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Three days after Chase may or may not have come onto him in what may be the most confusing conversation in his entire life, James meets his girlfriend.
Well, perhaps ‘meets’ is a bit of a misnomer. ‘Meets’ implies introductions, and there’s none of those involved, not a single word exchanged. James doesn’t even get her name. And he could be jumping to conclusions, but judging by their interlaced fingers, he doubts it.
And sure, holding hands isn’t necessarily romantic, but there are limited exceptions, and that didn’t appear to be one of them. It’s something children do with their parents and one another for safety’s sake, and then teens and adults do to express intimacy, a socially acceptable public display of affection. This isn’t a kindergarten field trip, and James doubts Chase was worried about losing her in the halls of XL, so that leaves intimacy.
James is aware that bisexual people exist. And pansexual, and — he’s aware that Chase hitting on him and Chase having a girlfriend are not mutually exclusive concepts. He doesn’t think they’re concepts that can co-exist ethically, but that would be just as true if Chase had a boyfriend.
James has been thinking about this — overthinking this, to be frank about it — for days, but he still isn’t sure he heard Chase correctly, let alone that Chase meant it the way James interpreted it, and it’s hardly something he can just ask.
Maybe it wasn’t a come on at all, just another homophobic joke that went over James’ head. James can’t see the purpose of it, but then, he can’t see the purpose of most things Chase does, so why would this be the exception?
Chase has been keeping his distance for once, which makes it harder. If he was constantly underfoot like he has been, practically breathing down the back of James’ neck, James would have no shortage of opportunities to ask, might even bring himself to do it after a day or three. But instead he’s always across the room, when James sees him at all, and James can’t begin to bridge the distance, isn’t sure he even wants to. The only time he’s close is when they’re on the ice together, and James has more important things to focus on then.
He has more important things to focus on now too — how well he maintains his focus in warm ups is tightly correlated with how well he plays that night — but instead of stretching like he should currently be doing, he’s watching Chase, both feet planted on the red line, like he’s about to skate into the Bruins’ end of the ice, Chase leaning in to Brandon Simcoe, all attention on him. If they weren’t wearing different jerseys, James would assume they were still teammates.
And of course Chase is friendly with Simcoe in particular. James shouldn’t be surprised. And he isn’t, really — Simcoe’s everything that’s wrong with hockey, and the fact he’s genuinely talented, could have a brilliant career without any of the extracurricular activities, that makes it worse. Not that James can say anyone who’s made the Triple Gold Club and hoisted the Stanley Cup hasn’t had a brilliant career, but when he retires, enters the Hall of Fame — and he will, James won’t pretend otherwise — half of the voters will be holding their noses when they put an X beside his name.
Chase isn’t quite there — for one, he doesn’t have any hardware to speak of — and James doesn’t think he needs any encouragement Simcoe could offer. Still, it’s neutral ice and Chase’s first game against his former team, so this is entirely normal, which means him barking Chase’s name is inappropriate, something he instantly regrets.
James doesn’t know what to say if Chase does come, but that’s fine; the silver lining is that Chase won’t pay him any attention, other than, perhaps, to pointedly turn his back.
Of course, Chase skates away from Simcoe as soon as he thinks that, heads straight for James, spiting him without a word.
“What’s up?” Chase asks.
There’s nothing up. James had no reason to call him over, and they both know it, it’s written all over Chase’s face, ‘I’ve done nothing wrong and you can’t tell me otherwise’, and he —
James can’t stand him.
“That’s not your team anymore,” James says.
“Are you fucking—“ Chase says. “Of course you’re not. You say this to all the dudes who chat with their old teammates before a game, or just me?”
James flushes, caught. He’d say it wasn’t typically relevant, or that other teammates knew better than to do that, but of course, that isn’t true.
“I didn’t mean it like—“ Chase says, looking uncomfortable himself.
James hadn’t thought he had until he said it, and now it’s all he can think about.
“No, I didn’t assume you did,” James says. His face feels hot. “Simcoe’s a — he’s contemptible.”
“He is,” Chase says. “Cretinous, even.”
James looks over at Chase. Chase wasn’t on the Whalers when he said it, and Simcoe being on the ice would have meant Chase wasn’t; they play the same role.
“He told you,” James realizes. He has no idea why he would, but he doesn’t try too hard to understand people like Brandon Simcoe. Or Holden Chase, frankly, but he keeps surprising. It’s unnerving. “It didn’t look like he even understood me.”
