Chapter Seven The Pennsylvania Tournament #3
“That’s not how you treat a lady.”
“You’re the one taking me away from my team. You can buy me a damn beer, or you can join us and drink one of ours.”
She pretended to consider a moment. “Deal. I buy you a beer and we talk, then I join yinz here for a beer and find out what your new team thinks of your sorry ass.”
“Please,” whimpered Lexi and Donno in unison, eyes wide as they took in this hockey .
“Fine. You guys mind if I disappear a bit?” Brady was already out of his seat. Not that Nick could say no anyway.
The team waved him off with a few parting chirps about abandoning them, fraternizing with the enemy, and owing them all a round later.
“Think he’s hitting that?” Mags asked. “Might explain why he’s been so damn happy all day.”
Nick had to breathe through his nose and bite the inside of his cheek to shut himself up.
“Nah.” Gail was barely paying attention, too busy typing on her phone. “He treats her the way he treats me, so I don’t think there’s anything sexy going on there. Besides…” She put down her phone, a wicked smile on her face as she caught Nick’s eye. “I don’t think she’s his type.”
Unable to hold her gaze, Nick turned away and hoped he looked like he had no clue what she was talking about… all while hoping he knew exactly what she was talking about.
“She’s my type,” Lexi said with a wistful sigh.
Donno nodded. “Same, bro.”
The conversation went back to the usual topics: their games, the Caps, and the upcoming Super Bowl. GG’s controversial opinion that Adam Oates was a good coach was enough to draw Nick’s attention away from Brady long enough to argue.
“He made Ovi relevant again!” GG said.
“You’re an idiot if you think he ever wasn’t relevant,” Nick countered.
GG glared at him. “All the players liked the changes he made—”
“When he micromanaged everything including the curvature of their blades!?”
“He took them from the bottom of the league to the top.”
“Division,” Gail corrected. “No Presidents’ Trophy. Maybe the conference.”
“Never mind he did it in half a season!” GG continued. Nick got the feeling this was a well-practiced rant. “That’s impressive! The players looked like trash when the lockout ended, conditioning gone to shit. He did good.”
“He did well in that small, shortened season,” Nick conceded. He waited for GG’s smug smile before adding, “Aaand then he crashed and burned the next, full season. Didn’t make the playoffs, and let’s not forget that he almost broke Holtby.”
GG’s mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out.
“Can’t argue the Holtby thing,” Young Greg said sympathetically. “You ain’t ever winning this Oates argument. You wanna argue coaches, Trotz and good ol’ Bruce are a better comparison.”
“How dare you,” Gail growled, and the argument shifted again, and Nick’s distraction was gone.
Don’t look don’t look, you idiot, don’t—
His eyes wandered over to the bar proper, where Brady sat with his friend.
Nick blinked in surprise when he saw them both looking his way, and before he could decide an appropriate way to respond, his face flushed bright red, and he whipped his head the other way in the hope that they wouldn’t notice.
He waited a careful thirty seconds, each one measured by his unsteady heartbeat, then snuck a look.
They weren’t looking his way anymore, but Nick still tried to be discreet as he watched.
Amelia “Aimes” Landry looked calm, relaxed, though maybe a little serious.
Brady looked… well, it wasn’t like he was frowning or anything, but Nick recognized something in his body language.
He couldn’t find the right word for it, couldn’t pin down the emotion as anything more than vaguely not good.
All day, Brady had been a shining beacon.
Occasionally the light dimmed, wavered in its intensity, but Nick hadn’t imagined it.
Everyone on the team was excited about the tournament, and still they’d noticed Brady had stood out among them.
This was his element. This was his childhood life intersecting with his present in a fun, unexpected way.
Now he looked faintly sick.
It only fostered a growing selfish and admittedly childish jealousy toward Miss Amelia Aimes.
She’d known Brady when he was younger.
She’d taken Brady away now.
She’d made Brady upset.
Nick quieted his nauseous stomach by counting from one to ninety-nine and forcing himself to come up with a player who’d worn each number.
It was a game he’d play with his dad sometimes, and it was a great way to occupy his mind since he was self-aware enough to know he’d be a surly ass if he opened his mouth.
He’d gotten to 52, Mike Green, when Brady reappeared with his friend at his side.
