Page 45 of Offside

"You said you'd never kissed a man before," I said.

"I meant it when I said it." He grinned. "Can't say that anymore."

"Do you want to talk about that?" I asked.

"I've already thought about it enough to understand myself." He shrugged.

I waited.

"I like women. They were never practice," he said. "Mackenzie wasn't. None of them were."

I nodded, waiting for more.

"And you aren't a correction." He watched my face. "I'm bisexual."

He said it casually. He didn't need to reinterpret every person he'd been with before me. It gave his present desire language.

"All right. It doesn't change how I see you or them," I said.

His jaw tightened. "That's it?"

"Do you need more than that?"

He considered the question. "I don't know."

"What support do you want from me?" I moved closer, leaving enough room for him to decide whether to close it. It had taken me years to accept that I was bisexual. He was in no rush from me.

"Just don't make it fragile because the word is new."

"It's not. It's part of who you are." I stayed close without touching him.

"Don't tell me I need to announce it right now to prove anything."

"You don't have to tell anyone unless you want to," I reassured him. "And you don't need to prove anything to anyone."

He put his left hand at my waist. "I told you because I wanted you to know."

"Then thank you for trusting me."

I kissed him softly. When I stepped back, Bishop touched his forehead to mine.

"Toothbrush," he said.

"Very romantic."

"You said yes," Bishop said, a smile on his face.

I found the unopened brush beneath the sink. In the bathroom, his own stood alone in a ceramic cup beside the faucet. I unwrapped mine and put it next to his.

17

Bishop

The article went live Thursday morning with a picture of my right arm hanging below the bench. I saw it on Garrett's phone before I saw the link Marchetti sent me. We were in the players' lounge waiting for video. Garrett looked at the screen, then at me, and turned the phone so I could read it. The headline called my shoulder a contract problem.

The first three paragraphs were built from things anybody could see. They showed the nationally televised hit, the camera following me down the tunnel, the reduced minutes in the next game, and a veteran defenseman playing through a chronic issue while his contract extension remained unsigned. Then the article gave insider details.

On October twenty-ninth, it said, the club postponed my extension meeting the same morning medical operations forwarded a “load-management concern” into contract evaluation.