Chapter 6 Nathan
Nathan
It’s not just one nun.
It’s five. And they’re in a ten passenger van with three back rows of bench seats. They’re on their way back from a conference in… I don’t remember now.
I’m so fucking tired.
The wonderful ladies not only give me a bottle of water and a bag of snack mix, they also put me in the very back seat all by myself.
Crew, on the other hand, is in the middle of the very first bench seat, surrounded by, believe it or not, hockey nut nuns.
But I can’t even be annoyed by his constant chatter.
For one thing, they’re keeping him entertained and he’s not chattering at me. I am blessedly fully alone in this backseat where it is warm, relatively quiet, and dark.
I’m coming down off of the adrenaline rush from our accident and my horrible flashback to my childhood trauma, and desperately need a minute without having to be polite to anyone, especially my wife’s other husband.
He assured me that he’d blocked Danielle on his social media accounts so she won’t see any of this—him posting for a ride, people posting that they’d stopped but we were already gone, people who are not the nuns claiming that they’d picked us up. It’s a shit show.
A shit show I’m not dealing with.
Crew’s in charge now.
Yes, I said that. Out loud with witnesses even. And no, I didn’t bump my head.
I’m just so tired.
Thankfully, Crew is able to fill the sisters in on why we are on the road from Decatur and that we’re trying to get to Des Moines.
I’m hoping by the time we get there, we’ll be able to charter a flight to Aspen.
Hell, I’m hoping by the time we get there, or close, my damned assistant will be awake and answer his damned phone.
I have to give Crew credit though. Despite it being the middle of the night, he’s still charming as fuck.
He also does not blame me for the detour to see our kids when telling the story to the nuns.
In fact, the nuns give us a chorus of “awww” and he definitely makes up a good story about how we ended up in the ditch that leaves out any semblance of the truth.
I am way too tired to worry about the consequences of Crew lying directly to five nuns about how our wife distracted me to the point of driving off the road.
They have now gushed over him as a player, the Racketeers as a team, the season in general, how much they miss watching Blake Wilder play since his retirement, and how much they love following our little family.
I have my head tipped back against the seat and my eyes shut and I’m drifting in a dozing state, but it occurs to me that the nuns being completely okay with our polycule is interesting.
“You’re behind on your number of Hat Tricks from where you were last year this time,” Agatha tells him.
Crew gasps audibly and I smirk even if I keep my eyes shut. She’s not wrong. And she’s not the first one to point it out to him. I do love when Crew gets a little shit about his stats.
Ever since I taught Danielle about hockey stats and how to keep track of Crew’s numbers, she makes a point of praising him effusively for his good ones.
Of course, that always ends up well for her because Crew loves when Danielle proves she’s his biggest fan and pays her back for her attention and loyalty with cookies and orgasms. Yes, often times together.
As if he needs that. He has the sports media, the entire city of Chicago, hell, the whole state of Illinois, thinking he’s the best thing since Boba tea.
Which is another trend that I don’t agree with, by the way. The last thing I want is to suck on a straw and end up with gelatinous balls in my mouth. I almost vomited the first time I tried it. It hasn’t gotten much better for me since then.
I don’t like balls in my mouth, what can I say?
“My shots on goal and assists are up this year though,” Crew defends himself.
Agatha hums. “Yes. But I think you’re slower. I haven’t timed you, but I’ll bet you’re slower in sprints, aren’t you?”
My smile grows.
“Agatha, you’re killing me,” Crew groans.
“That’s not a no,” Agatha says. “I think it’s because you’re too content. Too happy. You’ve gotten rid of that restless edge that always made you skate fast and hit hard.”
“Are you really, as a nun, as a servant of God, telling me that I should be less happy?” Crew asks.
I know him well enough by now that, even with my eyes shut, I can hear that he’s more amused by this than offended.
“Certainly not,” she says. “I just find it interesting. And I love that your family has made you happy and content. Though it wouldn’t hurt you to get a little faster when you’re out there. Alexsei is still skating fast and he’s happy and settled as well.”
I almost chuckle out loud because I have had the same conversation with people. Crew was definitely slower than he used to be and is absolutely slower than Alexsei, who has managed to keep all of his stats up, despite the fact that he also is in a committed polycule.
However, Crew is still one of the fastest guys in the league and Alexsei isn’t a competitor, he’s a teammate. So it’s all good.
“You have to come to a game,” Crew says. “Seriously Agatha, I need you at a game where you can give me a pep talk before and then tell me how wonderful I am after.”
We already offered the owner’s box to the ladies in exchange for the ride when they turned down every offer of money and made us stop thanking them. They have been to games before, but swear they don’t need all the grandiosity of sitting in the owner’s box.
“If I do, I’ll want to be right by the glass near the player’s bench where I can tell you what you’re doing wrong,” she tells him.
That can be arranged.
“I’ll make it happen,” Crew tells her. “Want to come to practice?”
