Chapter Eight February #2
hope you have a safe trip cya in the morning
Stupid, thoughtful Brady from three weeks ago.
Instead of deleting the conversation or the number, Nick opened the contact details. His fingers flew over the screen as he quickly, effortlessly made the change he needed.
He closed the contact info, the fruit of his labor already evident.
Brady (7:17 p.m.)
hope you have a safe trip cya in the morning
Nick had been building him up as this ideal for so long, the cute guy who was sweet and good at hockey. As “Jensie,” he was too much of a reminder of all the things that had grown between them. For his own sanity, Nick needed to tear that down and start over.
“Brady” was just a guy Nick happened to know from hockey. A good guy, but a regular guy.
And with that small gesture, he took his first real step forward and away from Brady Derek Jensen.
*
At the next game, Nick was early for once. He’d skipped his post-work run and gone to the rink at a decent time. He was in desperate need of some out-of-game practice, and a warm-up before puck drop was an easy way to do that.
Unfortunate side effect? When he got to the locker room, it was him, Brady, and Guy.
Guy was preoccupied with putting his gear on, headphones in, completely oblivious to the world around him. This was a standard part of his pre-game routine and effectively made his presence irrelevant.
So really… it was only him and Brady.
Fuck his life.
Nick paused at the door, took a deep breath, and decided to jump into the deep end.
“Hey,” he called. Actions and words needed to go hand in hand. Saying Brady was a regular person meant treating him like a regular person.
Brady didn’t look over. He stood there, diligently re-taping the blade of his stick.
Nick tried again, a little louder this time. “Hey.”
Still nothing.
Frustrated more than anything else, he stomped over into his line of sight and waved both hands. “Hey, Earth to Brady, you with us?”
Brady visibly startled and dropped the roll of tape, still connected to his stick. It spun around, sticking to itself and ruining the rest of the tape job.
“Nicki,” he squeaked. “Sorry, didn’t know you were, uh…” He paused awkwardly. “Didn’t know you were talking to me.”
Nick made a show of looking around the nearly empty locker room.
Brady laughed soundlessly, more a puff of air than anything else. “Yeah, should’ve figured that out.” He frowned. “Did you… did you just call me Brady?”
“You do realize that’s your name, right?” he teased. Was it wrong he felt a bit smug, getting a reaction out of Brady? There was something satisfying about it after weeks of purposefully ignoring each other.
“I’m aware, but…”
I’ve never called you that before. Yes, I know. Glad you know, too.
“No one on the team calls me that,” Brady said, taking the easy way out by not focusing on Nick specifically.
Nick bit back the word coward and settled on rolling his eyes.
“You got a problem with it?”
Brady shook his head.
“Good,” Nick said.
“Good,” Brady agreed, though he looked far from happy.
They stood there in painful, awkward silence. Jenna had suggested they act like adults about this, and here they were, acting like middle schoolers.
He took advantage of the lull in their conversation to take in Brady’s appearance.
He looked good, if only because he always looked good, but there was something…
off. There was something about his body language that screamed tired.
His eyes were dull, like he wasn’t quite present, and there was a paleness to him that made him almost fragile.
Seeing him like this was so strange. Nick could imagine himself asking what was wrong, already forming an invitation for beers if Brady wanted to talk or vent about work like Nick sometimes—
And then, because Nick didn’t want any misplaced protective instincts getting in the way of his plans, he shook his head and looked away.
“Well,” Nick said, voice a little too thick, “good luck tonight.”
“Yeah, you too,” Brady hastily replied. It looked like he had more to say, but Nick turned to find himself a spot well away from both him and Guy. He’d done his small part to move things in the right direction, and he wasn’t up to doing more yet.
People slowly filed in, and the tension leaked out of the room with each new presence. It was easier to ignore Brady when there were others vying for his attention.
Once they were on the ice, though? Different story.
They played different positions and were never on the same line, not in any meaningful way, but Brady and Nick had always clicked on the ice.
It was their similar styles combined with their practice between games.
It wasn’t uncommon for them to be on the ice together, and that usually meant points on the board and shutting down the other team.
Lately? Not so much.
They were out of sync, a step out of time with each other.
Nick normally kept an eye out for Brady on the ice.
He was an easy pass and an incredibly reliable player…
except now, his presence didn’t seem to fully register.
He’d be open, and Nick would legitimately not see him.
Or they’d end up covering the same person because Nick wouldn’t notice him, meaning they were always leaving someone open.
Not today, Nick promised himself. Today he was fixing things. He was making a conscious effort to pay attention to Brady, to keep him involved in the play, and to make smart decisions that would help the team.
So at the end of the first period when he saw Brady wide open, Nick seized the opportunity.
“Brady, heads up!”
He’d meant to send the pass right up to Brady for the point shot.
And he did send the pass pretty well… except that as soon as he called out, Brady mis-stepped and tripped over his own feet.
The puck sailed past him out of the zone, leaving Gail to sprint after it and stop any breakaway attempts by the other team.
One incident wasn’t terrible, especially one that didn’t actually hurt the team.
“Brady!” Nick screamed from the bench. “One hard! Behind the net!”
Brady shifted his stance, and for a second, Nick thought he’d both heard and understood Nick’s help.
Instead, he turned toward Nick’s voice, lost an edge, and went careening into the boards.
It was only Guy’s work in-net that kept the other team’s resulting push from ending up in the back of the net.
After that, Brady was fuming.
He slammed the door harshly when he stepped onto the bench, then kicked it for good measure to vent his frustration.
“You all right there, bro?” Young Greg asked cautiously. He leaned away from Brady in case the tantrum wasn’t over.
