by Avon Gale
Riley could go anywhere he wanted in his family’s plane, as long as no one else was using it. And here Ethan wanted to see his family, and couldn’t. Maybe he could find some way to help Ethan out sometime. Pretend Ethan won tickets, maybe?
“Your sister Kelsey is an astronaut?” Riley asked when Ethan was off the phone.
“Not yet, but give her a few years,” Ethan said dryly. “She’s so smart it freaks me out. She thinks about stuff like, where did the universe come from?” He made a helpless gesture. “Who even does that? But yeah. She’s going to get a scholarship to college, which is great.” His voice was filled with pride. “And she’s beautiful too. If she comes to a game, I will beat up anyone who looks at her like she’s a real girl and not my sister. Including you, Riles.”
“Good to know.” Riley was thirsty, so he took the exit for a twenty-four-hour McDonalds. “You want anything?” he asked Ethan as he pulled behind the one other car in the drive-through.
“Oh, umm.” Ethan shook his head. “Nah. That’s all right.”
“Are you sure? We have two and a half hours left of this drive. You were waiting for three hours. You don’t even want a soda or something?”
Ethan wasn’t looking at him. He was pretending to be searching in his bag. “No. It’s fine. I spent all my change on a magazine at the airport. My impulse control sucks, dude.”
Riley rolled his window down. “Come on. What do you want? You’re making this really difficult, Kennedy.”
“Fine. Geez. Just get me whatever you’re having.” Ethan ducked his head, looking a little embarrassed. “I can put it on my first rent check. Along with some gas money for picking me up. I’m really sorry.”
“No, it’s—” Riley startled as the voice from the intercom asked him, a little sternly, for his order. Like maybe this wasn’t the first time. He was just planning on getting a soda, but he ordered two double-cheeseburger meals and supersized them. It wasn’t like he couldn’t eat one, and Ethan probably needed more than a soda.
In fact he polished off his entire meal and one of Riley’s cheeseburgers. “You totally weren’t hungry, huh,” Ethan accused him, punching him in the shoulder. “Fucking goalies, man.”
“My eyes were just bigger than my stomach,” Riley lied, going for nonchalant. From the look Ethan gave him, he wasn’t buying it.
“Sorry. I have a hard time letting anyone do shit for me,” Ethan mumbled, still looking down at the floor. “I’ll pay you back. Promise.”
“Not a big deal, man.” Riley flipped on some music, hoping to avoid any more conversations about money. It never seemed to go well when people found out he was rich. Either his friends were like Lane and refused to take any help his money might provide, or they were like a few kids he’d known in high school who only wanted to hang out with him because of who his family was. He especially didn’t want to get into it with Ethan, who was reluctant to let Riley buy him dinner at McDonalds. God knew what Ethan would say if Riley told him that he’d already paid the rent on the apartment for the year, or that the next time he wanted to go home, he could borrow Riley’s family’s jet.
He hoped to switch the conversation, and they talked about the team and some of the guys. It was gossip, basically, though neither of them would call it that out loud. Then they discussed the upcoming season and the talk around the league.
The general opinion was that the Sea Storm, last season’s favorites to win the Kelly Cup, had become the year’s underdogs. They had the league’s top rookie last year, and he was their leading scorer. If that didn’t get them the Cup, how on earth were they going to do it without him?
The Renegades, on the other hand, were finding themselves in the same place as the Storm last season. The favorites. They were fresh off a championship, even though their breakout star and MVP, Jared Shore, had retired.
Riley didn’t mind. He liked being the underdog, and combined with the disappointment from last season, he thought it would only make the team more determined to win. He told Ethan about the team’s new backup goalie and how he was worried he’d get traded if he didn’t pull out all the stops this season.
“Nah. He can’t start his first season. He’s gotta learn and all that shit. Besides, you’re really good. The guys on the Blackjacks always said you were one of the best in the ECHL.”
“Yeah?” At Ethan’s emphatic nod, Riley leaned back in his seat and put his car on cruise control. “Well, all right, then.”
