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Jamie hadn’t seen Tyler in just over four months. With things like summer vacation and World’s there had been similar times apart where they hadn’t seen each other, but never had they gone the whole time without actually communicating at all. There had been no texts, no Skype, not even a reply on Twitter or Instagram. It wasn’t that they were fighting, per se, but Jamie had put a cap on his own personal patience level.
They had been friends for four years. Four years where Jamie had been everything for Tyler. From his driver to his neighbor to his new neighbor to his wingman to his shoulder when he’d broken up with a few girls. He’d been patient and kind and all the things that he was, in general, already, until the day they had to clean out their lockers when, without his permission, his brain had clicked.
He’d been pretty much fucking crazy in love with Tyler for four freaking years and he’d let himself do all the things he told himself he wouldn’t do with a teammate. He’d gone on vacations and done stupid road trips. He’d cooked dinners and been a stand-in girlfriend when Tyler was moping and needed it. He’d let himself fall in love when that had always been a rather large NOPE in his brain.
When he’d finished cleaning out his locker Tyler had asked if he wanted to meet up for dinner cause he had a ‘freaking sick’ idea for a vacation before he had to be in Europe and Jamie felt his chest constrict. From the back of his mind, he thought about all the reasons he wanted to go but he struck them down.
“I can’t,” he’d lied.
“You can’t?” Tyler had blinked at him. “Well, then tomorrow morning? I’ll get up before ten and we can do brunch?”
And Jamie had done the crazy stupidest thing he’d ever done. He’d bold faced lied to Tyler. Told him that he was going on a soul searching journey and that he’d call him when he got home.
That had been late May. His soul searching had ended up being him at a lake house about an hour and a half away from his parents' house. Mostly moping, mixed with training and swimming and trying his best to avoid his cell phone. He’d checked his email a few times and found that he’d gotten about two dozen emails from Tyler in the first three weeks before they just stopped.
Jordie had visited a few times, laughing for a solid ten minutes when Jamie had admitted to him what he was doing before he stopped and realized that he was telling him the freaking truth and smacking him upside the head. Apparently, he thought that he’d KNOWN what was happening with Tyler. At least he was able to keep the lie going with Tyler for him.
It was worth the occasional chirping about officially turning Mountain Man before he did.
But the season had to begin sometime and Jamie had to be there early because, well, Captain. And that was a whole thing. Going back to Texas and finding his home clean and full of food (Thank gd for cleaning people), just like he’d left it. Pictures of Tyler all around him. Stupid memories from stupid trips where he’d been stupid.
The whole soul searching thing hadn’t actually helped him at all.
The first time in the arena he’d felt like there was going to be a ghost around any corner. But rather than that he’d found fresh-faced rookies at every single turn, looking at him like he had all the answers under his Stars hat. He smiled and nodded and gave a rather rousing speech that he had given to the last three Rookie classes, then skated with them for the bare minimum amount of time.
Then he’d booked it out of the damn building. Not that he genuinely thought that Tyler would be there but it was probably better to not risk it when it came down to it. He got back to his house and grabbed his laptop. He hadn’t been on social media in months, giving the password to his publicist for promo reasons only. There were a few tweets from him that were so very cheesy he had to fight the urge to delete them.
Thankfully they didn’t try his Instagram, granted what they would have posted he had no idea. The last picture up was he and Tyler seated on a oversized bean bag at a hotel, playing video games. His brother had taken it and captioned it with “T and J are too intense for you.”
He checked his feed and found that most of them were either pictures of his teammates, his teammates' babies or random hot chicks. (He’d gone through a freaking phase, okay? They were fun follows, plus like, he was rich and still didn’t live their lives. It was fun to watch.)
When he got to the first Tyler picture he almost just closed the computer without looking but his rational thought was quickly nixed by curiosity. The latest picture was Marshall, curled up on the couch giving a grumpy as hell look to the camera.
“He’s really excited Daddy is home, no joke.”
Jamie couldn’t help the smile. He loved those damn dogs. For a moment he considered keeping scrolling but yeah, he was not claiming emotional intelligence. He clicked Tyler’s name and was brought to the screen of all the photos. Which, not shockingly, there were a lot of.
He found the stream from when he was in Europe, pictures of him and all the guys. He flinched when he saw him with Marchy, knowing full well he had nothing to be jealous of beyond the fact that Marchand had been his best friend for far longer than Jamie and who got jealous of friendships?
