Chapter 5
July
“Hey,” Avery said, plopping down in the chair opposite Ethan’s.
The fire had just begun to burn down, still a little smoke wafting through the air.
“Where’s Charlie?” Ethan asked.
Avery tossed Ethan one of the beers in his hands. “What do you think?”
“No way he’s calling Max now. What is it, like three in the morning?” Ethan scoffed, opening his beer and settling back into his Adirondack chair.
They’d had a good day, just the three of them, out on the lake in the boat Avery had bought two offseasons ago.
Grilled steaks out on the patio after. And now, a fire down closer to the water, dusk falling around them.
It definitely wasn’t anything worth complaining about.
Charlie and Avery kept threatening that Ethan would have to eventually buy into their lake house, where the three of them spent their summers living and training, but Ethan would believe it when they actually made it happen.
But for now, he didn’t own any of this, despite that he had his own room, and that meant that at the end of the season, when the firepit needed cleaned out and the grill scraped down, that wasn’t going to be his job.
“Something like that. I think they’re like seven hours out? But no, Max isn’t in Germany right now. He’s in Florida, at Morgan Reynolds’ camp.”
“Oh, the one Charlie refused to go to. How’s he taking it that Max went?”
Avery rolled his eyes but had an expression of unmistakable fondness on his face. “What do you think? Charlie’s in his room right now, FaceTiming the guy like it’s going out of style.”
“If I’d gone,” Ethan scoffed.
“He wouldn’t have talked to you for a month. Or a year, maybe,” Avery finished for him with a chuckle as punctuation. “I know. We just have to accept that Max is . . . well, a lot of exceptions.”
“Every exception,” Ethan grumbled.
“Everyone’s allowed to be weird about a person.” Avery looked thoughtful about this.
“That’s ridiculous. You’re not weird about anyone,” Ethan pointed out. “I’m not weird about anyone.”
Avery looked over at him pointedly, and okay, maybe that wasn’t entirely true. He was weird about someone, but he and Hank weren’t anything like Charlie and Max.
“Okay, maybe not as weird about someone as Charlie is about Max,” Ethan corrected.
“Bud, I don’t believe you,” Avery said gently.
“Ugh, Charlie told you, didn’t he?” Ethan was going to kick his brother’s ass when he came out here, after making goo-goo eyes at Max and rhapsodizing about the fact that Max had actually gone to the camp after Charlie had refused—and only because during an ESPN broadcast of his show at the end of last season, Morgan Reynolds had had the nerve to offer up a pretty justified criticism of the Bandits falling short of the playoffs.
Didn’t matter if Reynolds was right; he’d been practically Charlie’s idol growing up—him and Crosby, too—and that meant that Charlie wouldn’t be forgiving him anytime soon.
“Told me what?” Avery asked innocently.
“About me and Hank.”
“Hank?”
“Don’t even. You’re a terrible fucking liar. Is Charlie even in his room talking to Max?”
“Uh yeah. Unfortunately I had to overhear them before I shut the door.”
“Gross,” Ethan retorted. “I thought maybe you’d both decided it was time for you to have your big Avery queer-is-okay pep talk.”
“Maybe I decided that it was time for me to have my big Avery queer-is-okay pep talk,” Avery said softly.
“Ugh, I don’t need to hear it to know it,” Ethan said.
“Don’t roll your eyes. Even if you know it, it’s still important for me to say it, and for you to hear it.”
Ethan waved at him then and then took a long sip of beer. “Well, let’s have it, then.”
Avery had the nerve to be the one doing the eye-rolling then, after he’d fucking told Ethan he couldn’t.
“You could be a little more enthusiastic,” Avery grumbled.
“I’m just saying, it’s a moot point.”
“Is it?”
Ethan shifted in his chair so he could pin Avery with a hard stare. “Nothing’s happened. And if you fucking interfere—”
“Shouldn’t you be threatening Charlie with that?” Avery asked mildly. “I’m not even in New York. I’m not even going to be playing with you guys.”
“Oh, trust me, we’ve had that talk. Surprisingly, it’s been pretty effective, at least because there’s something Charlie wants, too.”
“Max,” Avery concluded, and Ethan nodded.
“Did Charlie also tell you to come out here and tell me that I need to always remember to put the team first?”
Avery laughed. “No. No. He didn’t—wait, I’m not even that shocked, really.”
“How could you be? You have to witness it all the time.”
It was unnecessary for Avery to guess Max again, because of course that was the root of Charlie’s emphatic team-first argument.
“At some point, we’re going to have to do something about that,” Ethan pointed out.
“No, don’t,” Avery argued instantly. “He’s going to get there, eventually. And we shouldn’t interfere.”
“Will he though?” Ethan questioned.
Avery looked about as convinced as Ethan was. Which meant, not at all.