“He didn’t,” Holden says. “He looked it up after the game.”
James can picture it, Simcoe making valiant attempts at spelling cretin — James doesn’t even want to know how his attempts at contemptible must have gone — and plotting his revenge. James should probably keep his head up tonight, but then, that’s always true when he and Simcoe share the ice.
James never called him cretinous, though of course a cretin is, by its very nature, cretinous. Which means Chase knows the word, or looked it up himself, or — James is overthinking this.
“You shouldn’t be talking to him,” James says before he can stop himself, like it’s any of his business, like that’s something he has any right to say. “It looks — you shouldn’t talk to him.”
He expects Chase to push back, but he just says, “I gave him the finger at the end, does that make it better?”
James presses his lips together, refusing to smile. For one, it’d be rewarding juvenile behavior. For another, Chase has a girlfriend. And James isn’t sure what that means, exactly, or why he’s even thinking about it, a snarling, ugly thing twisting in his gut.
“That’s not sportsmanlike behavior,” James says. Nor is calling someone a cretin, though, even if they are one, so James can’t really talk.
“Well, I’m not really sportsmanlike, am I?” Chase says. “At least according to some people.”
“No,” James says. The urge to smile has vanished. “You’re not.”
James couldn’t describe the behavior of Chase as sportsmanlike that night, but it isn’t egregious, particularly because Simcoe seems to be looking for him all night, and not to exchange pleasantries.
“Aren’t you friends?” James asks Chase after a shift Simcoe keeps Chase pinned to the boards, delivering half a dozen cross checks that the referee all of five feet away pretends not to see. The Whalers have had three power plays to the Bruins one, so Simcoe could get away with just about anything right now, and he knows it.
“I hate his fucking guts,” Chase says with a smile that’s all teeth, and James doesn’t know if that’s a joke or not, can’t tell with Chase, who says everything like he’s kidding, so that James has no choice but to second guess every word he says.
The Whalers lose it on the back of game management; and the mood is as foul in the locker room as it was in the arena in the final minutes, a sustained boo as the seconds ticked down, the Bruins playing keep-away with the puck, milking the stolen victory.
These are the losses that James can’t stomach, do his duty after without poisoning the air even more, and his As know it. Finn does the person to person check in, Georgie the ‘we’ll get them next time, boys’ speech. James keeps things clipped and short with the media. They make a few stabs at destabilizing him, but there have been enough of these games over the years, too many of these games over the years, and he doesn’t take the bait.
He does his job, and then he gets the fuck out, goes home, orders from one of the very few restaurants that are both open late and have options in his diet plan, sends his father the score, Finn a thumbs up to his check-in, then watches highlights on mute while he waits for his food, looking away whenever there’s a flash of green and gray.
He doesn’t think of Chase at all until he sees him at their next practice. It all comes back then, the game James has been trying not to dwell on, with limited success, the way Chase straddled center like he had no interest in staying on the Whalers’ side, the girlfriend. She was pretty, James supposes, though he didn’t get a very good look at her. Looked almost more like Chase’s sister than his girlfriend, honestly, but adult siblings don’t go around holding hands, and Chase is an only child. James doesn’t know why he knows that, but he does.
James doesn’t know how to ask. Doesn’t even want to, or at least, he can’t make himself breach the distance, even when it’s a matter of inches, Chase’s head almost brushing his as he takes faceoffs against him. He drops his stick too early every time. If James gets thrown out of the face off circle, well — he better not.
James makes plans to go to Finn’s after he meets his grocery delivery, takes his time in the room, because it’s better to be there than waiting impatiently at home. He’s the last one out, besides the staff, and when he sees Chase at the entrance, fiddling with his car keys, he isn’t particularly surprised.
James wonders if Chase waited for him. Isn’t entirely sure how he feels about the idea.
“Jamie,” Chase says. “You’ve been scowling at me all morning — well, you’ve been scowling at me for months, but I’m feeling some extra scowly vibes today, and—“
He was, then. Waiting for him.
“You have a girlfriend,” James says abruptly.
“Fiona,” Chase says. “She’s the best. Way too good for my sorry ass. Probably too good for her boyfriend’s ass too, but Sean’s pretty cool, honestly. Step up from the guys she usually dates. I’d say me excepted but that’d be bullshit, I was probably the worst of the lot.”
“But—“ James says. “She’s not your girlfriend?”
“Not since high school,” Chase says. “I was kind of expecting to get a ‘The Bruins are not our friends’ 2.0 speech, but look at you coming out of left field. I respect that, truly. Keeps me on my toes.”