As he scrolled he saw a series of photos of Tyler with a girl. About nine out of maybe three or four rows. He picked an innocuous one and opened it, finding Tyler making a goofy face while the blonde haired girl made duck lips and a peace sign.
“BAE all the way with Lexi”
This time his rational brain did somehow come to the forefront and he shut the window down. Lexi. Okay. He as okay with that. He wiped at his face. He’d figured that Tyler would find someone this summer. It was kind of his ritual. Find a girl, date her for a while, she gets sick of the season and … yeah.
The background of his computer was a picture he’d taken in Rocky Point on a ‘random road trip’ that he and Tyler had taken the summer before. He closed the screen. He was being melodramatic and he knew it so he stood up.
If his stomach was any indication it was time for food. He was down with that. He walked into his kitchen and grabbed some of the basics, forcing himself to go through the ritual of a pre-game meal, even if there was no game coming. It was easier to ignore your brain if you were going through steps, or at least it was for him.
When he was finished eating he picked up his phone, texting his brother some chirps. He was supposed to be home by now but had decided to go visit Demers for a few days before he came back. He told him to let Demers get some rest and to send him the better pictures if any drawing on faces happened. Telling him the Rookies looked extra young this year.
His phone immediately started to ring, his brother’s dumb face looking up at him.
“What the hell?” he answered. They weren’t talkers. “You okay?”
“Am I okay?” Tyler answered and Jamie felt the hair on his arms bristle. “That’s a funny question to ask.”
Jamie chugged the beer he’d thankfully popped open. “You visiting Demers?”
“Nope,” he said, popping the ‘p’. “Your brother and Daddy ended up coming to visit me. In Texas. Funny thing. Cause I figured that I’d hear from you when you got back. You know, from your Sabbatical from HELL.”
He looked around his kitchen like there would be a sign that told him what to say. Alas, there was just chicken and pasta and an empty freaking beer bottle. Damn it. He was floundering and taking too long, he knew it. Because he wasn’t dumb and because he heard Tyler make a noise and then suddenly the phone sounded scratchy.
“Sorry Chubbs, he grabbed the phone,” Jordie said and it was weird enough hearing his brother on the phone. But weirder still hearing his brother a little freaked out on the phone. “Uh, you might want to like, get dressed if you’re naked, cause the dude is on a mission.”
He would’ve contested the idea that he walked around his house naked but his brother had lived with him a good chunk of his life and he was solely wearing boxers.
“FUCK,” he yelled into the phone, hitting end on his phone and running towards his room.
His closet looked a wreck and all he could think was that he wasn’t sure what to dress like. Did he wear sweats, jeans? A freaking TUX? Nothing was rational when it came down to it. He grabbed what he was wearing that morning, some jeans and a black t-shirt, keeping the Stars sweater on the floor. He was just running into his bathroom to check that he didn’t look like hell when he heard the front door opening.
They’d exchanged keys three years ago. Awesome.
“BENN,” he heard Tyler yell from the main room. “Where the hell are you?”
Jamie looked in the mirror for a brief second, he looked passable but also a little like he was drained of all blood. He turned and walked towards the door but Tyler was at the door to his bedroom. He stutter stepped, keeping the bed between him and Tyler. It wasn’t a buffer, exactly, and if it was it was a really shitty one, but it was a marker at the very least.
“Hey,” Jamie said, waving for some reason that his muscles didn’t inform his brain.
“FOUR MONTHS,” Tyler said, practically jumping towards him. “I’ve not heard from you in four months and you are in the city and you KNOW I’m in the city and you don’t even come over?”
Jamie frowned. “Um. I didn’t know you were in the city until like an hour ago?”
“I posted Marshall on my Insta LAST NIGHT, dude.”
“I didn’t really look at Instagram this summer. Or Facebook. Or … any of that.”
Tyler made a face like Jamie said he had eaten Rocky Mountain Oysters. “Did you live in a monastery for the summer?”
“Just Canada?” he said and then instantly wondered where his brain had gone. He’d planned to say he traveled, said that he left his phone at home and only checked in on occasion. He’d had a backstory because a lake was awesome but a lake by yourself for months gave you time to come up with backstories.
“You were where?” The tone of voice he got from Tyler was low and angry. The kind he’d gotten from Tyler before, but only twice at him and both of those times Jamie was injured and being a dumbass.
