Chapter 15 #2
I picked the puck off Bernier’s tape clean and had a lane to the empty net and ninety-six feet of ice.
Janne was the only Vortex skater with a chance to catch me, and he couldn’t.
I shot from inside the blue line, low, into the empty net, and it went in.
Three-one. Cap got to me first, glove on my helmet.
Taft was second, the same as always. The bench was up.
The crowd was loud, and I let myself look up at the section as I sidestepped and let Janne’s sloppy push carry him into the boards with a clunk.
Dane was on his feet. His hands were in front of his chest like a man trying not to move too fast for his head, but he was clapping too.
His face was… he had the same look he had at the dinner table at his place when I told him about a thing I knew.
He didn’t laugh at me about it, so I kept telling him, and he kept listening.
Tim was on his feet too, clapping with both hands over his head, an unselfconscious clap I imagine he has done at hundreds of his brothers’ games and has never, until tonight, done at one of mine.
I looked for a count of three.
Then I put my eyes back on the ice.
We killed the rest of the period without trouble—not even from Janne, who was fuming on the bench. The horn sounded. We won.
In the room, Cap knocked his shoulder into mine on the way to the showers and said, “Good game, Chip.”
“Thanks, Cap.”
Coach Ronan came over and put his hand on the back of my neck for one second and said, “Nice,” which was Coach for good hockey.
Sable came in from Coach’s office in her off-duty collar, which she only wore in this building, and put her chin on my knee while I unwrapped my shins and waited for the obligatory fifteen minutes of team press before I was allowed to leave the building.
It all took way too long.
Dane drove because the auditory thing in his left ear was much better than it had been, and his neuro cleared him three days ago. We decided that letting him do the things the doctors had cleared him to do was important to him.
In the parking lot, Dane said, “Yours or mine?” and I said, “Yours.” That was the entire negotiation.
His apartment smelled of faint cologne and laundry detergent, and there was no leftover hospital in him anymore that I could detect.
His coat went on the hook on the back of the door.
My coat went on the hook beside it because that was the hook he had said was mine four nights ago when I’d hung my coat there for the first time.
Sable made the loop she made when we got to Dane’s: the front door, kitchen, hallway, bedroom doorway, then back to the rug in front of the couch.
Then she lay down on the rug, sighed her dog sigh, and put her chin on her paw.
Dane had a supply of kibble here, toys, and a bed in her own special corner. She instantly relaxed.
“Water?” Dane said.
“Yes, please.”
He brought me water in a glass, sat down next to me on the couch and did not put his arm around me yet, because he always asks first. I drank half the glass of water, put it down on the coaster on the side table, turned to face him, and said, “I thought about you on the ice tonight.”
He smiled. “Yeah?”
“Twice. Once when the Vortex power-play one-timer beat me because I was annoyed I couldn’t do that play over and make it work for you.
The second time was after the empty-netter because I wanted to see you smile.
I let myself look at you and didn’t look away when I should have.
Cap had to get me to refocus, and it felt different to how things go normally. ”
“Come here.”
“Okay.”
He held out his arm. I went under it. His hand closed at my far shoulder and pulled me into his side, slowly, so I had time to adjust the angle of my hip, the angle of my head against his collarbone, and the angle of my legs on the couch.
His other hand found mine and laced our fingers.
The TV was off. The lamp was on, and the window was cracked.
There was a far-off siren that wasn’t for him because he was off shift for nine more days.
“I’m going to ask you a question,” I said into his collarbone.
“Mm.”
“Are you ready for the question?”
“I’m bracing,” he said with a soft laugh that wasn’t teasing but was affection.
“Don’t brace. It’s a logistics question.”
“Okay. Logistics ready.”
I pulled back half an inch so I could see his face. He was being careful with me, the way he usually was. He was also smiling at me, that smile of his, mostly with his eyes and one corner of his mouth.
“I want to do more than we have done,” I said. “Tonight. With you. I want to be… I want to be naked with you. If that’s okay. I have been thinking about it for a while.”
His eyebrows went up then settled. He took a breath in and let it out.
“How long is a while?” he said carefully.
“Eleven days. Possibly twelve. Since Tuesday before last, which was the night after we… ” I gestured at the couch since we both knew which Tuesday I meant. “I have a list of things I’m okay with and a list of things I am not yet okay with. Would you like to listen to the lists?”
“Chip.” He laughed, low. “You’re killing me. Yes, I would like to listen to them.”
“Okay. List one. Things I am okay with. Naked. You. Me. Hands. Mouth—you on me, me on you, both—yes. I want… ” I stopped because the thing I wanted was a thing I did not yet have the word for that did not feel clinical in my mouth.
I disliked the clinical version, but it was the one I had access to.
“I want you inside me, eventually. I have read about it. I have… ” I felt my face heat.
“I have practiced, by myself, with the right equipment. So, my body knows what to expect. I would like to do that with you tonight if you want to because you make me feel so good, and I want more of that.”
He breathed out—hard—and pressed his forehead to mine for a count of two.
“Yeah,” he said against my forehead. “Yeah. I would like to do that with you tonight.”
“Good. List two. Things I am not yet okay with. Anything that happens to me if I have not said “yes” out loud first. Anything in the dark. Anything in a hurry. Anything that requires me to be quiet. Anything that requires you to be quiet because I would like to know it’s you the entire time.”
“Yeah, baby.”