CHAPTER FIVE

Mads

I followed him as soon as it hit me what he’d said. He was gay. He wasn’t out. He’d got into a fight with Addison, who knew he was gay?

Did his family know? Why hadn’t Brady told me? Surely, I could be trusted to have Ten’s back if he needed help on a new team.

The enormity of what Ten had just told me was too much for me to process, and I had so many questions.

“Jared!”

I turned at the voice, part of me hoping it was Ten, part of me dreading it, even though it didn’t even sound like him.

Coach Benning stood at the end of the corridor, arms over his chest, and he looked a long way past pissed.

“My office,” he said, and pushed open his door, gesturing for me to go first.

“I need to clear something up first,” I began, but he frowned and shook his head.

If this was about the fight and me taking Ten off the ice like I had, then I needed to confront and deal right away. Then I could find Ten and talk to him and ask him questions. So many questions.

Resigned, I went into Benning’s office, taking in the disorganized mess that was so unlike the repressed, organized kind of man Benning was. And there was Ten, hunched over in one of the guest chairs.

“Ten?” I asked, but I didn’t need to ask him what this was about; I knew what was happening here. This was no rebuke to me; this was way more serious shit than that.

Coach shut the door and moved behind his desk, sitting and lacing his hands on the surface.

“Ten has just made an announcement,” Coach said, and there was anger in his voice, alongside resignation. “As the team’s specialist in equality, this is something you need to hear.”

Specialist in equality? That wasn’t in my contract. Since when did I have that label? What Coach really meant was that as the only one in the building who had openly admitted he liked cock, I was some kind of expert.

“Ten?” I asked again.

“I’m gay,” he said simply. Calm as you like, his gaze not wavering from being focused right on Coach. He wouldn’t even look at me.

“Okay,” I said, just as calm, like this was the first time I’d heard the news and I was coming from a stance of inclusion and fairness to all players.

“And the reason I fought Addison is that he knows and used words that offended me.”

Seemed to me that Ten had been practicing those words, but only someone who knew him like I knew him, or at least thought I knew him, would have been able to hear the anxiety in his tone.

It was the same clipped tone he’d used whenever his brothers had pushed him too far when they were kids. Like he was this close to snapping and had to try really hard to keep himself steady and in control.

Coach stood. “You need to fight fires,” he said to me. “You have the room, and I’ll send Addison in. Management will need to know.”

I stood as well. What was Coach saying? He was leaving his office, and… what? I was the one who was going to be handling this shit, when all I wanted to do was get very personal with Ten and ask him how the hell he’d managed to keep this secret for so long.

“Coach, this isn’t my remit,” I began, and caught Ten glancing at me with hurt on his face.

I wasn’t backing down, though. As a friend, I would be there for Ten, but as an employee of the Railers I wasn’t the expert in equality just because of the sex I had. Right?

Coach stopped at the door, one hand on the handle. “I’ll discuss a salary enhancement with management commensurate with your new responsibility.” And with that he left.

All I could think was that I didn’t need money. I didn’t want to be the team’s equality spokesman. And hell, I didn’t want to be there with Ten at that moment. I turned from the door and leaned on it; at least that way we’d have some warning of Addison coming in.

“Your family?” I asked in shorthand, knowing Addison would be there any minute.

Ten didn’t turn to face me. “They don’t know.”

“How the hell… Jesus, Ten… Your family…”

Ten stiffened in his seat but still didn’t turn, and he didn’t say anything else.

There was a knock on the door, and I moved away to open it. A contrite Addison, with a butterfly bandage on his forehead and blood on his jersey, stepped in.

“Coach sent me,” he said, and he slipped into the other visitor chair that I had just been sitting in.

Which left me in the Coach’s chair, like a principal handing down punishments for school violations. I could, at least, see Ten from this angle, and he looked like nothing I’d seen before. Deadly serious, frozen, unmoving. Next to him, Addison was a mess, his eyes bright like he wanted to cry.

I can’t deal with this shit.

I needed some kind of handbook on sensitivity training, I should be sitting there with all the right words, knowing exactly what to say. Maybe I could contact You Can Play, or better yet, they might have something on their website. Why didn’t the team already have someone in place?