He inhaled and flexed his hands, figuring he might as well go all in with the truth. Well, at least part of the truth. “Canada. A little lake house, actually. My family had friends who owned a house they don’t use much. I rented it.”
“I thought you were in like Nepal or China. I spent months asking your dumb brother where you were and he said he didn’t know, that was a lie, wasn’t it?”
“Don’t blame Jordie,” Jamie jumped in. “I asked him to not tell -- people… where I was. I was trying to um. Find myself?”
Tyler rolled his eyes. “In a cabin in Canada? I was worried dude. I emailed you for a month. Every time there was a damn accident in a foreign country I wondered if you were there. You couldn’t have let your best friend in on this little secret?”
He gnawed on the inside of his lip. It wasn’t like he could explain to Tyler that he couldn’t because it was mostly to avoid him. Which sounded bad even in his head. He rubbed at his neck and frowned at the floor.
“I didn’t mean to like worry you, Segs,” he said, honestly. “I was in a bad place.”
Tyler stared him down like he expected more but he wouldn’t be one to tell him it. He was tired and he was anxious and honestly, he had been hoping to avoid this confrontation as long as he possibly could. He worked hard to do so. It wasn’t a healthy coping mechanism really, but it was his damn it.
“Are you STILL in a bad place?” Tyler said, his voice softening just a bit.
And that was the question that he’d asked himself every single day over the summer and all the way through till he saw Tyler in his doorway. “Truthfully? Yes.”
“And what part of best friend makes you think that I’m not here to help you. You’ve been there to help me through every single rough place I’ve been in for years even when we barely knew each other. Even when it was a joint rough place. Why would you think that you had to do this alone?”
Tyler’s face was red, his hands were on his hips and the vein in his neck that was reserved for real anger was nice and evident. Jamie… exhaled. Everything that Tyler was saying was true. They had been each others’ everything since they met. A weird instantaneous bond between the two of them. Lying to him, even by omission, had been exhausting for the entire summer.
“Okay, I’m going to tell you something and you have to not freak out,” Jamie said.
Tyler’s voice went high. “Dude, are you dying?”
Jamie couldn’t help the awkward stuttered out laugh that came out of his mouth. “No, no, I am not dying.”
“Did you knock someone up?”
“Crass, dude, and no,” Jamie said, refusing to look at him. “I wouldn’t do that. I’m … gay.”
“You’re… gay?”
“Steers and queers,” he said and then shook his head. “Really bad joke, not appropriate, sorry.”
Tyler’s hands fell at his side, anger was gone and it was replaced with a weird unreadable look. “Did you… did you just figure this out?”
“No.”
“WHEN did you figure this out?”
Jamie cocked his head to the side and scratched his temple. “Um. I think I actually said it for the first time like three weeks after my 13th birthday. Which was kind of funny because I realized it when I was forced to go to my friend’s bar mitzvah… his cousin was a year older than him and …”
“Okay, got it. You became a man,” Tyler snapped.
“We didn’t DO anything, Jesus fuck. I left early saying I had a stomach ache and then told my mom everything,” Jamie frowned. “She and I talked about future stuff, like hockey and family and shit. Then I didn’t do anything about it for a really long time.”
Tyler was extremely fidgety and he couldn’t help but think that maybe he shouldn’t have told him anything. The scarier part being that he hadn’t actually told him the half of it. He kept his hands at his side and balled them and then relaxed them.
“Tyler, I…”
“You know Brownie’s bi right?”
Well, no, he didn’t know that. Not that it mattered to Jamie in any way at all. Even if he had a thing for Brownie (which, no), Brownie was half married to an All-American Dream Girl. And also living somewhere in the midwest. Also, every time they’d met he’d gotten a vibe from him that he didn’t not like Jamie but he’d prefer he knew who the ALPHA best friend was.
“Now I do. So?”
Tyler frowned. “Soooo, why would you keep something like that from me. That stupid tweet wasn’t me, it was Brownie, actually. And I told you pretty much that when I first got here. And I’ve done my damn best to keep homophobic slurs out of the locker room because you never know who is and who isn’t. But like. YOU are and you think I’m what? A homophobe?
“Were you spending the summer brooding because you thought our friendship was over? Cause that’s fucked up… dude. I’m a dick, I get it but I’m not that big of a dick.”
