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“Slow down,” she whispered, her small hand coming to rest on my shoulder.
I drew in a breath and then told my sister everything. From the first meeting when I had misheard Marcus to the bitter words to our making up to becoming friends, and finally to the night in the back seat and all the days after. Marcus and I had shared thousands of texts since that passionate night. Some of them were really racy, others were about his daughter who I could not wait to meet somehow, someway. Some were about our fandoms or Banyu or the news or weather or current standings in the pros. Sometimes we gossiped about players on other teams and sometimes we had phone sex that left me a messy, breathless glob.
I purged my soul to my sibling, who nodded, sighed, and rubbed my arm throughout.
“Wow,” she softly said after I’d emptied myself of all words. “That’s a lot of stuff to wade through. You really like him, don’t you?”
“Yeah, like you do mangoes.”
That made us both chuckle. Citra had eaten so many mangoes during her pregnancy we were all certain Banyu would be born with bright orange skin and green leaves instead of hair.
“That’s some crazy like then,” she whispered before giving my arm a pat or two. “Baskoro, you should be honest with the team about this relationship. You know that lying about important things in our lives makes us depressed.”
“I know, I just…” My eyes closed as I mulled over the aspect of coming clean. “I just don’t even know how to go about it. Everyone on both teams, and our fans, think we hate each other. The rivalry is selling tickets, so the teams are pushing the contention we supposedly have. I’m not even sure if Marcus wants to come clean to his fans and team.”
“Maybe you should ask him instead of giving him hand jobs in the back seat of your roommate’s car?” She gave my bicep a poke.
“That only happened once. We haven’t seen each other since then. We have a game in Wilkes-Barre the day after Thanksgiving, and I don’t even know what to say to him about it. I want to spend time with him, but it’s such a hassle and if someone finds out…”
I let that float off into space.
“Then you need to figure out a way to be honest about you and Marcus. Remember how crippling it was for you to hide the fact that you’re queer?” I nodded sullenly. Yeah, that had been terrible. I’d been so scared of my family’s reaction to me being gay, I sat on it for years until, as always, my sister wormed it out of me. Together, with her hand in mine, a month later I came out to my parents. That had been a rough time. They weren’t angry at me, but they were disappointed. I felt at times they still were, but now that I could marry someone and have kids, the disfavor—the losing face—would be less. Although some of my relatives in Thailand were not accepting at all which, hey, their loss, but it still hurt. “Do you want me to hold your hand while you tell your team?”
I snorted in amusement as the baby slept soundly now that his little round belly was full. I tenderly lifted him upward so I could kiss his cheek and smell his hair. Baby shampoo clung to the ebony peach down covering his tender scalp.
“Thanks, but I think I can manage to tell the team without my big sister glowering at my friends. I just need to figure out how, and when, and then talk to Marcus about it all. He has to be willing to come clean or we can’t do it. I refuse to push him into this. It would be like outing someone, yeah?”
“Yeah, it would be.” She sat there as I cuddled my nephew, her mind going a mile a minute, the tip of her tongue between her lips. A sure sign she was cooking something up. “I might have an idea as to how you can open up a conversation with Marcus about telling the world about your mad love affair.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, one night in the back seat of a car isn’t exactly a mad love affair. We need more time together to see if what we have is worth jeopardizing our good standing with our teams and fans.”
“Right, of course, I know that. One thing at a time. Give me ten minutes.” Up she sprang, unpacking forgotten, as she now had an idea in her head to help her baby brother. I watched her go into her bedroom and then come out with her laptop. I quirked an eyebrow and stood, the babe in my arms tightly cradled to my chest, his head resting on my shoulder. “Okay, so don’t look so terrified,” she stated. “I just need to type up a few things.”
“Type up things? Citra, this isn’t an English assignment,” I replied and gently laid Banyu in his little sleeper rocker contraption. I covered him up with a green and blue flannel baby blanket, then turned to find my sister seated on the sofa typing away.
“Hush now,” she said, holding up a finger. Her sparkling brown eyes met mine. “There’s no problem a well-worded poem won’t cure.”
A poem. She was writing a poem. For me, the goalie, to read to my…Marcus, the other goalie. A poem. My sister really had to find a job so she would stop crafting sonnets for her dumb younger brother to read to his…Marcus.
I sorely needed a term for what Marcus and I were to each other, but “one off in the back of a messy car” sounded a little crass. Plus, we were way more than that now, I felt. What he felt had yet to be determined. Ugh. I needed a mango and knew just where to find one.
Chapter Ten
Marcus
“Left wing!” I yelled at my team, eager to let them know that our left winger was open and ahead of the puck carrier. One of our defensemen heard me, moved over, and made a smooth breakout that took the action back to the Gladiators end of the ice.
I stood up to watch what was taking place down there. Baskoro was having a hell of a time tonight but was somehow fighting back to keep his team in the game. We’d gone through three periods tied 1–1 in a game that was incredibly scrappy. So scrappy, in fact, that it looked like a simple shot on goal that Baskoro had easily blocked was now turning into a shoving match.
Greco—wonders of wonders—was flapping his mouth at Crispy, who had reached the end of his rope with the mouthy little shit. Crispy shoved Greco. Greco slashed Crispy. And that was all it took. The players on the ice fell on each other. The players on the benches began shouting, and that led to a brawl that flowed over the boards like rainwater over the edge of a clogged gutter. The fans were ecstatic to say the least. Everyone was on their feet. I sighed. This was not what I had wanted. Shit, I’d not even wanted the overtime. Basky and I were going to sneak off after the game to my place, eat some Thanksgiving leftovers, and hopefully touch dicks again. Time was of the essence because his team was leaving at the ass crack of dawn tomorrow to continue their road trip south, so this nonsense was stealing time from the secret rendezvous that I’d been fantasizing about for weeks now.
The refs were outnumbered. Fists and gloves were flying, and the fans, always ready to incite more blood and violence ala the gladiator on the front of the visiting teams jersey, began chanting my name and Baskoro’s.
HUDA NEWLEY HUDA NEWLEY HUDA NEWLEY
The chants filled the rink. It suddenly seemed like a good idea. Maybe the other goofballs would stop the bullshit if we had a good, old-fashioned goalie fight. So, I pulled off my mask, threw my blocker and catcher aside, and with a roar skated down the ice. The fans went wild. Baskoro saw me coming. He threw aside his gear and met me at center ice. I took a loose swing that missed, obviously. Basky thumped me on the shoulder. And we went down, him on top of me, his long hair coming loose from its holder. The play fight turned into something incredibly sensual as we rolled this way and that, both of us battling to get on top and not for the reason that the fans were hollering for. Oh no, there was no wish to wallop the other man. My sole desire was to pin him to the ice, press my hard cock into his tight hole, and fuck him.
Given the fire in his dark eyes, he had the same thought. Sadly, the refs showed up. Maybe that was for the best because if they’d not pulled me off, I might have smashed my mouth over his right atop the big golden comet painted on the ice. That would have had the color man and play-by-play dude scrambling for explanations. I could hear the commentary in my head…
