CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Tanner was psyched for the team’s west coast trip.
Crawford had been out for a couple of games with a minor injury, so Tanner had been playing with one of the call-ups. It was fine but also annoying because he and Crawford had kind of an unspoken connection.
Playing with someone new always felt like trying to pat his head and rub his stomach at the same time. And, of course, by the time he was really settling into a groove with the new kid, Crawford was back and they were headed out to Vegas.
In Vegas, the team—minus Crawford who was visiting his family—checked out a show and had dinner. They played the next day, absolutely destroying Vegas before they headed to San Jose, where they won again.
After that, they headed to Los Angeles.
Tanner was always psyched to hang out with the boys, but L.A. was especially fun.
They had some free time after practice and Jesse planned a trip to the La Brea Tar Pits. They were super fucking weird. Big-ass holes in the ground with sticky black goo bubbling up out of the earth, right in the middle of the city.
There were fences around the pits of course, to keep idiots from falling in or, like … trying to ride one of the realistic-looking mammoth sculptures.
Tanner squinted at them. Okay, riding one did look kinda fun …
He got a few photos through the fence, then stopped on the walkway bridge thingy over the Lake Pit where the fence was only about waist height.
He had a good view of the family of them.
Two of them—one a baby—stood safely along the edge of the pit.
Tanner frowned at the adult in the middle of the pool, clearly stuck and struggling and looking like it was about to drown.
Tanner knew it wasn’t a real mammoth or anything, but it made him think of the real ones they’d found bones of in the pits and it made him kinda sad, imagining how scared it would have been. His eyes watered and he blinked a little.
When he was growing up, this was the kind of shit he’d gotten picked on for being ‘too soft’ about.
But he smiled a little when Rafe leaned in next to him and said, “Aww, poor dude. He looks scared.”
“I know, right?” Tanner said and he felt better when Rafe bumped their shoulders together and stayed there for a bit before he wandered off to find Mickey.
This team was fucking solid. Tanner thought of Leif’s team and winced. What a fucking douchebag Leif’s teammate was. And his captain … what the fuck? Why hadn’t he done more to stand up for Leif?
That was bullshit.
Tanner grabbed his phone and took a couple more pictures of the family of mammoths.
Leif wouldn’t make fun of him for getting sad about them.
He leaned over the railing of the walkway to get a better shot just as a person walking by stumbled into him.
He yelped, nearly dropping his phone and bobbled it before someone grabbed the back of his shirt, steadying him.
He caught his phone and turned to see a big, beefy security guard frowning at him. His face reminded Tanner of the guy in his dream. Abby? But no, this guy’s nametag said Elijah.
“You can’t lean over the edge like that,” Elijah said gruffly as he let go. “Gotta watch what you’re doing.”
“Sorry,” Tanner said, smiling at him. Damn, he was good-looking with his dark skin gleaming in the bright sunshine and off his mirrored sunglasses. “I won’t do it again. Thanks for saving my life though. I wouldn’t have wanted to end up in the pits like the mammoths.”
Elija’s expression softened. “Definitely wouldn’t want that.”
“Can I buy you a coffee in thanks?” Tanner asked, looking up at him.
He was a good five or so inches taller than Tanner and about twice as wide. Those arms … wow.
Elijah looked him up and down. “Mmm, wish I could but I’m on duty and already finished my lunch break. How long are you in L.A. for?”
“Just until tomorrow night,” Tanner admitted. “We have a game.”
“A game?”
“Hockey!”
“You any good?” Elijah asked, smirking back.
“You know who the L.A. Suns are?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, we’re gonna beat their asses tomorrow night.”
Elija looked him up and down again. “You are, huh?”
“Yep. You should come watch.”
When Tanner was into someone, he usually bought them a ticket, left it at will-call, then met up with them after. It pretty much always worked.
But for some reason, now, he hesitated.
“Hey!” Farther down the walkway Graham called out. “You coming, Clayton?”
The team had moved on, heading toward the museum. “Be right there, S’mores!”
Tanner glanced back at Elijah to see him frowning. He said, “So, you free tonight? I get off work at—”
“I’ve gotta go,” Tanner found himself saying. “Thanks for the save, man!”
Without another glance back at Elijah, Tanner hurried toward his teammates, confused.
What the fuck was that about? When had he ever turned down a hookup with someone hot?
Ugh. Somehow, Tanner had a feeling this was all Leif’s fault.