If looks could kill, Young Greg would’ve been bleeding out on the ice.
“I’m fine,” Brady snapped. “I’m having an off game.”
“Off season,” Donno muttered safely from the far end of the bench.
“You know what,” Benns said in his most diplomatic, most captainy voice, “I think we’re gonna have Lexi and Mags play a bit more. Gail, Brady, I hope you don’t mind pulling back a bit.”
Gail cursed under her breath; Brady looked like he wanted to cry.
Great.
Nick did an admirable job pretending none of this was his fault. That was giving himself too much credit, right?
No one said anything either way. They ignored the whole Brady mess, they ignored any involvement Nick might have had, and Benns did his usual solemn post-loss speech.
“We could be better,” he said. The whole team was sullen as they changed, close to mutiny if he pushed too far. Benns read the room and finished with a weak, “I’ll send out some new strategies. Let’s try for better next time.”
Brady was the first one out the door. Nick lingered longer than necessary, mostly to avoid having to look anyone in the eye. He prayed the team would ignore him and let him stew in his own misery; the last thing he wanted was to talk.
So he wasn’t even surprised when Gail blocked his path out of the locker room. He’d never been that lucky.
“Let’s go grab a drink,” she said.
“Who, me?”
He and Gail got along fine, but they’d never hung out. Hell, he didn’t even have her phone number or anything.
“You see anyone else?” she said.
Nick looked around. He was the only one still there.
“Uhh, I mean, I’ve got—”
“Not asking. Let’s go. There’s a bar like two blocks from here. You can follow me.”
He was too scared of her to say no, in part because he knew she’d follow him home if he tried to ditch her. “Yeah, um… okay.”
He followed her to a dilapidated building that gave Krazy Dan’s a run for its money. Her car was right out front with an empty spot next to it. He took it, thought better of it, and reparked two spots down. In the extra two minutes he needed to back into the spot, Gail had disappeared inside.
It was easy enough to find her at the bar, where she was taking off her coat and seating herself on a stool in front of the taps. He took the adjacent seat and lamented that he couldn’t take the safer one two seats away like he had with his car.
“Two beers, please,” Gail said, using up all her politeness with the cute bartender. “Yuengling.”
Nick waited quietly until the bartender had poured their beers and moved on before turning to Gail. “You know I’m gay, right? Just in case this is you trying to take me on a date.”
Gail looked at him like he was quite possibly the dumbest person she’d ever met. “Yes, I know. That’s part of the problem. I know you’re gay and no, this isn’t a date.”
“Oh. Good.” A pause. “Wait, part of the problem? What? What’s this about?”
With a deep sigh, Gail chose to take a drink instead of answering. She licked her lips afterward and weighed out her words before saying, “You’ve broken my defensive partner.”
It took a moment for Nick to process what she was implying, and then he burst out with an indignant “Me!?”
Gail put up a hand to shut him up. It annoyed him that it worked. “You’ve broken Jens, and you are also playing like shit. Surprisingly aggressive, but you play like shit when it counts. Fix it.”
He considered arguing that he was not playing poorly and that he certainly had no effect on Brady’s playing, but then thought better of it. “I literally don’t know how,” he said honestly.
Gail rolled her eyes. “Is this an issue of fucking each other or not fucking each other?”
“Oh my God.”
“So not fucking. Look, I don’t know what’s going on, and I really don’t want to know details. What can I do to help?”
“Kill me?”
She glared at him.
He floundered for a more productive suggestion. “I don’t know. Talk to Brady?”
“I’ve already tried talking to Jens, but that’s never going to work. He shuts down whenever I even try to talk about you. You, you’re more of a functioning human being in terms of people skills, so it’s gotta be you.”
“I really don’t know what to do.”
“Start by not calling him Brady?”
“It’s his name! We call you Gail! Why can’t I call him Brady?”
“The man literally fell on his ass mid-game. Twice. Both times right after you called him that. He’s a hot mess, and that’s not helping. Besides, you guys call me Gail because you’re not allowed to call me anything else.”
“It’s not my fault he’s a mess,” Nick grumbled, only half believing it.
“It’s not not your fault, though. You know damn well none of us call him that, and I think if we’re being honest here, we know that if I called him that, it wouldn’t throw him off.
You’re the one he’s close to on the team—” She saw him about to argue, and she gave him a scathing look so he wouldn’t interrupt.
“Shut up. It’s true. You’re the only one on the team with the power to fuck him up that badly.
I repeat: all you said was his actual name and he couldn’t function. So maybe stop doing that?”
“Fine,” Nick said through clenched teeth. “He can be Jensie from Hockey to his heart’s content.”
She blinked three times in quick succession, then moved on without asking what exactly the significance of “Jensie from Hockey” was.
“Great. That’s step one; figure out step two. You’ve got three games to get your shit together.”
“…or?”
“Or I talk to Benns about it.”
Nick shuddered. He knew full well Benns would put in a solid effort to play counselor, and he really, really did not want to deal with that.
“…yeah, please don’t do that.”
“Then fix it,” she said, jabbing her finger into his chest after each word.
She took another drink from her beer as she stood up, then threw some cash on the bar.
“I hope it works out, but seriously, we all need things to work, period. Because you two not talking? Not working for anyone except the other teams.”
Nick stared at his untouched beer.
“Good luck,” Gail said gently, her hand brushing his shoulder as she walked by. “For what it’s worth, I’m rooting for you guys.”
If only that would be enough.
He’d tried to make things better today, he really had, and somehow made them worse. How was he supposed to fix anything if this was how it ended up?
The Jagr Bombs were royally screwed.