Three Is The Luckiest Number

by Catherine Cloud

  “Hey,” Elliot says and smiles.

  Blake’s smile is a little slower to appear. Elliot can’t blame him. Blake’s smiles have always been a bit of a rarity and Elliot has figured out that there are probably three types that make the most frequent appearances – a friend just scored a goal is the first, Elliot just said something stupid and Blake can’t help it is the second, and just found a really good burrito is the third. In any case, Elliot has been a terrible friend and probably doesn’t deserve a smile. They didn’t talk much during the summer, and when they did, their conversations fizzled out after a handful of texts. Elliot never knew what to say, felt awkward when he texted Blake to ask how he was doing.

  He never has that problem with his teammates, but he also can’t treat Blake like a teammate. That’s not what he is. Not what he was either. Or at least not just that.

  “Hey,” Blake replies eventually.

  “Great game,” Elliot says. The Knights pretty much wiped the floor with them, but it’s only the preseason. They have time to get up to speed before the regular season starts. Or so Elliot tells himself.

  Blake nods. “Yeah, it was okay.” A minuscule shrug and he adds, “They’re sending me upstate. Glad I got to play, though. I guess you’re playing on opening night?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Elliot says, even though he’s reasonably sure that the answer is yes. He doesn’t know why he doesn’t just say that. Maybe because he’s sad for Blake, because they’re sending him down, even though Blake must have known from the start that the AHL would be his first stop.

  “Well, I gotta go,” Blake says and holds up his fist, “good luck.”

  Tentatively, Elliot bumps his fist against Blake’s, and thanks him, and watches him walk away, wondering why he feels like he was talking to a complete stranger.

  #

  “Ravens again?”

  Blake doesn’t reply, because Dennis has eyes and can see that he’s watching the Ravens again, and Dennis also knows that he’s friends with Elliot Cowell – at least hypothetically. It’s not like they talk or anything, because Elliot is busy being a rising star and Blake is busy getting used to being in goal for the Knights’ AHL team. He gets to start often enough, has won more games than he lost, but it’s nothing like the show Elliot is putting on down in the city.

  They love him.

  Blake, of course, knew that they would love him, because how could they not? After what seems like five minutes in the NHL, Elliot is already so much more grown up than he was last summer. Since Blake loves to torture himself, he also watches Elliot’s interviews and not just his games.

  He misses him.

  That sunny smile, his laughter that sounded a bit like a goose being strangled, the smattering of freckles on the bridge of his nose and his cheeks, the way his eyelids fluttered the tiniest bit whenever Blake touched him, all those little things that Blake barely even noticed when they still saw each other all the time.

  “Yikes,” Dennis says when he flops down next to him. The score is 4-0 in favor of the Ravens and they’re only just approaching the end of the first period. Two of those goals are Elliot’s.

  “Wanna order pizza tonight?” Dennis asks.

  Blake hums something that could be considered a yes to the pizza question, his eyes still on their TV.

  He usually keeps himself from wondering if Elliot misses him, too, because the very honest answer to that is that he doesn’t know. He indulges himself today when the broadcast cuts to Elliot during a stoppage in play. A strand of brown hair is sticking out at the front of his bucket and he’s chewing on his mouthguard, eyes darting across the ice until he seems to find what he was looking for and skates over to Nyström, who’s about seven or eight years older than them and also a Swedish god. Elliot smiles at something that Nyström says to him, glove covering half his face so the cameras won’t pick it up.

  “So you used to play with him?” Dennis asks after a while.

  It takes Blake a moment to tear his eyes off the screen. “Yeah.”

  “He’s unreal, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” Blake says again.

  Elliot, on TV, is getting ready for a face-off.

  Deep down, Blake already knows that he’s about to watch Elliot Cowell score his first NHL hat trick. There’s two periods of hockey left and there’s a lot Elliot can do in two periods of hockey.

  It happens in the third.

  Next to him, Dennis is losing his mind, on TV, Elliot is swept into the arms of Mikey Walters, a very large D-man, who lifts Elliot right off his feet. Hats rain onto the ice and Elliot’s teammates pile a few on his head before the ice crew takes them away.

  Order resumes, and Dennis says, “Did you text him?”

  “Huh?” Blake’s brain catches up a moment later. Right, they’re friends, he should probably send Elliot one of those congratulations texts that they’ve become so good at. He got one for his first win, another one for his first shutout, surprised that Elliot was checking the AHL scores, and Blake also sent one to Elliot when he got his first point and two days later his first goal.

  Blake hates sending and receiving those texts.