Jamie shook his head. “No, no, dude. I never thought you were homophobic. Okay, maybe for like a day before I met you but then I met you and you explained it and I knew for a fact you weren’t that kind of person. I was just going through some stuff. I realized I kind of… liked…”
His brain stopped working for a second, because once he said it he was done. He couldn’t help but feel like there was a giant blue line in front of him and he couldn’t bring himself to break past it.
“Who?” Tyler asked, and there was that voice from earlier. The one that didn’t really say he was angry but one Jamie couldn’t read, which bugged him. “Who do you like?”
He blurted out. “A guy on the team. I like someone on the team, okay?”
“WHO?” Tyler barked.
“I’m not telling you,” he said, and as soon as he said it he meant it more than he knew. The look on Tyler’s face was more or less a mix of annoyance and disgust and though he doubted Tyler was homophobic apparently the part of him that was okay with Jamie liking guys was not okay with being the guy.
“Why the hell not?”
Jamie rubbed at his face. “Because it doesn’t matter. There is a list three pages longs as to why it doesn’t matter. Telling you would make it weird and the last thing I need is to have to think about it all the time and know that you know and that it’s there.”
“It’s not Sharpy, is it?” Tyler said and for a split second he believed that Tyler thought that before he caught the tug of his lip on one side.
“Oh fuck off,” he groaned. “No.”
Tyler put his hands up. “I’m just saying, he is pretty pretty...”
“Yeah, and surprisingly I don’t like married guys,” Jamie said.
Tyler hummed. “Want to go play some Xbox?”
“Oh gd, yes,” Jamie said, never more relieved to most likely get his ass handed to him in NHL 17. “I call the Stars though.”
“Aww, but you know how I love playing with myself.”
Jamie snorted. He told himself he wouldn’t laugh when Tyler made the same lame joke every time, but it was a lie.
As they sat down on the couch Tyler made a noise. “So, the guy isn’t married.”
Fuck
*
Jamie hoped it would be dropped quickly but it was a stupid hope. Once Tyler had sunk his teeth into something he was like Cash with one of those stupid pull toys. He was going to win this game. Even if the game meant guessing at Jamie’s choice in men.
The worst part was that it spiraled quicker than Jamie would have liked. The married comment cut out a decent chunk, which was hard enough. But then when they were lacing up for their first practice, Tyler leaned in towards Jamie and said.
“Can’t be the new guys, you realized it last year.”
Jamie’s skin tingled, from the proximity of Tyler to his ear and the fact that Tyler was going to play the guessing game from now to the game’s end and somehow that felt like a mile marker on their relationship he didn’t want to pass by.
“What’s with the smirk Seggy?” Sharpy asked, his usual casual smile turning a little bit evil. That dude had a streak in him that freaked him out a bit, if he was honest. He was just glad Burish had moved on before Sharpy got there. He’d heard stories and he was good.
Tyler shook his head with a shit eating grin. “Just doing some detective work. No bigs.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Sharpy put his hands up. “I’ve been out of the building till this morning.”
Which was a lot less comforting than it really should be. But whatever. Jamie had bigger things to be worried about, though he would double check his shampoo. And the soap. And hell, probably everything.
“Nah,” Tyler shrugged. “This you have nothing to do with, right Jamison?”
Jamie sighed. “Right, Tyler. You shouldn’t either, by the way.”
“And yet, here we are,” Tyler put his arms out.
“You guys are weird,” Sharpy said, turning to Oduya beside him and starting a conversation.
Tyler nudged him. “Hey, is it Od…”
“No,” Jamie said.
“Hmmm, come on,” Tyler said. “That smile is pretty good. You’re picky.”
Jamie brushed his fingers across his eyebrows. “Tyler, please, drop it.”
Tyler shook his head and finished getting dressed. Jamie wasn’t stupid enough this time to assume it could be dropped but he was relieved to find he had at least a few hours of peace. He watched the locker room all getting dressed and smiled. It was something he’d forgotten in the time he’d spent half in seclusion during the summer. The feeling of a noisy locker room and his friends being nearby.
*
They, like many years previous, had a BBQ late that afternoon with family and friends and all of their teammates. Jamie had long since gotten it catered because the first year had been a disaster that they all had sworn to be never spoke of again. It was one of those moments that Jamie was so thankful that he had gotten someone to take a chance on him in hockey as he would be doomed any other job opportunity.
The beer was free flowing, as was the food. It was a nice hot Dallas day. Kids and parents were swimming. Jamie was relaxed and a bit buzzed but he lived in this damn house so he could drink with the usual navigating with who was driving and who was calling Uber later. It was the one perk that came from his house being not his own for a whole afternoon and evening.