She laughs. “You don’t want that.”
“As long as you don’t meet with Nathan about me,” Crew says.
“Whether you’re living with him or not, Nathan is going to have to start looking at some of these new draft options if you keep slowing down. I can’t believe he passed up Atlas Martin. The guy is phenomenal.”
“He doesn’t need a new Center,” Crew says quickly. “He has the best one in the league.”
As much as I love when Crew gets taken down a peg or two, and as much as I want to pretend I’m still asleep back here so everyone will leave me alone, now I have to jump in.
I don’t, however, open my eyes.
“Agatha, you know as well as I do that the last thing the Racketeers need is a hot headed, nineteen-year-old coming in and thinking he knows better than everyone.”
“You could shape him up,” Agatha says of Atlas, the phenom out of Canada.
“Come on. I thought we were friends,” I say. “Don’t wish Atlas Martin on me.”
Of course we had looked at Atlas. Every team in the league looked at Atlas. He’s an amazing player. But he has absolutely no control over his emotions.
“The boy will grow up. Being with a group of men like the Racketeers would be great for him. I’ll admit he has a temper problem.”
“And an ego problem,” I say. “And as Crew said, we already have an incredible Center. He still has years ahead of him. Where would I put Atlas anyway?”
“Thanks, Boss,” Crew says.
I’m definitely gonna hear about this later. But I mean it. I wouldn’t trade Crew even if I wasn’t sleeping with his wife.
“That’s all I needed to hear,” Agatha says.
I crack an eye now and look at her. She’s turned slightly in her seat watching me.
“That was a roundabout way of finding out if Crew is talking about retirement?” I ask.
“Of course. He has a beautiful wife, a couple of kids, he’s slowing down…”
“Okay, Agatha, we’ve got it already,” Crew says.
“People have been talking,” she says with a shrug. “He has numerous endorsements and you know that anyone with a microphone would be happy to put him behind it. He could be doing a lot of things other than playing.”
I open both eyes now but pin Crew with my stare. “Crew isn’t allowed to retire until I tell him he can. And I have not given him that word.”
Crew sighs heavily. “It’s true. If I do something like that, I’m on dish duty for the rest of my life. Or they won’t let me…”
I roll my eyes. Thank God, he cut himself off because I know he was about to say something about Michael and me not letting him do something with Danielle.
The ladies all laugh, clearly catching on to the same.
Agatha pats Crew’s knee. “Well, we wouldn’t want that to happen. You’re young. You work on those sprint times and everything will be just fine.”
“Are we there yet?” Crew asks our driver.
Lizzie shakes her head. “About thirty more minutes.”
The nuns are dropping us off in Davenport, Iowa.
I have no idea where that is. That’s not true.
I probably do, but my head is too tired to think about it.
I know that it’s not Des Moines. But it’s on the way.
And the gals know some amazing diner where there is guaranteed to be a number of Racketeers fans who can take us the rest of the way to Des Moines.
This is ridiculous. There is no way in any normal circumstance on any typical day I would agree to any of this. But here we are. And it’s all my fault.
Forty-five minutes later, we are seated in a booth in Daisy‘s diner, a roadside diner with breakfast served twenty-four hours a day. We’re on the outskirts of Davenport, Iowa and the nuns are going to have breakfast and then continue north to Dubuque.
We haven’t even had a chance to ask for a ride yet but it seems the entire diner is, indeed, full of Racketeers fans. Crew barely had a chance to place his order before he was signing autographs and taking photos.
The women and Crew kept their promise not to let on who I am. I can’t handle more advice about how I should be running the team or complaints about who I did or didn’t draft last season.
I just honestly cannot handle anything more than eating at this point. Even that is a stretch.
The noise and brightness level in Daisy’s is, obviously, one hundred times more than the back of the van and it only takes ten minutes for me to have a throbbing headache behind my eyes.
Crew is in the very middle of a circular booth at the back of the diner, orange juice in one hand and coffee in the other. He’s talking through the latest series play-by-play. No one knows who I am, or they don’t care if they do recognize me. Which is perfect.
I gulp down a cup of coffee, shove a couple of pancakes and strips of bacon into my mouth and then I head out to the van.
I just need twenty minutes of sleep. Crew is going to be in that diner for at least another hour, and the nuns have only just been served their Belgian waffles and biscuits and gravy. They’re regulars at the diner and so they also have a lot of people stopping by to chat.
No one is going to miss me for twenty minutes.
I pray that the nuns are trusting souls who don’t lock up the van when it’s right outside the diner.
God comes through.
I slide the door open and slip back to my bench seat at the very back of the van. I slip off my jacket, fold it into a makeshift pillow, and stretch out on the bench. With a deep, weary sigh, I close my eyes.
It’s finally daylight, we have a plan, we’re out of the storm and on clean, dry roads, and Des Moines is only two and a half hours away.
We’re not to Aspen yet, but the worst part of the trip is over.