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Bisexual. I try saying it out loud, too, but it won't come. It sticks in my throat like a word in a language I don't speak yet.

Maybe later. I'm not there yet.

I'm closer than I was this morning, though, on a bench, looking at a freighter that wasn't going anywhere.

When I come out, the lights are off except for the lamp between the beds. He's in his own bed, on his side, facing mine. His eyes are open.

"You were in there a long time," he says.

"Long shower."

"Mm." He watches me cross the room. "Laurel called. I saw you on the phone in the room."

"She says I can keep the lake house."

His eyebrows go up. "That's good. Right? That's good."

"Yeah." I get into my bed. I turn off the lamp. The room goes dark. "That's good."

The air conditioning hums. I lie on my back and look at the ceiling.

"Owen?" he says into the dark.

"Yeah."

"There's room over here."

I don't answer right away. I lie there and listen to him breathing, and to my own heart, which is doing the thing again.

Then I get up, and I cross the gap between the beds, and I get in beside him.

Chapter Fourteen

RÉMY

The youth initiative launches on a Tuesday afternoon in a community center gym on the West Side, and Nadia from brand has put my face on a banner the size of a garage door.

It's hanging over the stage. It's a photo from opening night, me mid-slide on my knees with my stick in the air, and across the bottom in big rainbow letters it says PLAY PROUD.

"Isn't it amazing?" Nadia says, walking me in. She's got her tablet under one arm and two phones going at once. "The kids are going to lose their minds."

"It's very big," I say.

"It's the biggest we could print."

There are about a hundred kids in folding chairs, eight to fourteen maybe, some in hockey jerseys, some in rainbow shirts, some in both. There are parents along the walls. There's a table with juice boxes and a cake shaped like a hockey rink. There are cameras. Of course there are cameras.

The team sent five of us. Me, Sorel, Adeyemi, Webb, and the captain, because the captain goes to everything. Hale's standing at the back of the gym by the juice boxes in a team quarter-zip, his hands behind his back, looking at the banner like it's a weather system coming in.

We haven't talked about Toronto since Toronto. Not really. We flew home. We played a home game. We went back to our separate apartments, and he texted me Home? at eleven-thirty, and I texted back Home, and that was all either of us said.

I don't know what we are. I don't know if we're anything, once there's no hotel room to be it in.

"Rémy," Nadia says. "You're up. Just be yourself. Two minutes. Talk to them."

I've done speeches before. In juniors, at banquets, at schools. I'm good at them. You make a joke, you tell a story, you tell the kids to work hard and listen to their coaches, and they clap.

I walk up on the stage and look out at a hundred faces, and I forget all of it.