Ethan fell asleep about an hour outside of Jacksonville. Riley glanced over at him occasionally, happy to have been able to pick up his teammate and feed him dinner.
I have a hard time letting people do shit for me.
That was the problem with the whole money thing. Riley just wanted to use it to help out his friends, but they didn’t make it easy.
When they were back at Riley’s apartment building, he leaned over and shook Ethan’s shoulder. His skin was warm, and Riley pulled his hand back a little shyly when Ethan came awake.
“Hmm? Oh. We’re here.” Ethan stretched. In two seconds he went from sound asleep to boundless energy and practically vaulted out of the Honda. It was close to two in the morning. “Hey, man, did you get a new car? I just realized it’s not the same one. I thought you had that sweet little Mazda.”
“Oh, that’s… yeah, but Lane has that. His car was practically falling apart, and Shore’s truck was just as bad, so I cut him a deal.” Riley shrugged and changed the subject. “Need a hand with your stuff?”
He helped Ethan bring in his bags, and showed him the second bedroom, which had its own bath. It also had a balcony of its own, facing the ocean.
Ethan gave a low whistle. “Damn. Riles, this is nicer than my apartment in New York. Like, the one I grew up in,” he joked, leaning against the wall. His eyes were sleepy, and he looked like the lead singer of a punk band with those tattoos, shaved head, and sleeveless shirt.
Riley raked a hand through his hair, feeling weird. He was tired. That was all.
Ethan crouched, rummaged through his bag, and came back up with a pack of smokes and a lighter. “Gonna have a smoke and a shower, then enjoy sleeping in an actual bed. I slept on the couch all summer, ’cause my sister Kelsey waited for me and Britt to move out so she could have her own room, and I didn’t think it was fair to kick her out.”
Ethan held up his smokes. “You want one? I don’t think you smoke, but y’know. You can have one if you want.”
That was… huh. “No. That’s okay.” Riley shook his head and decided he should go to bed because he kind of did want a cigarette. At least he thought that’s what he wanted.
“No problem. I won’t smoke inside the apartment or anything. This place is really nice, Riley.” Ethan looked a little worried, but he seemed to shrug it off and gave Riley that grin of his again. “Thanks. I really appreciate it.”
Riley felt his face flush, and he nodded. “Me too. I always wanted a roommate.”
“And I always wanted my own room,” Ethan answered, winking at him. “We’ll get up to no good. I just know it. I am so goddamn glad to be back.” He stuck the cigarette in his mouth and grinned at Riley around it.
Riley told himself the pleasant warm feeling was because he was finally able to do something nice for someone. But as he watched Ethan go outside to smoke and saw his silhouette in the shadows and the faint red glow of his cigarette, Riley wondered if that was really all it was.
THAT WHOLE “goalie brotherhood” thing meant Riley could not possibly hate or otherwise shun his backup, Sasha Vazov. The kid was two years younger than him and a few inches taller, but he hadn’t quite grown into his frame just yet.
Despite having a perfect goalie stare, Vazov was actually pretty shy. He seemed grateful when Riley immediately skated over to stretch with him on their first day of camp.
“I think maybe you would be not as friend… to me,” he said carefully.
Riley shook his head. “I’m a nice guy,” he said truthfully. “Besides
, I was new once. The team’s what matters, not the starting job. Which is mine,” Riley pointed out, and Sasha gave him the slightest of smiles.
Along with Vazov the team had acquired a new center, Bennett Halley, who had just finished college at the University of Michigan. He was a gifted player—solid and a good skater—but without Lane’s grace or speed.
While Halley didn’t manage to alienate the entire team like Lane did when he first showed up, Riley immediately disliked him for excessively celebrating when he scored a goal on Vazov the first day of practice. Riley made a silent vow to make sure Halley wasn’t able to get a single puck to the back of the net when Riley was in goal during practice, because that sort of show-off behavior pissed him off.
Riley was a little worried about Ethan, though, because he was clearly out of condition and having trouble in the drills. Not worried enough to let him score or anything, because Riley was still competitive, and that was his job. Nice guy he might be, but he hated getting scored on. He wasn’t there to make anyone look good.