“Jagr Bombs, this is Aimes. I’ve known her since we were… twelve?” He didn’t wait for a confirmation. “Aimes, these are the Jagr Bombs. They’re my team in DC.”
“They totally recruited you with that name alone, didn’t they?”
“It was the deciding factor, yes,” he said solemnly.
Brady had regained some of his color and was back to at least his usual self, though not his earlier warmth. He reclaimed his seat next to Nick, though Nick couldn’t help but notice that he wiggled the chair a few inches away and gave him a constipated smile as he sat down.
Uh oh.
“What was Jens like as a kid?” GG asked. “Seems like the type who was old even as a kid. Born fifty, y’know?”
Aimes didn’t sit down. She stood there, hands in the front pocket of her hoodie. They had pushed together four high-top tables to accommodate the team, and Nick felt that was the only thing keeping her from towering over them.
“Can confirm,” she said. “He was the only one I ever saw doing homework on the travel bus. Or ever. Probably why he got a fancy job in Washington and isn’t stuck here in Pittsburgh with the rest of us.”
“So you played together?” Nick found himself drawn into the conversation against his will. He didn’t like the effect she was having on the evening, but he craved insight into Brady.
Aimes gaze pierced through him. “Sort of. We played for the same program, so we’d be in the same practices but might play on different teams. Like if there was an age restriction on a tournament, or a gender one, we might play together, but we might not. We’d travel together a lot, though.”
“We went to different schools,” Brady mumbled. “Only saw each other for hockey.”
“Was Jensie always a beast?” Young Greg asked.
She raised an eyebrow, and Nick could almost see her mental checklist of names for Brady. Was her “Beej” the same as this “Jensie”?
“Coach wanted him to play wing because he’s fast, or used to be, anyway. Even tempted him with that Jagr carrot. ‘You like sixty-eight but want to play D!? Come on!’ ”
The impression earned a snort from Brady.
“He’s stubborn though,” Aimes said with a shrug. “Likes defense too much.”
“Uh huh,” Lexi said and poured her a beer from their last surviving pitcher. “Jensie’s awesome or whatever. Tell us about you.”
“Yeah.” Donno slid his plate of fries across the table, right through a ketchup stain. “Who is Aimes?”
Her poker face was admirable. “Beej?”
“They’re harmless,” Brady said. “Both on and off the ice.”
“What!?”
“How dare—?”
“They might be up for a threesome, though,” Brady said.
Both Lexi and Donno’s jaws dropped.
“I, uh—I mean—”
“Not that I—I—”
“Awww, you broke them.” She polished off the beer in one long swig. “C’mon, boys. Let’s go talk in private.”
She walked off with all the confidence of a woman used to being followed. Lexi and Donno did a comic double-take: they stared after her longingly, looked to each other, then back toward her.
It was Lexi who broke first as he raced after her. “Wait up!”
“Me too!” Donno said, not far behind.
“How is it I’ve been your D partner for nearly two years,” Gail said, “and you have never set me up with any hot friends?”
“I don’t have any hot friends.”
Gail glared at Brady.
“Except you?” he offered.
Young Greg continued staring after Lexi and Donno, brow furrowed in confused admiration. “What’s the team policy on hooking up with teammates, anyway?” he asked. “And what’s the etiquette on asking them for deets about that tomorrow?”
Mags made a face. “Never come up before, I don’t think. Too many guys on the team for it to matter.”
“What does that have to do with anything?!” Young Greg asked incredulously.
“Who we supposed to hook up with?”
“Bro, that’s super heteronormative of you. Like, everyone on the team is fuckable, and if you’re saying otherwise, you’re blind AF.”
“You’re both idiots,” Gail said, thankfully de-escalating the ridiculous argument. “For very different reasons, but yeah. Jensie, as Alternate Captain, you got any team bylines to bring up?”
Brady looked uncomfortable as he fidgeted in his seat and wouldn’t meet anyone’s eye. “No policy,” he mumbled. “Probably a bad idea?”
“Oh, for sure that’s a bad idea.” Young Greg laughed. He pointed after where Donno and Lexi had disappeared with Aimes. “That is a disaster waiting to happen. Like, at least they don’t play on the same line or something, but they’re not gonna be able to look each other in the eye tomorrow.”