“Yo! Jamie! Get over here!” Tyler called and Jamie turned to find Tyler and a group of guys all seated in a circle. He realized he was buzzed because it didn’t seem like a bad idea to go over until Tyler opened his mouth. “We’re the singles.”
He looked around the group. There were maybe 20 guys, all seated in their swimsuits, beer in hand. Jamie sobered slightly and looked over at Tyler with wide eyes. Did he seriously go around and corral the freaking single guys? Yes, yes he did. Because he was Tyler Paul Seguin.
“Awesome, not depressing at all,” he said, but Tyler patted the seat next to him. “Is this like a fucked up version of AA?”
Tyler shook his head and gave him a playful nudge. “Just talking. Arguing. Redheads versus blondes…”
“What about brunettes?” Jamie chimed in. And seriously. He put his bottle down. Tyler’s eyes twinkled and he looked around the circle.
Johns took a swig from his bottle. “Redheads. Christina Hendricks, man.”
Another guy piped in about blondes. There was no consensus except that, apparently, they had to have a good rack. That was the through line for the guys, and as Jamie had learned to do over the course of his career, he went along with them.
“Chests are nice,” Tyler said, looking down at his feet. “I like legs, though.”
There was a murmuring. A few guys agreed. One guy added in that asses were always good. That Jamie agreed with. Asses were nice, working in the career he did he had learned the beauty of a well-formed ass. He spent more time then he could measure doing squats with a guys ass less than ten feet in front of him.
“Jamie?” Tyler prodded and Jamie shook his head.
“I like hands,” he said, which was a segue, and a poor one at that. But true. He got a circle of eyes on him. “What? Long fingers, nimble…?”
Maybe he needed to just keep his mouth shut.
“My last girlfriend played the piano,” Nemeth piped in. “I’ll admit watching her play was kind of a turn on. Knowing what those hands could do.”
Jamie exhaled. “Exactly.”
Not exactly, but close enough. He liked watching Tyler’s hands with a stick or checking his gear. The way he would run his fingers over every stitch and seam. The smooth way his fingers would follow the tape on the end of his stick. The way he was always fidgeting with something when they had group meetings.
He caught himself looking over at Tyler’s fidgeting digits and made himself turn.
“What about tattoos?” Johns asked. “I mean, some girls can hold em but others? Fuuuuuck no.”
Jamie blinked. It was like they were all in on it together.
*
When he could, he escaped the ‘single circle’, thankful to have hosting duties to keep him at least slightly busy. He grabbed for a new beer, having left his old one in the circle, and went to the kitchen to make sure that he still had food and plates and drinks out. His house was filled to the brim with hungry hockey players and their hungrier kids. He swore they multiplied like rabbits.
“What the HELL is wrong with Segs?”
Jamie jerked around and found his brother walking in with a bag full of trash to add to the pile near the door to his garage.
“What do you mean?”
Jordie kept walking and put the bag down before he came back with a frown on his face. “Well, so far today he’s asked me who your favorite player growing up was, who you hung out with most in Juniors, and get this? He asked me if you talked about anyone a lot. Like it wasn’t his dumb ass.”
“Fuuuuck,” Jamie groaned. “Tell me you didn’t tell him anything, please Jords?”
“Nah, I punched him in the arm and told him to ask you himself… wait. I’m missing something. Did you fucking TELL him?”
Jamie shook his head and hissed. “I told him I was gay. I told him I had a crush on a player, cause I’m a fucking idiot and now he’s spending his time playing freaking Sherlock over who the crush could be.”
“Why don’t you just tell him?” Jordie said. “You two are worse than freaking teenagers. Words, mother fucker, can you USE them?”
“You should have seen him when he found out I had a thing for a player,” he said. “I almost said it was him and he looked like he might be sick. So I’m letting him think it was someone else. And then he can figure out some sort of theory and I’ll just tell him I got over it and we’ll move on.”
Jordie reached out and slapped the back of his brother’s head hard. He rubbed at it and punched his brother's arm.
“You dick, what was that for?”
Jordie shrugged. “This is going to be a shit show, I’m sure you’ll be owed a few of those, so I started early to save my arm.”
“Your thoughtfulness is amazing and wonderful,” Jamie deadpanned.
