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“What do you suppose it’s like?” James asked Paul as they headed to the kitchen, dishes in hand, after a satisfying home-cooked dinner. Not a speck of food remained on the plates, so everything went straight to the dishwasher.
“What what is like?”
James opened his mouth, closed it back up, lifted eyes to the ceiling, tried once more to put words in a sentence. Finally he picked one word, then another; a single verbalized thought that he hoped wouldn’t nudge the hockey gods into cursing the team. “Winning. Just... winning.”
Paul knew there was more to that word than just its bare meaning, since the Pens had done so much of it in the last few years. No, James was referring to a specific and final type of W, one that neither one of them had ever experienced. But like James, Paul disliked referring to the game’s ultimate prize in any way, other than to toss off an occasional remark like ‘The Cup is the ultimate goal’ to a reporter. But that pithy phrase couldn’t possibly satisfy James. Nor should it. “I’m the wrong one to ask, Nealer. New Jersey won the year before I came up.”
“Then you kinda know how I felt when I got traded here. Walking into that room with all the guys who’d done it? Who’d been there?”
“A bunch of us hadn’t, but yeah, I know what you’re saying.” Paul stopped a moment and then added, “Probably explains the rest of that season for you.”
“Nah, that was just me being me. Not doing what it takes to be successful—”
Paul would have none of that. He interrupted the soundbite-type admission by backing James up against the kitchen counter, seizing his face and silencing him with a gentle yet forceful kiss – a wordless shut the fuck up which was pretty much how Paul won every argument between them. “Don’t go there with me. This isn’t Two Minutes with 29er.”
“I figured that out, since Bourquey doesn’t shut me up by kissing me.” When Paul sighed in exasperation, James said, “You know, you want me to go where I don’t want to be.”
“I don’t want you to go anywhere, Nealer,” he said, reaching up to thread his fingers through James’s tousled hair. “I just don’t want you to talk to me like I’m a beat reporter. All those cliché lines we use with them? We hide behind them so we don’t have to really open up. There’s nothing you need to keep hidden from me.”
“I don’t hide from you. I tell you everything!”
“Oh, really?” Paul decided to put James’s declaration to the test. “What’s your deepest fear, the thing that wakes you up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat?”
“C’mon. That’s stupid. Ask me what my favorite color is, or what kind of music I like, stuff like that. Not what scares me. I don’t like talking about that.”
That was as good a reason as any to start there, Paul thought. “Hey, remember that movie we watched last road trip? The football one with Keanu Reeves?” At James’s nod, Paul continued. “When everyone had to talk about what scared them?”
“Dude. They all said ‘spiders.’ Except that one fat guy who was afraid of bees.” James disentangled himself from Paul and leaned against the kitchen counter. “I’m afraid of losing my hair. How’s that?”
Paul shook his head.
“45 and bald and pathetic not gonna cut it?” James asked wryly, faking a scowl.
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
James suddenly looked as if he’d rather be in a police interrogation. He shoved his hands into his jeans pockets, turned completely away from Paul. For a moment, Paul considered changing the subject, if it truly bothered James that much. Before he could, though, James quickly muttered, “I’m… I’m afraid of falling down the stairs.”
“You know, if you’re not gonna take this seriously…” He trailed off when James turned around to face him. His wide round eyes and lack of color told Paul volumes. “Really?”
“I avoid walking down stairs whenever I can.” He gave a little shiver and added, “I don’t even like watching movies or TV shows where someone takes a header down a flight of steps.”
“I have stairs,” Paul said, gesturing toward his front door.
“Ever seen me run down ‘em?”
James turned away again, this time to head into Paul’s living room and plop down on his sofa. Paul snagged a couple bottles of beer out of his fridge before joining him there. He handed James one, popped the cap on his own, sat down next to him. “Was that so hard?”
“Fuck you, buddy,” James shot back with a complete lack of venom. He opened his beer and took a long pull. “Told you, I don’t like talking about what scares me. It doesn’t make me feel better; it doesn’t teach me anything about myself; it doesn’t help me get over it. It just makes me feel like a stupid kid when I know someone else knows about it.”
“You’re not stupid. Everyone’s afraid of something.” Oh shit, Paul thought. He’d just made the wrong turn on the damn highway and was headed back toward the oncoming storm. And the light in James’s eyes told him he’d seen it, too.
“So what scares you, Pauly? Fair’s fair, now, no bullshit.”
Paul knew that he couldn’t just blurt out the first common fear he could think of. James knew him too well to be satisfied with that. He sipped at his bottle, stalled for time. “You don’t know?”
“Of course I don’t know.”
“Guess.”
James’s eyes narrowed and he snatched away Paul’s beer, setting both bottles on the coffee table. “No bullshit, I said. Tell me.”
“Fine. Ever noticed that I’m the first one up and around in the morning on road trips?”
James lifted his eyes to the ceiling in thought, inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement. “So what?”
“Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been afraid I’d get left behind. Stupid, right? Not like I don’t have a phone to call someone, or plenty of money to buy a plane ticket. But you know what? That’s not nearly as bad as... as...”
Paul felt James’s hand slip comfortingly into his, and the tension of the moment seemed to slip away. If he couldn’t be open and honest about this with James, what kind of a relationship did they have anyway? “Losing… losing…” As much as he wanted to, Paul couldn’t continue the thought, couldn’t get the second word out. So he tried to cover. “Just losing.”
Paul felt warm lips on his own, a soft, gentle kiss that warmed him from the inside out. Fingers moved up to cradle his face, and he lost himself in the simple joy of James. When the kiss ended, Paul heard a whispered, “Losing what?”
He could no more have stopped himself from speaking than he could have stopped a loaded freight train rolling downhill. “Losing you.”
This time, it was James’s turn to pull back. “Seriously?”
“When I look at you, and you’re everything I ever wanted in my life,” Paul admitted. “And you could have anyone else…”
“Stop it.” James shook his head. “Don’t sell yourself short. And don’t be afraid of losing me any time soon, you idiot. If I wasn’t in this for the long haul, do you think I would’ve bought the house down the road? Having to see you every day was almost the dealbreaker for me in this relationship...”
Paul covered James’s rambling attempt at comfort with yet one more kiss, but with added promise. He rose to his feet, pulled James up as well, glanced a hint toward the bedroom. James answered that hint with a tug in that very direction.
He’d won again.