“You speaking from your vast experience?” GG asked.
“I mean, like, not personal experience—”
“All right, kids,” Gail said. She got up and stretched before pulling her hood over her hair. “I hate to dip out on an ongoing party, but I’m exhausted and would rather win tomorrow than drink more today.”
“Gail’s right. Benns will kill us if he finds out we stayed out past ten,” Mags said.
“Kill us?” Guy asked. “You mean send a strongly worded message talking about how disappointed he is in us, then spin it into a positive we can rally around?”
“Yeah, that’s what I said.”
Everyone slowly prepared to leave. Brady and Nick lingered behind, and Nick waited until after the goodbyes.
“You all right?” he asked when they were alone.
Brady gave a half shrug. He kept his eyes glued to the table. “Yeah. A little burnt out.”
“Ready to head to the hotel then?”
Brady looked absolutely defeated. It was like that time they’d pulled together and ended up losing to the best team in the league by a single point.
It was absolute dejection: Brady had closed in on himself, and his walls were back up.
Whatever had happened at the bar, it seemed like there was no chance of him talking to Nick about it, and no chance of him getting over it tonight.
That spark that had lit Brady’s eyes all day—hell, had lit him up for the past week since they’d found out about the tournament—was extinguished. He wasn’t bothering to fake it anymore, not when it was just the two of them.
“The hotel?” He gulped and looked away. “Yeah, good idea. Maybe we can watch a movie or something.”
It was a half-hearted suggestion at best. Nick saw it for what it really was: he wanted an escape, a way to get out of all the innuendos and too-friendly touches and lingering gazes.
Nick wanted to slam the table and demand what the fuck Aimes had said to him.
Nick hadn’t been the one to instigate things all day!
He hadn’t suggested the shared room, and he wanted an explanation—any explanation—and not this cowardly avoidance.
He wanted to grab a fistful of Brady’s hair and pull him in for a kiss and see if that changed his mind or settled his nerves.
He wanted to do all that… but as quick as the anger came, it left. He didn’t like how things had turned out, but for whatever reason, Brady wasn’t interested anymore. Hell, maybe he hadn’t been interested at all. It wasn’t fair of Nick to put his longing onto Brady’s shoulders.
So instead, he put a gentle hand on Brady’s shoulder and waited until he reluctantly met Nick’s gaze.
“A movie sounds great,” he said with as much of a smile as he could muster.
Brady let out a sound that was likely meant to be a relieved sigh. It sounded more like a sob, choking him a bit before it could fully escape.
“C’mon.” Nick stood up and nodded toward the door.
“Yeah, okay.”
It was a small mercy they’d driven separately. It gave Nick time to recollect, to try and numb himself.
Nick showered (door locked to make his understanding of the new situation clear) while Brady settled in. He took his time drying off before pulling on clean boxers and a loose tee.
Brady was on the edge of his bed in a pair of boxer briefs with a shirt that looked like it had shrunk in the wash.
He sat there, legs spread and hair tousled, looking like some fucking hockey-playing Adonis, Nick’s own Pygmalion dream come to life.
Not fair. All he wanted to do was run his hand through Brady’s hair, nuzzle against his beard, and—
Nope, gotta drop that line of thinking before he got himself in trouble.
Brady looked up from his channel surfing. He must have seen Nick’s face and understood some of what was going through his mind. He looked down at his sleepwear and kept his eyes fixed on the floor.
“Disney Channel has an MCU marathon,” Brady said quietly, almost like he was ashamed to suggest it. He looked embarrassed about this whole mess, and it softened Nick’s heart.
“Sounds good.”
They made it through half a movie before Brady drifted off.
Light snores filled the room, and Nick quietly turned off the TV.
It took an impressive amount of willpower to not look in Brady’s direction, because seeing Brady softened by sleep would be too much.
So he rolled over, back to Brady’s entire side of the room, and clutched a pillow close.
He willed himself to fall asleep and not dream, damn it.
He felt bereft of what could have been.
He shoved the feeling aside. They had the rest of their time in the shared hotel room, the rest of the friggin’ tournament to deal with.
Yes, there was potential fallout affecting them when they got home, but Nick just wanted to survive the next twenty-four hours without things becoming too awkward.
Then he could fall apart in the privacy of his own home.