What if I needed someone to talk to myself, as a bi man? Who was going to help me if I needed it?

I cleared my throat, and Addison jumped like I’d cocked a gun and pointed it at him.

“Who wants to go first?”

Ten said nothing, and Addison kept fidgeting.

I picked up the nearest object to me, one of Coach’s fancy pens, and methodically pulled the whole thing into its constituent parts, waiting for one of them to say something.

“Fuck,” Addison began, the first to break. “I’m sorry, Ten, I really am.”

“Uh-huh,” Ten said helpfully.

“It’s just, I’m not first line, okay? I can’t do this with you. You’re too fast, and my contract is up for renewal, and… fuck, I just lost it.”

Addison sounded miserable, and I looked at Ten to gauge his expression. There was a twitch of reaction, a tension in him, and I saw him briefly close his eyes. I considered stepping in at that point, wrapping up the meeting now that the apology had been offered, but Addison hadn’t finished.

“And my cousin is gay, you know, and I would kill anyone who said that to her with all that hate. You have to know it was heat of the moment, and if I could take it back, I would.”

Ten nodded, then turned to face Addison. “Is that the first-cousin you fucked and had kids with?” he asked, clear as day.

I didn’t have time to react, Addison got there first. “What the fuck?” he snapped, shocked.

“That’s what you hicks do in your state, right?”

Addison opened and shut his mouth like a goldfish, and then something snapped between them and Addison offered his fist, which Ten bumped, and I realized what Ten had done. He’d insulted Addison with the worst cliché he could think of, and Addison had seen it for what it was.

“Now we’re equal, right?” Ten said. “No need to walk around avoiding me—we have a game to win.”

“I’m so sorry, man,” Addison said again.

“Sorry I split your forehead open,” Ten offered, “and for implying you fuck your cousin.”

“Fuck, it was a good one,” Addison said, and touched the wound on his head. “Did you see the blood? It was, like, all over the ice.”

They both smiled, bumped fists again, then turned expectantly to me.

Great, now it was my turn.

“We are an inclusive organization, and welcome all orientations,” I began, and saw the smirk beginning on Ten’s face. I hated him so much at that point.

“Fag is a bad word,” Ten said, simple and to the point. “As are faggot, bum bandit, shirt lifter, and any and all variations on those.”

Addison nodded. “Agreed. I won’t use them again.”

“Although,” Ten said, “turd burglar was a new one on me.”

“Thanks,” Addison said. “I will ensure from now on that I don’t use homophobic language, and I also won’t tell anyone else on the team what I know unless you decide to make it public.”

He stood up, as did Ten, and they semi-hugged, with plenty of back-patting. I honestly couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

“Nice talk, Coach Madsen,” Addison said, and let himself out.

“Neither of you were taking that seriously,” I said as soon as the door shut.

Ten simply looked at me, and his expression was deadly serious. “That there was exactly how it needed to be handled—a one-on-one apology. I won’t make this bigger than it is. This is me, my identity, and I won’t sit here and let you tick boxes to define me and who I am, or how people talk to me.”

“Fag—”

“Is wrong. I know it, you know it, and one day it won’t be used again. One day I won’t want to kill someone in a face-off because he casually throws it around in every sentence, like punctuation.”

“Ten—”

“I have to get back.”

I let him go, because I didn’t know what I wanted to say at that point. I sat there for the longest time. Was Ten right? Was the way toward inclusion for the guys to be accepting among themselves? Would that spill outward to coaches and management and to fans of hockey? Being bi somehow gave me a pass. I slept with women as well, so people considered me undecided, which was complete crap, but I didn’t push it.

No one judged me, and anything that was ever said to me, I ignored. Maybe I should have dropped gloves over slurs. Maybe I should have been the one to start the revolution.

By the time I got outside, Ten was long gone, and he didn’t reply to my text asking to meet up.

And I resolved there and then that I needed to get the inclusivity, sensitivity, equality training, or whatever it was called, and really try to do some good.

 

OceanofPDF.com