The Rest of the Story

by Tal Bauer

New leaf. Every time my thoughts wandered, every time I caught myself watching Shea on the plane, every time I started to get a little too comfortable, I’d flip that mental leaf again, like if I kept flipping it, eventually the brand-new mindset I was supposed to have kicked my own ass into would start sinking in.

Most nights, we ended up on my bed. Side by side, our backs to the headboard, legs outstretched, thighs brushing, knees knocking, toes sometimes twitching together.

He was asleep. Not just dozing, full-on knocked out. His cheek was pillowed against my shoulder, his mouth open, his exhales tickling my neck above the collar of my T-shirt. He’d passed out with his pen in hand, our notebook open on his lap.

I ran the back of my fingers down his cheek, skittering my touch over a scab he got after a check to the boards in St. Louis. He made a noise, something between an exhale and a whimper. Twitched into my touch. It would be wrong to wake him. He needed his sleep.

It was too late. I was too tired. No big decisions tonight. I tossed the iPad and tipped my head back, closed my eyes. I was out in seconds, supposedly avoiding a decision I had damn well made an hour earlier. The last thing I was aware of was the smell of Shea’s grapefruit shampoo and the tickle of his hair against my cheek.

When I stripped out of my T-shirt in the bathroom, I smelled him. Shea, embedded in the fabric, his hair and his soap and him.

I stood there, my shirt to my nose and the water in the shower running, eyes closed, breathing him in.

Lawson got the game puck for the shutout, but everyone was hollering when I gave Shea his first goal puck, wrapped in white tape with my carefully written “First NHL Goal - Shea Darling.”

For a nontalkative bastard, I sure did open my mouth around Shea.

There’s a heartbeat on every team, one guy who holds the room together. For us, it was Brody.

“Here,” I said softly, handing it to Shea. For Darlin’, I’d written. Moogs’ First Outlaw Puck.

“This is the first of many,” Shea said. His voice was as low as mine, hidden beneath the video game and Brody and Lawson’s shit talk. I smiled. “Maybe. But it’s the first one in a long time that’s mattered.”

We beat Boston and Philadelphia

Boo, leave my Flyers out of this

Philadelphia was cheesesteak-eating contests and a quick trip to the Liberty Bell before we had to get on the plane to DC.

<3

Shea and I were supposed to review Tampa’s last game on my iPad, but his cheek was on my shoulder before we were taxiing, and by the time we were airborne, I was slumped right back on him. My cheek on his hair, his breath on my neck.

Shea—shirtless, in low-slung board shorts that barely clung to his hips, water dripping down his skin, skin I’d had my mouth on—was propped on one elbow and grinning. “Hi,” he said. I couldn’t have told you my name with a gun to my head.

Were other people as stunned, as speechless, as absolutely bamboozled as I was? Was he causing traffic accidents on the road fronting the beach? What if someone drowned because a lifeguard couldn’t tear his eyes away from the happy trail escaping down Shea’s abdomen and disappearing beneath the shoelace tie of his board shorts?

“I’m a free agent after this. I don’t know what’s going to happen.” “I hope you stay.” His voice was as soft as the waves lapping at the shore.

All his ducks were in a row. Mine were fucking feral and squawking in my mental pond,

It would be no trouble at all for him to find a nice guy, someone wholesome and beautiful and half as wonderful as Shea. Only half, because no one could ever really be as wonderful.

“How did you know this is what I like?” I knew because I’d read it in an interview he’d done at Harvard, one of those twenty-question kinds of things. Favorite color, favorite movie, favorite ice cream flavor: yellow, Inception, butter pecan.

I’m not the kind of guy people plot and plan for their friends to end up with. I’m usually the kind of guy that friends warn each other away from.

I’d never fallen for anyone. I’d never been anywhere close to this in my life. The way I’d lost my heart, the way I’d lost my thoughts, the way every single reference point in my life had shifted toward Shea was a big fucking mystery to me. I didn’t see it. And I certainly didn’t know what the fuck to do about it. I didn’t know how to be in love.