Sometimes it happened, especially when three guys sent three pucks sailing at him at the same time. But his training during the summer had clearly paid off, and he was in the zone by the third day of camp—enough to know there wouldn’t be a problem with his starting the season, which was a relief.
It was nice to have someone at the apartment after the grueling days of training camp. Though he could tell Ethan was startled when he walked in on Riley doing a split on the living room floor, stretching out his lower back after practice.
“Fuck, man,” Ethan said, eyes wide as he took off his sunglasses. “Somehow that doesn’t look the same when you do it on the ice while wearing all that gear. Doesn’t that hurt?”
“Nope.” Riley grinned up at him. “You mean you can’t do this?”
Ethan fell onto the couch in a sweaty, tattooed heap. “I can’t do anything, seems like,” he muttered. “I had to stay after so the coach could tell me I’m in danger of losing my spot if I don’t make some kind of improvement. In four days.”
“Improvement in your skating, or what?” Riley asked and stretched forward again. It felt good. His muscles were warm and limber, without a single strain or pull. Ah, the beginning of the season, when nothing hurt, and there wasn’t any pain to ignore and play through.
“I guess? The coach did say I’m good for team morale, and so he doesn’t want to cut me, but I have to stop smoking so much.”
Riley sank down on the floor and turned his head. “So much? Or at all?”
Ethan clearly didn’t want to answer that, making Riley think it was the latter. “You look like that chick from The Exorcist, dude. If you start crab-walking, I’m out of here.”
Riley flipped on his back and pushed up off the floor. “The power of Christ compels you!”
“Quit it,” Ethan laughed, and Riley could see him grinning even though he was currently upside down. “Why can you do that?”
“Practice.” Riley carefully lowered himself to the floor. It would be bad if he strained something showing off.
Since that was exactly what he was doing.
“Maybe you could teach me, and I could do that on skates. That’s improvement, isn’t it?”
“Over what?” Riley shifted into a different stretch, one that wasn’t him on the floor with his legs wide open.
“Uh.” Ethan put his hands behind his head and slid down on the couch. “Lying flat on my back because I fell over?”
Riley snorted. “Maybe you should just go in early or stay after and do some drills. I remember Lane did that.”
“Isn’t that because nobody liked him?”
“Nah. This was after he got called up for a few games in Syracuse. He came back all gung ho and wanting to skate faster.” Riley shifted again, breathing out and counting the stretch in his head. He’d already done that set, and he wasn’t sure why he was doing it again.
Showing off. Right.
“Okay, that’s never going to be me.” Ethan shrugged and slid lower. “I bet that feels good. Stretching like that. My back hurts, since I’m an idiot that drinks too much and smokes. Why am I a professional athlete again? I should’ve been a boxer. They don’t have to be on ice skates.”
“That’d be cool, though, if they did.” Riley patted the floor next to him. “Come here. I’ll show you.”
“How to box on ice skates?” Ethan winked. “Rad.” He got on the floor with Riley, wearing his usual jeans and a white shirt. He told Riley he had white T-shirts because he could clean them all easily with bleach. “Can I do this stretch in jeans?”
“If you’re a male stripper,” Riley joked and cleared his throat. “So I hear.”
“Is that how you afford this sweet apartment and the new car and all that coconut water?”
Oh, shit. This was going back to the money thing. “No. I get the coconut water in bulk. And you can try it in jeans, but it’d be better if you were wearing sweats or something.”
“Okay. One sec.” Ethan went to his back on the floor, undid his jeans with one hand and then pulled them off while he arched his back and wriggled his hips—somehow managing to get his shoes kicked off as he stripped down to his boxer briefs.
Riley felt his face flush, and he wasn’t sure why. He’d seen guys in various states of undress his whole life, given how much time he spent in a locker room. None of them took their jeans off like that, though. “Now who’s the male stripper?”
“Are you kidding? I’d be terrible at that. Although I guess I could give it a shot if this hockey thing doesn’t work out. They’ve got strip joints around here for dudes to work at. Right? I like Florida. This is a sweet apartment, and New York is way too cold in the winter.” He sat up, looking expectant. “You okay?”
