Overdue Changes

Logan

A year ago, I made a choice. A bad choice. Out of the blue, I got a shot at moving up from the ECHL to the AHL, probably my last shot at a higher hockey league at age 33. Except at the same moment, my boyfriend came out publicly. I was supposed to be at his side, but professional hockey still wasn't welcoming to gay men, despite a couple of out players. I decided I had to pick between the career I'd been working for all my life, and my boyfriend. I didn't choose Miles. Now, a year later, I know what a fool I was, but Miles is engaged to a woman and there's no way back for us.

Miles

I don't regret coming out. I can't, given how many kids, and adults too, have contacted me to say what it meant to them to have even a retired pro-football player stand up as a gay man. I wish I'd come out earlier, when I was active in the NFL and could've been more of a role model, but I'm not sorry I did it now. My only regret is that somehow, in the stresses of that moment, I lost the man I loved. Logan froze me out, I was angry, and… somehow, we said things we couldn't take back. Now I'm living my out gay life, and that's important, but I miss Logan. Taking care of my friend Rachel's fiancée, acting as her beard till she can get away from her father, makes me feel useful, but I can't help wishing it'd been Logan at my side in those society photographs.

Overdue Changes is a 42,000-word novella set in the Changes hockey universe, with two new main characters who blew up their relationship a year ago, and aren't sure there's any way back.