*
The night ended, as it always did, with just he, Jordie, and Tyler, finishing up the basic cleaning and packing up the few leftovers. It was his favorite part of any get-together, starting way back when the parties were in his condo rather than the house he’d bought.
“So I knocked off a few more from the list,” Tyler said, casually as he grabbed cups from all around him.
Jamie chucked a cup at him, gently and with no intention of hitting him. “Tyler, tell me you don’t actually have a list.”
“Dude, it’s called a roster? D’uh,” he put his hand in his pocket and yeah. Tyler had a printed out list. “Brown hair, though that only nixes like the Nordic crew. Except Oduya, though you said no to him… No married dudes. I’m not sure how to work the hand thing, long fingers? Like. How do I judge that?”
“How about you don’t judge any of it?”
Tyler tied the top of his bag and shook his head. “Four months, Jamie. Your heart was fucking broken. I want to know who.”
“Yeah, bro. He wants to know who broke your heart…” Jordie said, handing Tyler an empty bag and grabbing the full one. “Only fair.”
“Wait, do you know?” Tyler looked at Jordie and then at Jamie. “Does he know?”
Jamie jumped in before Jordie could start. “No. He doesn’t. HE let it go.”
“Bull shit,” Tyler called out. “Bulllllll shit. No way that Jordie let it go. You know, don’t you?”
Jordie looked at his brother and then back at Tyler. “I am not getting into this shit with you two.”
He turned around and walked back into the house, Tyler’s trash bag and another one under his arm. He slid the back door closed and Jamie heard the click of the lock because his brother was a total bag of dicks and he was going to glue him to his freaking toilet seat as soon as he got a chance.
“What does he mean by that?” Tyler asked. “And why did he lock the damn door? Are we going to have to swipe in through the freaking window?”
If he knew his brother half as well as he unfortunately did, the window was locked or was in the process of being locked at that exact moment. He exhaled and looked at Tyler.
“Who’s left on the list?”
“Jamie, we are locked outside. The list can wait.”
Jamie rolled his eyes. “My brother is a dick, Tyler. He is a giant box of tools and the one way I’m going to be let into my own damn house, short of breaking glass is for you to tell me who is left on the list. So open up the freaking paper and we can run through this shit, okay?”
He didn’t want to do this. Not now, or preferably ever. But he was tired and he wasn’t in the mood to deal with the game anymore and he knew Tyler wouldn’t stop playing and he knew if he lied his brother would call him the fuck out on it. So he just had to give up.
Tyler opened the paper up and looked at him curiously as he read the names. “Johns? Nemeth? Rousel? Janmark?”
“No, no, oh hell no, and no.”
“You won’t give me any more hints? Did they get traded… fuck are you love with Demers?”
Jamie put a hand up to his forehead and rubbed at the headache that was starting just behind his temples. “Jesus, Tyler. You have one person not on the list that fits all my criteria. And it isn’t Demers. And they are on the team currently.”
For a long second it didn’t click. Tyler was looking at the paper and his brows were furrowed together and then, suddenly, Jamie could see as the pieces placed together.
“Brown hair, not married, nice ass, tattoos are okay,” Jamie ticked off.
Tyler stared at him. “You like my fingers?”
Jamie let out a pained laugh. “THAT is what you took from this?”
“Screw you,” Tyler said. “I’m fucking processing here.”
He crossed his arms over his body and watched as Tyler paced back and forth, a flapping black trash bag and a piece of white paper following in his wake. “You… you didn’t even tell me you were gay for years and then you suddenly realize you have what? A crush on me?”
“It … it isn’t a crush, Ty,” Jamie said, a little hurt seeping in. “For starters I’m not 16 and I didn’t write your name and mine in a fucking notebook over and over again.”
“Then you just leave,” Tyler continued, barely taking note of Jamie talking. “You figure out you have a thing for me, and instead of telling me, you leave me. So that I can spend the summer thinking there was something seriously wrong and worrying about you.”
“You seemed pretty okay with your ‘BAE’... what was her name, Lexi?” Jamie spat and then regretted it. It was petty and childish.
Tyler laughed. “LEXI? Lexi is Brownie’s cousin who I was friends with from going to holidays at Brownie’s house. We posted those dumb pictures to annoy him because we were in the same city and he wasn’t. He got the joke, by the way. And her six foot four military husband would kick my ass if I tried and played that. Not that I would.”