The only thing I knew, with dead-set certainty, was that Shea deserved better than me. So even when everything was upside-down, even when we were sharing ice cream and brushing our sandy toes together, even when we were pressed from shoulder to shins in the dressing room, even when we fell asleep on each other in the plane and in our hotel rooms, that was the compass I followed. Not me. No matter what, not me.

My mind was a hamster burning up his wheel. You could have plugged me in and powered the city.

I bit down on my tongue, right on the tip, and started counting the freckles scattered across his cheekbones. I was up to sixteen when his eyes fluttered open.

I don’t know when I last cried. Maybe that night in the bathtub when I was washing my dad’s blood off my knuckles. I wanted to now, had to fight off the hitch in my chest, even. Had to drag in those pre-cry shudders and stare up at the streetlights with my eyes peeled open.

“We can do it your way,” he whispered, cutting me off. “What?” “I can be simple.” Shea’s hand was shaking in mine. His eyes were a hot, frantic blue, knotted up with fear.

He pulled our joined hands to his lips and kissed my knuckles, too fast. “We can do it your way. We can sleep together, and I’ll keep it simple, I promise.” He swallowed. His pulse was a hummingbird fluttering at his throat. “We don’t have to date. I swear, I’ll be easy—”

“I can’t do this anymore.” Tears built and fell, sliding down his cheeks and his temples and onto my sheets. “I can’t keep pretending, Morgan. This hurts so fucking badly.” He tried to hitch one leg around my waist. “You wanted me a few months ago, so please, please, can we just—” His voice broke into wet, gulping heaves.

Shea inside out and ready to throw away his dream for a once-and-forever kind of true love, one man to have and to hold for all time, and to love him like no one else could. And he wanted to give that up for me? Fuck no, I’m not worth that choice.

Shea and I had built a shared world and filled it with our favorite things. The team, our hockey, each other.

“Morgan,” he breathed, so softly I don’t think I was supposed to hear him. He nuzzled my jaw, pressed his lips to my neck. “I’m in love with you.”

His absence was as potent as his presence.

In the whole time I’d known him, Shea and I had never gone this long without some kind of contact.

“You were right when you said we shouldn’t get involved because of the team. This is awful—” He rolled his head back, blinked fast up at the lights. “Just give me a day, okay? One day, that’s all I’m asking. I’ll deal, I will. I hid things pretty well before last night. I can do that again. They’ll never know, I swear. I just need one day. Please.” His chin quivered.

But he was a glimpse of a future that I wanted. He could be my forever, the rest of my life, if I tried my fucking hardest.

How much was I willing to risk? To give? Everything. All of me, every part. My heart, my body, my molecules, my atoms. My past, my present, my future. My dreams, my hopes, all of it, every single thing; they all belonged to Shea.

I didn’t fucking deserve him, and this was most likely going to end in disaster, but could anything be worse than last night?

“You mean everything to me.” My words hung between us. “You are everything to me. So let’s do this. Let’s really do this.”

I’m yours. I’m yours as long as you want me. You can smash me to pieces, shatter me into smithereens, and it will all be worth it, just for the chance to be part of your life.

“You said you wanted to give me the world.” “I will.” My response was automatic. My desire to leap out of the plane and get to work even more so. Where to start? Did I dig up the foundations of the earth, or did I try to harness the moon? Gather treasures and pile them at his feet?

I wanted to give Shea the world. He wanted me to be me. Buying him his favorite flavor of coffee creamer seemed like a step in the right direction.

Adorable

I drew him a purple portrait of us on the back of my napkin: two stick-figure hockey players holding hands with a big heart over their heads. Don’t say I’m not a romantic.

There was that out NFLer, too.

Wes <3

“You have nothing to worry about. I promise you, they’re good people.” “’Course they are.” I pushed my forehead against his. “They made you.”

Generations of Darlings must have bewitched their loves with those backlit blues and then sent that wizardry down the genetic line.

John,

His name...is...John Darling...?

“You fell for your captain.” Amelia sipped her wine and eyed Shea over the rim of her glass. “So unlike you.” She winked, then told me, “Shea has always been very fond of rules.”

Lmao

Everything Shea had ever done, John and Amelia celebrated and were so fucking proud of. “This is perfect. It’s exactly how you should be loved.”