“Well, we still shouldn’t interfere,” Avery said staunchly. “Kind of like you don’t want either of us to interfere with Hank.”
“But I’m not being catastrophically stupid about Hank.”
Avery raised an eyebrow. “No?”
“No,” Ethan said.
“Just texting him a lot,” Avery offered. “Talking to him a couple of times a week.”
On cue, in Ethan’s hoodie pocket, his phone buzzed.
A text, almost certainly from Hank. His phone only did that when it was Hank—or his brothers, Livvy, or his parents.
Livvy was at their parents’ house, and they’d talked to them just a few hours earlier.
Avery was right here. And Charlie? Well, they’d covered just how occupied his brother was with Max.
“Yeah,” Ethan admitted.
“You guys talked about it?”
Ethan didn’t really want to talk about it with anyone, maybe not even Hank. He just wanted to do it. And if he was talking about it, Avery was probably not very high up on the list. Charlie, either. Because Charlie would just end up lecturing him about putting the team first.
“Not really, and it’s okay. We’re friends.”
“You like him,” Avery pointed out.
“Yeah, in a lot of ways. As a friend first, absolutely. He’s a cool guy. Smart, actually. Smarter than any of us.”
“And yet you’re the one in college,” Avery said dryly.
“That means jack shit, and you know it.”
“Oh, I know,” Avery said. “So he’s smart. Funny, yeah?”
“How’d you know?”
“Please, you’ve got a good sense of humor. Someone would have to be sharp and funny to keep up with you. And he seems to be. Plus, there’s what Charlie’s told me.”
“Oh,” Ethan said a little stupidly. Charlie hadn’t really offered many opinions of Hank to Ethan directly, and Ethan hadn’t asked, because he wasn’t sure he wanted to get into it. Didn’t want another lecture, for sure.
“Let me guess, Charlie didn’t tell you.” Avery laughed. “God, what are we gonna do with him?”
“Put him in a lab and study how someone so dumb can be so good at hockey?”
“Hush,” Avery said, but he was still laughing.
“I didn’t ask either,” Ethan admitted.
“So,” Avery said, “do you think he likes you?”
“Charlie? I think half the time he kind of can’t stand me.”
Avery shook his head. “No, dummy. Hank.”
“Oh. Um. Well. We haven’t talked about it. Not specifically. Not exactly.”
“But you talk all the time,” Avery said.
And yeah, they fucking did. It had been on the tip of Ethan’s tongue to invite him to the lake house a dozen times already this summer. To make a barely veiled attempt to get an invite up to Toronto, where Hank was staying with his parents.
But he hadn’t, even though he wanted it so fucking bad. Even though he’d not gotten the call-up at the end of the season that he’d hoped for, and the closest Ethan had ended up being to New York was Michigan.
“Yeah, but we’re friends, you know?” Ethan shrugged, like that explained it all. But he knew it didn’t. At least not on his end. He couldn’t say for sure about Hank’s end, but he hoped, anyway.
Hoped, even as he tried not to get too ahead of himself before they were even in the same state again.
By the time they saw each other in person again, it would’ve been a whole year.
Twelve months, fifty-two weeks, three hundred sixty-five days, and it would’ve been like nothing—and everything—had changed.
“I don’t talk to my friends as much as you talk to Hank,” Avery pointed out dryly, “but if that’s the angle you wanna take, I’m not going to argue with you.”
“You’re such a giver,” Ethan retorted.
“But I am gonna remind you again of the Avery’s queer-is-okay pep talk, if you need it.”
“I don’t think I will,” Ethan said.
Avery raised an eyebrow.
“Not because I don’t think anything’s gonna happen.
” God, God, Ethan really hoped something would, but he’d been trying to reconcile himself if Hank wasn’t ready for it, yet, like the first fucking moment they saw each other again.
“Because I know being queer is okay. You and Charlie are chill, you know?”
“Chill. Alright. I’ll take it.” Avery flashed him an unexpectedly bright smile. “But we’re not calling Charlie chill, not under any circumstances.”
“What’s this,” Charlie retorted as he pushed the glass patio door closed and flopped down on his chair. “Talking bullshit about me when I’m not even here. Not cool. Not cool at all.”
“You don’t even know what we were saying,” Avery reasoned.
“I don’t have to.”
“So, how’s Max?” Ethan asked slyly. “I hear he and Morgan Reynolds are pretty fucking chummy these days.”
“You are not gonna piss me off,” Charlie said knowingly. “I’m in the chillest mood, despite the crap that V is laying down.”
“You should’ve just gone to that camp,” Avery said, always so fucking reasonable. “You could’ve seen Max.”
“And I’d have to see Reynolds. And then I’d probably have told him that he was full of shit and made me break two sticks at practice, and . . .” Charlie trailed off, lifting one shoulder. “Nobody needs to hear what a fucking mess I was last year.”