey, I was trying to call you.” Sal met me at the door with a saucy kiss and two tickets to something. I couldn’t read what it was, because he was too busy kissing me to let me see the tickets, which was okay. His fingers dancing over my side sent small ripples of pleasure through me. Then he broke away, smiling so brightly I felt warm just from seeing his happiness. “Did you not turn your phone on, or is it dead?”
“One of the two. What are they for?” I asked, and grabbed for the tickets. He danced in reverse and spun around neatly to avoid my second attempt to get what he was holding.
“This is why I whip you at hoops,” he taunted, then flipped the tickets at me.
“Yeah, well, we’ll put you on skates and see how salty you are,” I said while plucking the tickets out of the air. I flipped them over and smiled. My gaze went to Sal, looking as hot as hell in a pair of torn jeans and nothing else. “Are these legit?”
“Yep.” He popped the P with sass. “Some guy at work had them. Said he and his son were going to go but something came up, so he wanted to know if we’d take them. You up for some Buffalo Bengals baseball tomorrow afternoon? I thought maybe it would cheer you up after getting your ass chewed.”
“For sure.”
Sal whooped in glee, his smile majorly infectious.
“You always make me feel better.”
He danced just out of reach, slipping backward until he’d led me into the bedroom. “Bet I can make you feel even better,” he said, then reached for the band of my slacks.
With a tug on the belt, we were chest to chest, his mouth over mine, his hands roaming under my dress shirt. I wanted him so badly my body pulsed and ached. My clothes were quickly peeled off, as were his jeans. He slid between my legs. His lips moved over my throat, and his cock, sheathed in latex and slick with lube, nudged under my balls. I clawed at his shoulders and sides.
“Hurry,” I growled after an ungodly amount of time had passed and he still wasn’t inside me. I arched up.
He pressed me back onto the bed, letting all his weight settle on my chest. The head of his cock bumped against my ass, but it was his slippery fingers that entered me. I groaned and cursed. Sal kissed my throat, then ran his tongue into the divot under my Adam’s apple. He stroked, rotated, pulled a finger out then pushed in two. Over and over, until he had a trio inside me.
“You’re so beautiful, Aug,” he purred, lapping at my nipples as he softly stroked my prostate. “Tight and hot, slick, horny, beautiful man,” he said, the words falling out to moisten my damp chest. I grunted his name as I fisted the bedding. “You want more of this, or you want my cock?”
“Your cock, your cock,” I replied in short gasps. He pulled his fingers out slowly, then cupped my balls. “Hurry, shit, hurry.” His prick slid downward, resting for just a second at my entrance before he rotated his hips. “Fuck,” I said on a fast exhalation. He paused, waited, then moved deeper. Muscles stretched and pulled, burning pain mingled with exquisite pleasure.
“Slow and easy, Aug,” he murmured, his face buried in my neck as his ass began to rise and fall.
I turned my head, took his earlobe between my lips, and started to suck. I felt the tremors roll through him. He said something short, hot, and Spanish. I suckled harder on his ear. He pumped in and out of me with more speed, then threw his head side to side, yanking his ear from my teeth. Balls slapping, hands grasping, toes curling, he fucked me across the bed. I snaked my hand downward, fisted my fingers around the base of my cock, and began stroking myself. Sal’s eyes locked with mine. I watched as his orgasm drew closer, then overtook him. I pumped my dick hard and came with him. Sal pulled out quickly, then lay over me, hands on either side of my head, chest plastered to chest with semen, and he kissed me with gentle passion.
“Wow,” he huffed before I put a hand to the back of his neck and pulled him down for more tongue action. “You sure do like baseball tickets.”
“You should see what I’d do for tickets to the final round of the Stanley Cup,” I teased, then nibbled on his kiss-swollen lower lip.
“I bet we see firsthand in a couple years when you’re playing in it.”
“Okay, I know I said I loved you earlier, but I really love you now,” I said, then tugged him down for another kiss.
Sal laughed into my mouth, then wiggled free, leaving me in the bed feeling loved, a little sore, and much happier than I had been just an hour before. As he attended to the condom and washed up, I drifted off on his side of the bed. When I woke up, I was still there, and the sun had just started to peek into the bedroom window. I glanced over to see him sitting there, fully dressed in a Buffalo Broncos baseball jersey and a matching cap, jeans, and sneakers.
“Man, someone’s excited,” I said, and was then rolled out of bed by one very impatient baseball fan.
I showered, ate something light, and rolled out the door for morning skate, Sal accompanying me. Mario gave my guest a short look when I introduced him around to the team as my boyfriend. Everyone else was super cool about another gay player. Guess after Vic, Dan, and Mario, what was one more LGBT dude in the mix? Relief surged through me.
Concentrating on paddle drills was hard, knowing that Sal was bouncing around in his seat. Coach Dewey worked me and Mitch hard, and I put everything I had into the drills. I’d fucked up once. It was not happening again. Nothing was going to keep me from playing each and every postseason game I could.
After a fast shower my boyfriend and me were on the road to Buffalo, New York, to catch the triple-A Buffalo Bengals taking on the Rockport Rockets. I let Sal drive my car. Again. Pretty much anything he asked for I would give him, obviously. The drive took about two hours. We spent some time just strolling around Buffalo before we headed to Myron Feeds Field. The park was a big one, seating around eighteen thousand people, but a weekday afternoon game had brought in maybe twelve. The grass was real, the food good, and the people friendly. And wow, did folks in Buffalo know their hockey. I must have signed a hundred autographs and taken two dozen selfies. Sal sat at my side, smiling like a goober as fan after fan asked if I was feeling better and when I’d be back in net.
“I didn’t think people in Buffalo would care about a minor-league goalie in Cayuga,” I told Sal during the seventh-inning stretch. “Thanks for bringing me here. Today has been the best day. I love you.”
I kissed him square on the lips, right in front of all twelve thousand Buffalo Bengals fans. Sal looped his arms around my shoulders and kissed me back. I guessed August Miles was really out now. The fans around us clapped. Well, most of them. The ones who didn’t like two men kissing could just sit on their hands.
Even though the home team lost, the day was just amazing all around. Hours had flown past without me even thinking of hockey, which was something truly incredible.
A text came in during the ride home. It was from Lila. I read it, looked at Sal, then cleared my throat. He threw me a quick look, then turned down the Front Porch Step CD we’d been listening to.
“Lila says Mario wants us to come to dinner tomorrow night,” I informed him.
“Tell her we’ll bring wine,” he replied. I thought maybe I should mention Mario’s continuing resistance to us dating, just as a warning. When I sat there not texting, he tossed me another peek before getting his gaze back on the road. “Aug, maybe this will be what Mario needs to see that I’m not some Latino heartbreaker.”
“Okay, but if he says anything stupid about you, I’ll punch him in the face.”
I sent Lila our happy acceptance reply as Sal cranked the pop / punk back up to eardrum-destroying levels. Just the way I liked it.