No. I’m not. Riley gave an easy shrug, using the same tricks he did in goal to stay loose and relaxed. “Sure. Watch.” He showed a few of the stretches to Ethan, who was one of the most inflexible people Riley had ever seen.
Riley ended up trying to push him lower in the stretch by half climbing on Ethan’s back. They laughed, and it was perfectly fine—guys being stupid and horsing around—until Riley realized, with a vague sense of unease, that he was hard.
And he was wearing track pants, so it wasn’t like he could hide it. What the hell? Before he could figure out if Ethan had noticed or not, Ethan saw the time and jumped up.
“Oh, man. I gotta shower. Lawry’s picking me up to go to that bonfire at Sloany’s. He swears Zoe’s okay with it. I hope he’s right.” Ethan gave Riley a friendly smile. “You want to come with me?”
“No thanks.” It didn’t seem to Riley like Ethan had noticed Riley’s hard-on and was trying to get away from him, because Ethan moved suddenly like that all the time. Besides, guys got worked up when they were… worked up. Nothing really wrong with it. All about blood flow, et cetera.
“Okay. Well, you’re invited, you know. I never see you out after practices and stuff.” Ethan leaned down to pick up his jeans. “I guess that’s why you’re actually good at hockey. Unlike me.”
“I think you’re good,” Riley said. “There’s more to the game than skating. Besides, that was a pretty cool trick with your jeans.”
Ethan’s grin was unabashedly wicked. “You’re good for my ego.”
“I’m not going to let you score on me at practice,” Riley informed him, stretching again because his little blood-flow problem didn’t seem to be going away.
“Seriously, you should come sometime,” Ethan continued, and Riley had to hide a wild laugh because, yeah, that was the plan—as soon as his chatty roommate took himself off to his shower. “You’re hilarious, and I don’t think anyone really knows that but me. And hey, did you know people thought you were dating Courtnall?”
Riley didn’t know what to say, though he was aware of the rumor. “Why is it I was supposedly dating Lane, and everyone thought Lane was dating Sloany’s girlfriend?”
“People like complicated love triangles
? I don’t know. Maybe they thought you were all three dating. My sister knows some people who do that. Sounds like a lot of work. And man, I’ve lived with two sisters. Why would I want two girlfriends?”
“That wasn’t two girls,” Riley pointed out. Then he wondered what the fuck he was talking about… and why.
“Right. Backup. That might be better.” Ethan strolled into the kitchen with his jeans slung over his shoulder, and pulled a Pepsi out of the fridge.
Riley cleared his throat. “You’re going drinking.”
Ethan sighed, put the Pepsi back, and took one of Riley’s coconut water boxes. “This stuff is gross, Riley.”
“It grows on you. And Martin Brodeur drinks it,” Riley told him, mentally chiding himself for his inability to stop talking. And he was still hard.
“Who?”
The look of horror on Riley’s face made Ethan laugh. “Kidding, kidding. Hey. I can’t wait until the Rangers play the Devils, but I doubt we’ll get that broadcast down here. There may be an important preseason baseball game happening somewhere they need to cover.”
Riley had actually signed up for the Center Ice package so he could catch Devils games. But he didn’t say that. The memory of Ethan’s stubbornness over Riley buying him a cheeseburger was fresh in his mind. It seemed better to spring it on Ethan with the game already on, so he wouldn’t ask any questions. “The Rangers suck,” he offered instead.
“Fuck you,” Ethan said cheerfully and headed for his bedroom. He left the door open and dropped his jeans on the floor. Riley could see him pulling at his boxer briefs on his way to his bathroom.
What the hell was he doing?
Riley got up, went to his room, and closed his door. He pulled off his track pants and his underwear and sprawled on his bed with his laptop. He was suddenly very curious about why he was turned on right then.
The idea of being attracted to men had never bothered him, even if it’d never happened to him before. Riley had known Lane was gay before he saw him with Jared, just from the way Lane shied away from normal physical interactions between teammates. Riley spent a lot of time focusing on body language as part of his position.