Page 16 of Puck the Coach's Son
He puts his hand on my cheek for one second. He leaves the stall. The door clicks. The tap runs in the main part of the bathroom. The hand dryer. Footsteps. Door.
I stand in the stall with my forehead against the back of the door and breathe.
I have not done that before.
I have not, at thirty, had a man whose body I wanted and who wanted me back and who was in a bathroom with me, and not gone through with it. That has not been on the menu of things that happen to me. That is not a thing my body has ever pulled on me.
This is about Paul,I tell the door.
The door doesn't answer. The door is done with me too.
I walk back into the bar with my hands in my pockets and the expression of a man who went for a piss and is coming back, which requires approximately one percent of my acting ability. Nobody looks up.
I do a slow arc of the room because I'm not going straight to him; I'm not that stupid. I get a new whiskey. I chirp Phoenix about his hair, which took a champagne shower and hasn't dried well. I let Jax pull me into a half-hug. I am doing the things I do.
I am doing them while my whole body points at the far end of the bar like a magnet pointed at a piece of iron.
The thing I see, when I finally let myself look, is Jax at the far end of the bar.
Jax is standing too close to Theo.
Jax has a hand on Theo's shoulder in the friendly-drunk way that is not actually friendly. Jax has his chin ducked so he can say something into Theo's ear and Theo is leaning away from him with a politeness that is doing the work of a door. Theo's drink is half-full. Theo's whole body is in the posture of a man who was raised to never make a scene and who is, therefore, in a scene.
I am across the room before I remember walking.
“Jax.”
Jax turns. He grins. He is very drunk. He is also my teammate and I have known him for three years and in a more ordinary life I would chirp him and extract him and drive him home.
“Mad Dog. Join us. I was just telling the Virgin here —”
“Don't.”
“Don't what.” He laughs. He looks at Theo, who is not looking at either of us, who is looking at his own beer like his beer has the answer. “Oh. Don't the chirp? Come on, bud, I'm welcoming him.”
I step between them. I put my hip into the bar so Jax has to step back to see around me.
“Jax. Back up.”
“Creed.”
I do not raise my voice. I put a hand flat on his chest.
“Back the fuck up.”
He blinks. He is too drunk for pattern recognition.
“Dude, what —”
I do not hit him hard.
I hit him hard enough that he sits down on the barstool behind him and his eyes go wide and he touches his lip with the back of his hand and looks at the red smear and says, “What the fuck, Creed,” in a voice that is genuinely hurt, and I feel like shit about it for a half-second and then I don't.
The bar has gone quiet. The team has clocked it. Phoenix is coming over at speed. Grayson is already on Jax.
I turn to face the room.
“Listen up.”
