there's a short window post saginaw and pre san jose where misa is happy, and bright, and a little nauseous always. zayne is already going to go to calgary, luke is at UPenn, spence committed to UMich, and sam is only on the horizon, is still only sam from juniors. misa thinks it must have been all the draft promotion where it really started happening, where he said yes to porter on repeat, yes to dinner, yes to gold, yes to facetiming before bed, yes to making out in his truck, yes to being his boyfriend. it must have happened something like that, he's sure because that's how he recounts it to zayne and his pinched face. then porter goes to philly, misa to san jose, all the other guys to their own places, spence back into the grave.
porter gets these big moon eyes at the end of the summer, just before dev camp where he says we can do long distance, right? and misa says yes, again, on repeat. he wants to say that he's bad about checking his phone, and they should be more concerned about surviving their rookie years, about getting any ice time at all, instead of keeping up with each other. but misa doesn't say anything like that, instead it's luke in the car asking who are you texting? misa pressed up against the glass of the passenger seat trying to decipher out what so happy to be with you :) means.
this isn’t about being a people pleaser, misa doesn't really care what people think, even if he does a little, it's more about ease. you say yes and it's the end of the conversation, but misa always fails to consider that more comes after the yes, you have to lay down and spread your legs and say this feels good, you have to text good morning, and one second i'm in a meeting, you have to watch flyers games in your hotel room after a 20 minute ice time game of your own.
toff is nice about it, the buzzing of misa's phone on the coffee table that he won't pick up and won't turn off as they watch football. sam is less nice about it, saying tell him to fuck off when misa says he needs to call porter back. in the backgrounds of parking lot rendezvous, sam lurks and waits for misa to finish putting his head in he crook of porter's neck. parking lots are good, they feel final, feel like misa has sam waiting at the end of them to take him home and has porter in front of him going my curfew at 12 but barks won't tell— again with the continued yes, the after part where misa has to shuffle up to sam and blabber on about is it okay if you drop porter off with me?
porter in san jose in his bed, and misa having to wake up early to drive him back to the hotel. misa in philly and sam taking a weird stance on curfew times when porter invites him out. the phone calls, and the fact misa turns off his phone at noon on a random wednesday. in oakville it was lake ontario, in saginaw it was lake huron, and now it's an hour to the pacific. he drives, fucking hates driving, and parks the car in the sand ridden lot, turns his phone off and shoves it in the glove box. misa isn't sure what he wants to happen, just sticks his feet in the freezing water and wonders about how long frostbite takes to set in, if you go pink, then blue, then purple, or if no one's ever noticed before. sand sticks all the up his sweats, under his nails, and in his hair, and misa wonders if he's tracked a piece of sand from michigan or ontario onto this beach too. maybe he's got pieces of the delaware river all over him, courtesy of texts he's surely missing from porter. he keeps his phone off on the drive home, forces his windows down instead of listening to the radio. and when he gets back to the toffolis’ he pulls the hose over his head and watches his clothes get heavy and wet, and the sand trickle out onto the lawn.
toff looks at him with these big wide eyes he doesn't ever have, and yells to cat about towels. misa stands there and drip dries in front of the back door, water pooling at his feet on the kitchen tile. sam's the one who drags the towel over his hair, makes misa strip down in the downstairs bathroom before misa can even think about the implications of being naked in front of another man. it doesn't feel like being naked, even when he's standing wet and cold and bare, it feels like something else. maybe like his skin has restitched itself in the pacific and under the hose and in the toffoli kitchen as soon as someone laid eyes on him. sam puts him in the shower, and then in a shirt, underwear, pants, in the hoodie off his back.
warm cloth over his head and the ringer on his phone back on— buzz buzz buzz on his bedside until sam reaches over and says it's not marty, zayne's been texting me too. right. zayne and the promised phone call from three weeks ago, always zayne and his pinched face going tell him to fuck off in a nicer way. going why did you say yes? going should i talk to luke?
misa throws his phone across the room and bites through his lip and shatters the glass on his bedside and pukes over the hardwood—doesn't do any of that and barely turns his head to look at sam and asks can you tell him i don't want to do it? sam stares down at him very closely, like he might be able to pick out the grains of sand, and then asks calmly, do you mean marty or zayne? he means anyone sam can get a hold of at this point. porter. can you just... can you fix it? all sam does is nod and shove misa's face id in front of him so misa has to watch as his phone opens up to the 124 unread messages. it takes ten minutes and the phone doesn't ring once, sam doesn't move off the bed, doesn't ask any questions, doesn't even make a noise until he puts the phone down on the other side of the bed.
two days and misa takes his phone call, ten days and sam checks marty hard into the boards. an hour after that, misa stands in the parking lot, and watches sam shove both their duffels into the backseat of his car.
