Page 13 of Man Advantage

“Here, I got it,” Cole had said, reaching for the handle.

Ford had heard his own voice come out before he could stop it. “I’ve got it, Cole. Jesus. I don’t need you to do every single thing for me.” It came out small and mean, and in a register that wasn’t his.

Cole had stopped with his hand halfway to the machine, looking at Ford with nothing at all on his face, which was worse than anger.

“Okay,” he’d said, flat and even. He’d set his hand back down and gone inside.

He didn’t slam anything, and he hadn’t said a word about it since. He’d just taken his kindness back out of the garage and left Ford alone with a snowblower he still couldn’t move.

The apartment was the other thing. The landlord had wanted Cole’s answer by Friday, which had come and gone, and Cole hadn’t said a word about it either way.

Ford hadn’t asked. He’d told himself no news meant nothing, but he didn’t believe it. A man like Cole didn’t let a deadline slide by accident. He’d taken the place. Ford was sure of it. Any day now it would come up over coffee, casual, the way Cole kept everything. Ford had started bracing for it in every quiet minute they spent together. Every decent thing Cole did for him lately—riding to the rink together so Ford didn’t have to strain his hip, a plate of dinner left in the microwave when Ford and Nadine had parent-teacher conferences—felt like a man being kind on his way out the door.

He was still standing in the dark with all of it when he heard the heavy footfalls on the stairs behind him.

Cole came into the kitchen in a T-shirt and sweatpants, his hair flat on one side like he’d been lying down but unable to sleep. He took one look at Ford gripping the counter in the dark, and he didn’t say a word about the garage. He pulled the gel pack from behind the bag of peas in the freezer and wrapped it in a dish towel.

“Come on,” Cole said. “Couch. Get the leg up before you go over.”

Ford didn’t have anything left to fight with. He let Cole steer him into the front room and lowered himself onto the couch, and he got the bad leg up along the cushions the way Cole told him to.

Cole knelt on the floor beside him. It couldn’t have felt good, kneeling on hardwood after a full practice, not on a body that spent every night getting run into the boards, but he didn’t act as if it bothered him. He fit the pack against the outside of Ford’s hip, over the joint, without having to ask where. He held it there with one hand and rested the other on Ford’s knee, warm through the sweatpants.

“How long’s it been this bad?” he asked.

Ford could have lied. He was good at it by now. But Cole was on the floor with a cold pack pressed to the worst thing in his life, and Ford didn’t have it in him to lie to the man.

“Since the summer.” He looked at the wall over Cole’s head. “The first doctor who looked at it said labrum. Impingement too, probably. Said it won’t fix itself. It’ll just get worse until somebody cuts it, and even then it’s a season or two if I’m lucky.” He hadn’t gone to the specialist who’d say it for certain. As long as nobody said it for certain, it wasn’t. “I’ve been sitting on it since June. Telling everybody I’m thirty-four and thriving.”

His voice cracked at the end. He pushed through it. “I’m sorry about the garage. I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.”

He didn’t say the rest of it—that the mean voice scared him worse than the hip did, that he’d heard it before in someone else’s mouth and sworn he’d never sound like that. He didn’t know how to say any of that to a man he also wanted to shove against the kitchen counter and kiss until neither of them could think straight.

Cole took all of it in without moving. His expression didn’t carry the quick, bright horror everybody else led with. None of the “Oh man, you’ll beat it. Guys come back from that all the time.” He didn’t tell Ford it would be all right. He just stayed where he was with his hand on the pack, steady, and Ford dropped his eyes to Cole’s scarred knuckles holding cold against the worst of his leg.

“You didn’t have to come down,” Ford said because it was easier than anything else he could have said.

“I heard you on the stairs. Every trip when you were trying to get Charlotte down.” Cole shifted the pack a half inch, easing it. “You count them, you know. Going up. I can hear you counting them through the floor.”

Ford’s face went hot. He was good at pretending everything was okay. He had nothing for this. Cole had heard him through the floor and come down anyway, and Ford couldn’t sort out whether that made him want to thank the man or bolt out the front door.

He looked down and realized he’d already leaned in. So had Cole, up off his heels now, close. Ford didn’t know how they’d gotten here. He only knew Cole hadn’t pulled back, and that the warmth coming off him was doing something to Ford’s breathing that he couldn’t hide.

Cole’s breath caught. Ford felt it against his own mouth. This close, he could see the stubble along Cole’s jaw, catch the scents of soap, cold air, and the faint bite of muscle rub on his shoulders. He wanted to close the last inch. He wanted his hands in Cole’s hair and Cole’s mouth on his, wanted to find out what happened when Cole stopped holding himself so carefully. For one stopped second, he was going to do it, and Cole wasn’t pulling away.

And then, upstairs, Charlotte’s door opened.

Small bare feet down the hall. The click of the bathroom door. Ford pulled back so fast the twist lit the hip up, and he sucked a breath through his teeth. Cole was already on his feet, putting a step of space between them.

“Keep it on there twenty minutes,” Cole said, to somewhere past Ford’s shoulder.

His voice was level. He set the pack on the coffee table, close to Ford’s hand but not in it, and went toward the stairs. At the bottom he stopped, one hand on the rail, his back to Ford.

He didn’t turn around. He went up quiet as anything and left Ford alone in the front room. Ford got as far as opening his mouth before the bedroom door clicked shut at the top of the stairs.

Ford sat in the dark with the cold pack he wasn’t holding, his heart slamming like it was the third period with a shutout on the line. Charlotte’s light clicked off. The pipes knocked and settled. He pressed the heels of both hands into his eyes. He’d pulled back tonight. He wasn’t sure he could do it again.

SEVEN