“Urgh, this is why I wasn’t going to tell you,” Jamie said. “This is so stupid. I don’t want to fight with you about this and I tried to like… distance myself to see the bigger picture. Four months in a cabin can be pretty fucking clarifying.”
Tyler finally paused in his movement. “Okay. So?”
“So what?”
“What’s the bigger picture?” Tyler asked, stepping a little closer. “Did you zen out? What did a summer give you?”
Tyler was too close. He could smell the stupid aftershave he used, and the sweat from the day and the sunscreen and it was too fucking much. He couldn’t bring himself to lie. “Nothing. It gave me nothing.”
“Nothing, eh?” Tyler cocked his head and smiled, predatorily and just that shade of evil that he could get away with. “You still…?”
“Tyler, I swear to fuck, step back. This isn’t a funny joke and I’m not… I’m not okay with you doing this.”
To Jamie’s genuine shock, Tyler took a step back, his face going completely blank and his body ramrod straight. “You think I’d fuck with you like that?”
“I think you might not … get the level of what I mean, okay?” Jamie said, taking a deep breath. “You and Brownie had a game going on, and that’s fine but I can’t play that game. You can’t be my ‘wifey’ or whatever.”
Tyler looked at the ground and then looked back up at Jamie, still serious in a way that Jamie only saw on very rare occasions. “We dated. We didn’t play a game, Jamie. Tyler and I just dated. Casually, for me, but it was something else for Brownie. Something I regret. It ended well, at least. He met his girl and things went back to normal. But I wasn’t playing a game with him and I wouldn’t play a game with you.”
“I’d want more,” Jamie said, proud of himself for being honest. “So let’s just not start, okay?”
Tyler laughed, genuinely belly laughed, dropping the paper and the black trash bag and laughing like Jamie had just recited Louis C.K. verbatim. Jamie tried to straighten his back, realizing he’d begun to hunch in on himself, habit of being the big guy for his life time. He’d always tried to make himself smaller in these moments. When Tyler noticed, he quickly stopped his laughter, taking a step forward and putting his hand on Jamie’s left shoulder.
“Four months,” Tyler said. “I spent four months desperate for any fucking news of you, I went insane. I called your brother more than I called my mom. Then you magically come back and tell me you’re gay and my whole body freaking sparked but you had a thing for someone else. So I … I tried to figure out who it was, because if I knew who it was I could either beat them up or convince you why they were freaking wrong for you.
“Jamie. I’ve spent the better part of two years trying to convince myself you were straight as fuck but you weren’t. And now I have a fucking chance with you and you tell me to let it go?”
Jamie gaped at him.
“We’re doing this, Jamie. We’re fucking doing this. And I don’t think there is any way you could want more than I want, so deal with it.”
And Jamie felt a hand behind his neck, lips on his and a beard scraping his upper lip.
It took him a minute to catch up with the movement but when he did he pushed himself forward and cupped the beard he liked to mock Tyler for. He called it Tyler’s attempt at looking older than he was, teased him that he was trying too hard. He brushed his fingertips in the scraps of hair on Tyler’s chin and pushed his body up close to him.
Tyler hummed and he could feel him smiling into his kiss, soft lift of the sides of his lips and the kisses went less and less intense and more into feverish pecks. It was dizzying. He kept thinking that at any moment he was going to wake up and still be in Canada, lying on the beach, staring at the sun and hating himself for letting his mind stray.
“Dude, you have neighbors, I opened the door a solid two minutes ago.” He turned around to find Jordie at the door with his hands over his eyes. “You could come in anytime and when you do I am so fucking gone.”
“Excuse me, jackass, but how many times have I caught you?” Jamie pointed out, flushed and embarrassed but not letting his brother know it. “I have seen things no brother should see.”
Jordie, still keeping one hand on his face, flicked Jamie off. (Well, the general vicinity of him.) “None of those girls were Tyler. I’m going to need therapy.”
“Didn’t you say you were going?” Tyler said and kissed the base of Jamie’s neck, smacking his lips loudly.
“Aw, gross, I don’t even want to know,” Jordie turned around. “Let me know you’re still alive.”
“Will do!” Jamie called back.
Tyler leaned into Jamie’s ear. “By sending pictures?”
“I fucking love the way you think, Seguin.”
Tyler nipped at his ear. “Good, cause you’re stuck with me.”
Jamie could feel his eyes glaze over at the thought. “Bedroom?”
“Hmm,” Tyler thought, licking at his lips. “Couch?”
Jamie kissed him because he could.