14. Nolan
Chapter fourteen
Nolan
Iwoke up in the gaming chair with the screens gone to standby and no idea what time it was.
The chair had done what I paid for. My hip sat cradled with zero pain. The center screen held a paused frame of Boston's penalty kill, and I had no memory of having paused the tape.
Elias stood in the doorway with a glass of water, watching me wake up.
"What time is it?" I asked.
"Little after eleven." He came in and set the water on the arm of the chair. "You went down while I was on the phone. I stopped the video and let you sleep."
"Their goalie cheats," I said.
"Cheats how?"
"Not that kind. He guesses early. When the puck moves side to side down low, he drops before the pass even arrives. He's giving up the top of the net on purpose, betting that by June nobody's got the hands left to lift one over him. He's been right for four straight games."
"Are your hands too tired for that?"
"Ask me tomorrow after the game."
Getting out of the chair after sleeping in it was a two-stage business. Elias didn't reach for me. He let me do it on my own.
He waited until I was standing, then knelt without a word and pressed his thumbs into the band of muscle down the outside of the thigh, working the sleep-stiffness out. I gripped the top of the chair for balance and leaned into it.
When he finished, he kept his hand there. It rested flat on my hip, and he slid it slightly to the inside.
He looked up at me from one knee. He'd just finished another call that I'm sure he'd identify as boring. No man's calls are always boring.
There was a question on my tongue. Who do you actually work for?
I ran it ahead. Whatever he answered would change things between us. If the answer was the same he'd already given me, I was a man who'd made an accusation before a game we could not lose. If it was hiding something, then the past few weeks had been built on a lie.
There wasn't a winning posture. I decided to give it two weeks. The run would be over by then, and Elias's return to Minnesota might render it all moot.
I let go of the question. It was easier than I suspected it would be.
"Let's go to bed," I said.
In the bedroom, I undressed him slowly while he stood before me. First was his shirt, and his breathing changed under my knuckles at the third button. By the last one, he was holding my hips in his hands and pressing his hard cock against me.
He was gentle as long as it took to get my naked body down onto the bed, sliding a pillow under my left side. Then he raked his fingers into my hair and held tight, pulling my mouth up to his.
He wedged a knee between mine, and I took his weight on top of me. All that long muscle bore down on me. I gripped his ass cheeks, pulling him against me until the friction between our cocks was right.
He swore into my mouth and bit my lower lip. I bit back.
Somehow, Elias wedged a hand between us and stroked our cocks together. His was longer and slim like his body, mine thick and rock hard.
"Fuck, Elias—"
"Yeah—it's us, Nolan."
He breathed as if he were running a race as he worked us both in his hand, thumb dragging over my head with each stroke. I opened my eyes to look at his face and watch him come undone.
"There," I said. "Right there, don't—"
He kept us just like that as the orgasm pooled low in my gut and began to climb. I didn't try to stop it.
"Elias, fuck."
He opened his eyes and grinned. That nearly pushed me over the edge. He stroked a little faster, and I came, shooting between us, making our bodies slick.
He was only one stroke behind me. His body seized, and a massive shudder ran through him. Elias pressed his forehead against mine and then feverishly kissed me. I held on tight until he rolled to the side, panting.
As we lay there, a new truth settled into my chest. I loved him. The thought had arrived without permission, and I stared up at the ceiling, hating that it landed as danger instead of joy.
The Cup Final would be over soon, and Elias would return to Minnesota. I'd find out what these nights had meant to him. Did they matter, or were they convenient? Was he just another person who wanted something from a star professional athlete?
I hated myself for thinking that. I kept it inside, smiled, and let him think I was basking in the afterglow.
"Sleep," Elias said into my hair.
***
"Rise and grind, old man." I killed Maddie's voice and lay still for one breath, taking inventory.
The hip woke in a surly, but not vicious mood.
It was a six on the ten-point pain scale.
Beside me, Elias was already awake, scrolling through his phone.
We did the floor work on both sides of the bed without talking, his stretching and mine.
We left the Colchester early for morning skate. We were on target to beat Jamie to the arena.
Elias took a different route than he had on any other morning, and I didn't ask. Somebody in an old brick four-flat had hung a bedsheet off the fire escape with the Steamers' wheel painted on it. Underneath, large block letters spelled out: WE'VE WAITED LONG ENOUG.
