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“Alright then,” he eases. “Let’s start there. Today, you’ll remember. Write in your journal everything you recall from the morning before the Super Bowl until the final second.”
“The day before or the day of?” Colt lets it slip, and I try not to roll my eyes.
“Interesting,” Dr. Gary replies. “Did something happen the day before?”
“Nothing that hasn’t happened before.” Colt doesn’t lie.
Sorta.
“Well, let’s start there,” Dr. Gary answers. “Write it down, from the morning of the day before the game to the final second—all of it, even what you ate. Then, take screenshots of your journal and text them to me by 2 p.m. I’ll compare the two and report back.”
“What are you looking for?” I’m afraid he can read between the lines of our lie.
“I’m not looking,” he answers. “You are. Try to see where your mind was at the time. Then we’ll talk about where it should be and how to get it there.”
After a few pleasantries, I click the remote, turning off our video conference.
The sound of gentle waves and our pained silence fills the warm, salty air, and I toss my head back, feeling so fucked.
“How do we do this?” I ask aloud, not expecting Colt to answer.
But he does. “We’ll be honest.”
“Honest outs us.”
“I trust him.”
“I don’t trust anyone.”
“That’s your problem.”
“I got more problems than that.”
“Well,” Colt surges to his feet, “don’t let me keep being one.”
I jump up, too. “What the fuck is your problem?”
“The same one for years!” We stand almost nose-to-nose while Colt shouts, “I love you, and you love me! We always have, but it’s always been a problem for you, while for me, it’s the solution.”
“Solution?” I shout back. “We’re NFL players! We don’t get to be anything but all-American and all-straight!”
“So what? So if we’re bi, we die? You make it sound like a death sentence.”
“Death sentence, no.” I clench my fists. “But a distraction, yes.”
He rolls his eyes. “You and your fucking distractions.”
“You wanna see a fucking distraction?” I snarl. “Let every player on our team know, including the coaching staff, our owner, the management, the staff. Oh, they’ll say they support us. Legally, they have to. But every subtle fucking way they’ll ice us out, or judge, or joke? It’ll fuck with our heads until all we see are phobic distractions. And you know I’m right. I’m sorry, but I am!”
And I fucking hate it, so I gotta bail.
I grab my dumbass journal and pen, then I grab a spot on a lounger on the far side of the pool and get so damn real with my memory. With everything. Even Colt sleeping in the bed with me, but not that.
Not that I love him, too.
CHAPTER NINE
“I’m no man’s distraction.”
