Page 84 of Puck Fest
“Danny.” Noah’s hand on my arm stops me. “Don’t say anything else.”
“But he?—”
“Don’t.”
The hotel security guard looks at his monitor. “Our cameras show Mr. Masterson grabbing a phone. Then Mr. Tanner here pushed him. Then his friend used a slur. Then Mr. Masterson threw a punch.”
“He assaulted me,” the drunk guy…Tanner…says.
“You provoked him with hate speech,” Noah says, his voice cold and professional despite everything. “That’s on camera too.”
“Doesn’t matter. He hit me. That’s assault.”
My phone buzzes again. I pull it out and frown at a text from Carter.
Dude what the fuck? You’re all over the Internet.
My stomach drops.
Notifications blow up my phone - YouTube,Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. There are already a bunch of videos. They’re taken at different angles, but they all show the same thing.
Me and Noah kissing on the street.
Tanner recording us, making asshole comments.
Me grabbing for his phone.
The fight.
And the comments. Jesus, the comments.
Raptors player Masterson caught kissing a MAN outside team event
Is this the PR guy who supervised his probation??? He’s the coach’s son
Coach’s son and a player holy shit
Violence and now this? Trade him
“Fuck,” I mutter.
Noah leans over to look at my screen. Color drips from his face.
“We need to leave,” he says to security. “Now.”
“We’re not done?—“
“Unless you’re pressing charges, we’re done. And if Mr. Tanner wants to press charges for assault, I’ll make sure every media outlet in the country knows he provoked it with homophobic slurs caught on your cameras.”
The security guard looks at Tanner. “You want to press charges?”
Tanner looks at his phone, at the videos already spreading, at the attention this is getting.
“No,” he finally says. “Just keep him away from me.”
“Gladly,” I say.
Noah and I leave through a back exit to escape the attention from the event. We don’t talk. We don’t look at each other. We just walk to the parking garage in silence.