"They ran out of sheet," Elias said.
"They started too big. Rookie mistake."
We were most of the way downtown when I said, "Take us down through the Landing first."
He glanced over. "We've got time?"
"Sure. We'll land in the middle of the crowd."
I gave the directions, taking us under Eads Bridge and onto Laclede's Landing, where the streets turned to cobblestone. Old brick warehouses stood shoulder-to-shoulder where they had for over a century.
Elias rolled it slow. The tires were loud and uneven under us. The block opened at the bottom, and the river was just there, wide and brown. A working tug pushed a string of barges upstream.
I don't know what I wanted from it. I'd driven past the water many times in the past three and a half years. The morning before Game Five, I wanted to roll past it with Elias in the seat next to me.
"Guys on that tug work twelve-hour days," I said. "Six on, six off, weeks at a time. Hard work."
Elias glanced at me. "Do you like thinking about that?"
"I like that somebody's out there doing it while most of the city's still asleep."
Elias brought us up out of the Landing and back onto the flat street grade.
At a red light, he reached into the side pocket of his work bag, between the seats.
He pulled out a charging cable and plugged his phone into the console without looking at it.
His eyes never stopped moving. He caught everything: a person in the crosswalk, a van idling in front of the dry cleaner, and someone carrying a McDonald's bag down the sidewalk.
We still beat most of the rest of the time. Jamie was on the ice, snapping pucks at the far net. Not the top corner this time. He was working the ice low, blocker side, six inches off the post, over and over.
He'd watched the same tape I had, and he worked the goalie's cheat into muscle memory. I skated past behind the net.
"Subtle," I said.
"I don't know what you mean."
"Neither will he," I said, "if you look somewhere else first."
Jamie grinned and lined up another puck. I carried on down the boards for another lap around the rink.
***
Game-day afternoons are the hardest hours of a hockey player's week. You get back from the skate by noon, the game's at seven, and the seven hours in between require a disciplined schedule.
Eat at one. Down at two. Up at four. You set a schedule and you obey it because an idle afternoon is how a man beats himself before anybody drops the puck.
Elias sat at the island with his laptop, and I ate the pasta that the service marked GAME DAY in block letters. Brick texted at one-thirty. It was a photo and no message.
Maddie'd baked a cake, and it sat on their kitchen counter with five candles planted in it. She'd piped a paddlewheel across the top in blue.
While I was admiring it, she texted me herself.
Maddie: five candles. one per game. don't make me have to buy seven.
Nolan: Are you doubting us?
Maddie: I'm managing expectations.
I set the phone down and caught Elias watching me. I turned the photo around so that he could see it.
"That's a good cake," he said.
"She likes baking. Said if we made the Final she'd do the Wheel." I looked at it. "I don't have hands that steady."
"You're proud of this."
"I'm allowed that. I'm the fun gay uncle. I taught her nothing, but I'm taking full credit."
I went down at two, like the schedule said. Lying on top of the covers with the shades drawn, I managed thirty-five minutes asleep. On a Cup Final afternoon, that counts as a minor miracle.
At four I got up and started getting ready: shower and the suit. Elias stood in the hall watching the last of it, me tightening my tie in the mirror by the door.
"There he is," he said.
"Who?"
"The guy from the posters. I think I like the other one best, for the record."
"The other one can't win a face-off."
"Sure he can, and he can do it in sneakers." Elias laughed to himself as he picked up his keys.
The building was loud well before game time. They crowd started standing during warmups. By the anthem, the walls vibrated.
The first period ran nothing-nothing, and the noise never settled. A crowd usually breathes, swelling on a rush, dropping to a hush on a penalty call.
This one never dropped. Through every whistle, TV timeout, and dead puck, it kept up a flat, sustained roar.
Boston made the minor adjustments everybody makes: a different look on the forecheck early, or sending their big pair out against Wes instead of me, but the spine was the same: 1-3-1 across the neutral zone.
Boston scored at 9:40 of the second. It happened fast. I lost the draw, and they planted a body in front of the crease so Misha couldn't see, and a shot came through their screen, ticking off a stick on the way in.
Nobody blames the goalie for that one. Brick said the deflection was luck, and everyone believed him. I sat there knowing the whole thing started with a face-off I'd have won a year ago.