Chapter Eleven May #4
Brady Derek Jensen: he’s limiting his screen time so it’ll be a while before he responds
Gregory Smegory: Glad Nicki’s okay but I also noticed you ignored the Tom Wilson thing
Brady Derek Jensen: intentionally
Nick had avoided picking up his phone for a few days. It started as a necessity. Even on the dimmest setting, the screen hurt his eyes and a headache would slowly build behind his temples. Jenna had actually stolen his phone for the first day to force him to be good, and he appreciated that.
Later on, it was more about avoiding work.
He’d taken a week off because why not—he had the days saved up—but now he was getting emails from Chad and some of the other sales guys who didn’t know that he was hurt.
Or didn’t care, but he gave them the benefit of the doubt to avoid being pissed off.
If he started down the path of reading work emails, he’d pull out his laptop and start doing actual work.
He wanted to play hockey, and he needed to rest to make that happen. Yes, he’d be swamped when he went back to work, but until then, he was entitled to some actual rest to recoup.
Now as he caught up on the group chat, he chuckled.
Nick J. Porter: hey guys feeling better thanks for everything
Nick J. Porter: really excited about that chance to play in the tournament - try not to tank the team’s standings while I’m out ??
And then, before he could be tempted to do more, he turned off his phone and put it aside. The one symptom he hadn’t shaken yet was how tired he was, and the best part of being home from work was getting to nap whenever he wanted.
*
There was a knock at the door.
Nick hung out with people, Nick interacted with other human beings, and Nick was friendly with his neighbors and knew most by name.
No one knocked on his door, though.
Ever.
Jenna and Terry and other family members likely to stop by had a key. Anyone else, he’d meet them wherever they were going. He hadn’t ordered any packages, as far as he was aware, and Mormons didn’t come to this neighborhood.
So who the hell was knocking at his door at 6 p.m. on a Wednesday?
He considered ignoring it. If someone was trying to sell something, he wasn’t interested, and he was definitely not interested in dancing around ways to say “get the fuck off my property.”
But in his heart, he was too damn polite for it, and he begrudgingly went to answer when he heard a second knock.
There, on his doorstep, wearing a Team USA jersey, was Brady friggin’ Jensen.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, and immediately felt like an idiot. “Sorry, that was rude—”
Brady looked him over with a raised eyebrow, his eyes lingering on his ratty old sweatpants. “Get dressed. What, you nap all day?”
Nick gawked at him. “I’m injured,” he said defensively. “And big words from someone who wears friggin’ joggers and shorts all the time. Sweatpants are perfectly acceptable home wear.”
“Yeah, but we’re going out. Get dressed. I’ll wait in the car.”
“Going out—?”
“The Jagr Bombs’ve got a game and neither of us can go, so we’re going out to the bar instead.”
“I can’t watch the TVs—”
“I know. I got it covered. Get dressed, for fuck’s sake.”
Nick knew he wouldn’t get anywhere by arguing, so he went upstairs to put on something he hadn’t been wearing for two days straight. There wasn’t enough time to shower. He maybe overdid it on the body spray, but oh well. Better than smelling like his hamper.
When they ended up at Krazy Dan’s (though at a table farther from the bar with no clear line of sight to a TV), Brady set a speaker on the sticky tabletop. He fiddled with his phone until the speaker lit up, and then the familiar sound of hockey commentators filled the space between them.
“Is that—?”
“Game Four? Yeah. I don’t care about this Sharks/Blue Jackets thing, but hockey’s hockey, and it’s all we got.”
Nick smiled widely and pulled the speaker close so he could hear.
One of the minor disappointments he’d suffered was avoiding TV.
No streaming his favorite shows or movies, no NHL playoffs, nothing that he’d normally use to fill his time.
This was a great alternative, one that was very old school.
It reminded him of how his dad described listening to games as a kid, him and his siblings crowded around the family radio in the kitchen.
“This is awesome,” he said, then gestured to Brady’s jersey. “Do either of the teams have Team USA players?”
“Fuck if I know. I don’t follow these teams. I just want to skip to who wins the Cup so I know who I want to see dive-bomb next year. No beer for you, but you want to share some nachos?”
“Sure.”
*
“How much do you remember?” Brady asked carefully when the first intermission hit. “From the concussion?”
Nick squinted and tried to think. “Not much, I don’t think?
Like, I remember getting to the rink, and I remember playing, but I don’t really remember anything else.
There’re some things that maybe I remember or maybe it’s just my brain trying to come up with a memory for things I know happened.
I know I got hit, so I kind of have a mental picture for that, but I have no idea if it’s real or not. ”
Brady nodded along and slid the nachos closer. Nick took one but didn’t eat it, just absentmindedly used it as a prop as he kept talking.
“I know the Gregs and Gail helped me out in the locker room, and I can totally picture it… except if you ask me any details about what bench we used or who did what, I have no clue. And I know you took me to the clinic by the rink, but I don’t remember being in the car or talking to the doctor or anything.
First thing I actually remember is waking up and wondering what the hell Jenna was doing on my nice recliner while I was passed out on my shitty old couch. ”
Brady nodded again. He looked disappointed but unsurprised. “So you basically lost the whole night?”
“Yep. Why, I say some really embarrassing shit or something?”
“I’ve seen you eat it painfully on the ice. I’ve seen you take an epic swing at a puck only to miss entirely. You’ve never been embarrassed, ever, so I’m not sure what you’d have to say to feel anything close to embarrassment.”
That surprised him. Nick had been embarrassed a great many times in his life, and a startling number of those times had occurred in front of Brady Derek Jensen. Sure, he laughed them off, but some had been downright mortifying at the time.
And apparently Brady hadn’t noticed.
Nick faked a laugh and ate his nacho in an attempt to look natural. “So what I’m hearing is, I said some ridiculous stuff, but you’re not going to tell me what.”
Brady tried to hide a smile. “It wasn’t that bad, I promise. You asked me a million times what happened to my hand. That was the worst of it.”
“Oh.” That was a relief considering the wealth of things he wanted to say to Brady, and a whole lot more that he never wanted to say to Brady.
“Guess that’s not so bad.” Fuck, why was he upset he hadn’t said anything else?
Rather than overanalyze it, Nick changed the topic.
“Thanks for taking me to the doctor, by the way. Not sure if I actually put that into words already or if I was too out of it.”
“I’d say ‘any time,’ but you better not get your dumb ass concussed again, so I’ll leave it at ‘you’re welcome.’ ”
“I don’t think it was my ass that got concussed, but okay.” He stole the last nacho. It was soggy and kind of gross, but it gave him something to look at that wasn’t light-blue eyes. “You gonna abandon me to shitty bars once your suspension is up?”
“Absolutely. Though by then, the lights and ice shouldn’t hurt your eyes or whatever. You could come be our cheerleader.”
“I’ll see if I can find some pompoms.”
They didn’t talk about concussions or any other dangerous stuff like feelings for the rest of the game. It was a good reminder that this “friend” thing they had going wasn’t completely busted.