Page 18 of Two for Charging

Chris could have screamed in frustration. Every conversation he had with this kid was a minefield. He gritted his teeth instead and said, very calmly, “I’m not interested in Mara romantically. I’m happy for them.”

“You don’t look happy.”

“Don’t you want a snack?”

Jayden made a face. “Vegan fruit leather’s worse than real fruit leather. Tastes healthy. Blech.”

“Okay, well, if you’re staying out here, you have to stop making fun of me. Those are the rules.”

“But it’s so easy!”

Chris elected to take the path of least resistance and not talk at all while they finished cleaning up.

Inside, Mooney and Mara supervised snack time while Howie chatted with the kids. He sat cross-legged on the floor and had already made friends with several teens—who had never deigned to speak to Chris—by complimenting their outfits, which, to Chris, looked like ordinary jeans and T-shirts.

It must be the gay thing, he figured. They could recognize a member of the group at a hundred paces, and Chris wasn’t one of them. He was straight and white, two of the worst things a man could be. He didn’t disagree, but he also didn’t enjoy being made aware of it. Watching Mooney hand Mara whatever she needed without her having to ask made Chris more aware of how superfluous he was. The only time Chris had ever been that in sync with another person was with Luca on the ice.

He was going to die alone.

Usually, going to the shelter made him feel good, as though he’d done something helpful for the world despite getting teased by teenagers and pelted with pucks. Today, Chris left more aware than ever he wasn’t as good with the kids as Jax and Phil and Tom and Howie. To top it all off, his friends had reached the age where they had serious partners. Soon, Chris would be the last single one, not even by choice but by a second worse thing: being terrible enough at dating that a fourteen-year-old had called him out on it. Still more upsetting was the thought of trying again; it made everything in him clench up in misery.

But it wouldn’t do to get lost in self-pity. When Chris got home, he took out the notepad and the set of sparkly gel pens he kept in the kitchen junk drawer for when he had to write stuff. Maybe trying to do therapy right would fix him. He settled on the couch and started thinking.

He should get a snack for this.

A brief perusal of the fridge revealed nothing unhealthy enough to be a satisfactory snack.

He sat on the couch again and stared at the empty page.

Chirs pulled out his phone and checked Instagram. There was a video of Howie and Mooney doing shooting drills on the team’s official page. He double tapped to like it and scrolled the comment section briefly, satisfied he couldn’t find upsetting comments about Mooney’s race or the shelter project. Sometimes, the people who hated the team’s work with LGBTQ kids got militant and commented about it on unrelated posts. Kayleigh wasn’t always great about deleting those comments right away, so Chris reported them to the site when he found them.

He was getting distracted again. At this rate, he’d never finish his homework.

All right, what worried him? The dating thing and the sex thing. And, God, Mom had texted about some girl she met at the farmer’s market. And if Howie kept going clubbing, risking being seen, he’d get himself outed, and it would be all Chris’s fault and—

Chris took a deep breath and started writing.

Number One: I keep finding out people are gay.

After some consideration, he added in parentheses, (which isn’t bad, but I can’t tell anyone, and also, why me?).

When Luca’s key scraped in the lock, he’d gotten no further than the solitary sentence staring back at him, and he had to stuff the notebook and the pens under the couch cushion. Luca couldn’t know about all the gay stuff happening on their team. Also, Chris didn’t want him finding out about the therapy homework and, consequently, about how bad Chris was at therapy. Luca didn’t need more reasons to think Chris was an idiot. Chris couldn’t handle him giving up in disgust and moving out.

Of course, hiding his notebook left Chris sitting on the couch alone in front of a blank TV screen, which wasn’t a super normal thing for him to be doing.

“What are you up to?” Luca asked once he’d hung up his leather jacket and set his shoes in the shoe rack. He dropped a big canvas bag on the kitchen counter.

Chris had thrown his own bomber jacket haphazardly over the arm of the sofa when he got home, and he’d left his shoes in a pile by the door. He was the worst roommate.

“Nothing,” he said far too quickly. “Just got home. You? I mean, what were you up to?”

“Had some things to take care of.”

That sounded more as if he’d been running errands than as if he’d been on a super-secret date, but what did Chris know? As evidenced by how lonely and gross he’d felt watching Mooney and Mara today, he’d never been close to as comfortable as them with any girl he’d dated. He was a shitty dater. Boyfriend. Whatever. Maybe “things to take care of” meant “romantic brunch” in some new dating code no one had told Chris about.

As Luca disappeared into the bathroom to wash his hands, Chris pulled his notepad and pen out from under the couch and scribbled, Number Two: Bad at dating. Underneath, he added, Number Two B: Bad at sex.

“So,” Luca said as he emerged. “We will not have much time for the next few weeks, and Tom will be watching what we eat.”