After the tar pits, the team went into the museum and they tried not to make too much noise as they checked out the fossils of saber-toothed cats, wooly mammoths, and mastodons—Wait, are those mastodons outside, then, not mammoths?
Tanner wondered. And what’s the fucking difference?
—along with giant sloths, dire wolves—which he thought were just a made-up thing in movies—and even a nine-thousand-year-old human murder victim.
Apparently, there were no dinosaurs, which Tanner was kinda bummed about.
So was everyone else, and they all got into an argument about what the best dinosaur was. Unsurprisingly, T-Rex was Crawford’s favorite, Rafe was a fan of Stegosaurus, Mickey liked Apatosaurus, Graham voted Spinosaurus, Jesse was a fan of Hadrosaurs, and Connor put his vote in for Ankylosaurus.
Tanner was a Velociraptor fan. They looked cute but were total badasses.
The team argued so loudly about which one was the best that they started to get dirty looks from the people working for the museum.
Connor suggested maybe it was time for them to leave, so they headed to the Grand Central Market where everyone went off in small groups to do different things.
“Have fun with your ex!” Tanner told Graham and Thad, who were going to meet up with a guy Thad had gone to prison with.
Tanner thought it was pretty awesome that they’d managed to stay friends and that Graham was chill about hanging out with a guy Thad had hooked up with for years. That was one thing Tanner loved about this team. They weren’t weird and judgmental about shit.
After Thad thanked him and they wandered off, Tanner looked around. The rookies had headed out to find food and do some shopping and Tom was supposed to meet up with them at the taco place.
Tom had been off hanging out with some guys he’d played with here in L.A. before he was traded to the Harriers.
Crawford was being all weird and grumpy on the walk to the food court, but Tanner tried to cheer him up by telling him some random stuff he’d learned about the apartments nearby. He’d scoped them out online after Jesse sent the info about the market.
“It’s right near the L.A. arena too!” he told Crawford.
Crawford stared at him blankly. “You planning to get traded or something, Clayton?”
“No!” Tanner protested. “I fucking love playing with Boston. But like, let’s be honest, there’s no way I’m going to end up playing for them my whole career.”
He’d been thinking about that a lot lately. That at some point, he probably would play for a team like the Rockets. A place that didn’t have a captain like Connor and teammates who were either queer or totally chill about the people who were. Ugh.
“Why?” Tanner teased. “You want me to leave?”
“Most days,” Crawford said.
Outraged, Tanner protested and Crawford put him in a headlock to give him a noogie.
Tanner wriggled away, yelling at Crawford about messing up his hair and accidentally bumped into an older woman coming out of a designer handbag store. She frowned at him and he gave her his most sincere smile.
“Sorry about that,” he said breathlessly. “One of my teammates is being a jerk but he’s usually harmless. Hope I didn’t hurt you. You look lovely today by the way.”
“Oh, that’s alright,” she said, smiling as she patted his shoulder. “And thank you. It isn’t very often these days that I get compliments from handsome young men.”
“Well you should,” he told her with a little wink.
Laughing, she walked off with a bounce in her step.
In the background, he heard Anker mutter, “How does he do that? He was like that with the guard at the tar pits too.”
“Hell, if I know,” Luke said.
Tanner smiled to himself. They didn’t get it.
They were always giving him shit for flirting with everyone and sure, he did flirt a lot. But the thing was, most of the time what people called flirting was just Tanner being friendly. He genuinely liked people and wanted them to feel good.
He loved when he could make them smile. So whether it was some awkward sixteen-year-old girl with braces or a wrinkled old geezer in his nineties, he was going to try to make them feel good about themselves.
That didn’t mean he wanted to have sex with them. He just wanted them to walk away feeling like someone had really seen them and thought they were great in their own way.
And sure, he would have hooked up with Elijah if his head wasn’t really full of Leif or whatever, but even if Elijah had been seventy-eight, Tanner would’ve smiled and tried to make him feel good about himself.
But people always assumed that being friendly was the same as trying to get into someone’s pants.
In the food court, everyone ordered a shitton of tacos and by the time they’d mowed through them all, Tanner’s belly was full even though he was still picking at the chips and mango habanero salsa in front of him.
He was in a great fucking mood. He’d sent Leif the pictures from the tar pits—he agreed that the drowning mammoth—mastodon?—was really sad—and he said he was envious because the tacos looked delicious.
Tanner was just about to make a really bad joke to Leif about eating tacos when Jesse called out, “Hey, where the fuck were you, dude?”