If she wasn’t his girlfriend, then why was she even there? Why was she given the behind the scenes tour players typically reserve for significant others and immediate family? Why were they holding hands?
“You don’t make any sense,” James says.
“Right back at you,” Chase says.
“You were holding hands!” James says. “That looks — you know what that looks like.”
“Yup,” Chase says. “I do indeed know what that looks like.”
“But she’s not your girlfriend,” James says.
“Nope,” Chase says.
“You can just — do that?” James asks.
“What?” Chase asks. “Hold hands with someone you’re not dating?”
“No,” James says. “I mean — yes, but — why?”
“I broke you again, huh?” Chase says. “I have to stop doing that, Schneider’s going to figure out it’s me doing it and then he’s going to — do you think Schneider’s more the axe murdering type or like, bare hands, Homer Simpson strangling Bart kind of shit?”
“Finn would never—“ James says.
“Yeah, yeah, I know, ‘Finn would never’, but humor me here,” Chase says. “The man snaps, we thinking he uses a weapon, or—“
“Why would I humor you?” James asks. “Finn would never kill anyone, including you.”
Though the more Chase talks, the more James is reminded that few could blame him if he did.
“Okay, so Schneider has to kill a dude to save all the puppies in the world,” Chase says.
“How could killing someone possibly save all the puppies in the world,” James says. He could see a situation in which it could save one puppy, or even a number of them, in the case of, say, a puppy mill, or a dog fighting ring — if Finn were to kill anyone, James could think of worse people to target — but every puppy worldwide? It’s a farcical scenario.
“He’s got a puppy killing virus, I don’t fucking know,” Chase says.
“Did he engineer this virus?” James says. “Or is he simply carrying it, and this is a case of cross-species transmission? Because I can’t see Finn killing someone in general, but he would consider killing someone in the latter scenario monstrous, and I—“
“You are the worst person in the world, oh my god,” Chase says. He’s laughing a little as he says it, but James suspects he means it.
“And you are incredibly aggravating,” James says.
“You’re hurting both of my feelings right now” Chase says.
“And what feelings are those?” James asks. “Thoughtless aggression and excessive amusement at your own jokes?”
Chase barks laughter. “I don’t know why everyone thinks you’re boring, man, you’re kind of a bitch.”
“I am not a bitch,” James says.
“I meant it in a nice way,” Chase says. “Bitch solidarity! Oh come on, James, come back, I need to know if the puppies are okay.”
“The puppies are not real,” James says, and keeps walking to his car. He doesn’t understand how they even arrived on this topic in the first place. He certainly doesn’t understand how Chase roped him into debating it.
And he is not a bitch.
*
“Hypothetically,” James says. “If you had to kill someone—“
“I told you,” Finn says. “I have no idea what I’d do in the trolley scenario.”
“No, listen,” James says. “If someone had a virus that would kill every puppy in the world, and you could prevent their deaths by killing that person, would you do it?”
“The guys were running their mouths, huh?” Finn asks.
“Something like that,” James says.
“Is it just puppies, or all dogs?” Finn asks
“Does that change your answer?” James asks. Logan’s dog, lying on his feet, looks up, then huffs and puts her head back down. James supposes he’d understand if it did.
“No, just curious how this hypothetical virus works,” Finn says.
“Just puppies, I think,” James says.
“I guess?” Finn says. “If it’s the fate of one person versus every puppy. And presumably they’re doing this on purpose, right? Like, if I don’t kill them they’ll unleash it for evil purposes or whatever?”
“Presumably,” James says.
“Then yeah,” Finn says. “I guess so. You?”
“Probably,” James says.
“Cool,” Finn says. “You want to go get smoothie bowls when we take Cheezit for a walk?”
“Okay,” James says. They’re more Finn’s thing than his, but Finn did kill a hypothetical man for him, and James figures that’s worth at least a smoothie bowl.
*
“He would,” James says. “But not with his bare hands.”
They discussed that over their smoothie bowls. Finn wouldn’t be able to bring himself to strangle anyone, even if the fate of every puppy in the world was literally in his hands. He also assured James that while some of the comments James made could be construed as bitchy, he was not a bitch. Which is what James thought.
James catches a glimpse of Chase’s face, utterly delighted, before he looks away.
“Don’t ask me any more ridiculous questions,” James says.
“I am going to make a list of them,” Chase says.
Unfortunately, James believes him.