  He picks up his phone, says, Proud of you, but doesn’t hit send, because he’s not Elliot’s mom. Awesome goals, he tries next, but it sounds weird to him, so he deletes that as well. Five more tries and Dennis shoots him a look that’s asking if he’s writing a novel over there.

  Blake grits his teeth and sends, Congrats on the hatty!

  He hates this one, too.

  The Ravens eventually win the game 6-0. It’s a fluke, because the Ravens have been terrible since the start of the season, have been terrible for the past two years and are slow to get back to where they’d like to be, but they aren’t going to lose every single game of the season either.

  Blake does not receive a reply from Elliot until the next morning: thanks. how’s it going?

  Blake tells him that everything’s going fine, doesn’t mention that he thinks about him all the time, doesn’t mention that he misses him and that he sometimes wonders if Elliot misses him, too, doesn’t mention that he wishes they had time to really talk more often. Elliot is too far away, not just because Blake isn’t across the river in Newark, but because he’s living an entirely different life. He gets to be an NHL player already and Blake is still waiting his turn, and that’s really just how it is in this business.

  They can’t all be prodigies who break rookie records.

  #

  He gets called up in February.

  He mostly sits on the bench, because it’s the Knights’ backup who’s injured, so their starter, Jake Matthews, is still in net for the three games that Blake spends with the Knights.

  He joins them for the first one in Florida, then flies back to Newark with the team and Mattie – like there was never even a question where Blake would be staying – takes him home, to his wife, his two kids, and his two Labradors. Blake becomes fast friends with both the kids and the Labradors, lobbing balls around their playroom with tiny plastic sticks.

  They have the day off when they return from Florida and Mattie takes it upon himself to show Blake around, because, “You know, in a few years you’re probably going to live here.”

  Mattie is thirty-one. If he plays for a few more years, Blake might be ready for the NHL when he retires. Mattie talks about it like there’s really no other way for the Knights to go, like Blake already has a place in this franchise, like, in a few years, he’ll take Mattie’s place.

  When Mattie goes on and on about what a great time Blake is going to have and how well he’ll fit into the team, Blake finds himself staring in disbelief.

  “What’s with the face, kid?” Mattie eventually asks. “Is that why they call you Fish? Because you make that face?”

  “No, they call me Fish because Samuels is apparently the same as salmon.”

  “Sure,” Mattie says. “What’s with the gaping then?”

  Blake gapes a little more and then as
ks, “Aren’t you… I don’t know… Wouldn’t you rather play forever?”

  Mattie laughs like that was the funniest joke he’s ever heard. There’s some wheezing and snorting. Mattie claps Blake’s shoulder. “Yeah, ten years ago I wanted to play forever, but now it’s…” Mattie shrugs. “I love hockey, but I’m not getting any younger. I’ll go as long as I can, and as long as they’ll let me, but… You know, my dad was a hockey player and he had to retire early and he said that hanging up the skates might have hurt less if he’d seen it coming. So, I guess what I’m saying is that I’m seeing it coming.”

  “Oh,” Blake says. He can’t even imagine it, retiring.

  “No, I get it,” Mattie says with a wink. “You haven’t even started yet.”

  In the afternoon, Mattie leaves him to his own devices and, for the first time, Blake considers the river. So easy to cross. And then he’d be in New York City and then what? He knows that Elliot lives in Manhattan with one of his teammates, but he has no idea where. Manhattan isn’t a place you go to on a whim to track down an old friend.

  Elliot might not even be in the city.

  With Blake getting called up, he lost track of the schedule a bit, so he pulls out his phone to check. Elliot’s playing in Toronto tomorrow night, so today might be a travel day for the Ravens.

  Elliot’s not even in the city. So the river doesn’t matter.

  It wouldn’t even matter if he was in the city. Because what was Blake going to do anyway? Give him a call? Ask him if he wants to hang out? Elliot likely doesn’t want to see him. They broke up. No, not even that, because they weren’t together in the first place. They were something, in the middle of the night, whenever no one was watching, on rare summer days when they happened to be in the same town. That’s when they were something.

  Blake pushes those memories away.

  He and Elliot are done.

  #

  Blake is in close proximity to New York City and Elliot is in Toronto, which is probably for the best, because Elliot couldn’t handle seeing Blake in person right now.

  He likes New York. His rookie year is a fairy tale.

  When he got his roster spot, Elliot moved in with Adam. They’re pretty good at being roommates as long as they don’t try to watch a movie together. Hockey games work, because they usually have the same priorities, but their taste in movies couldn’t be any more different. Adam likes thrillers and horror movies; Elliot likes comedies and superheroes. They stay out of each other’s way, at least movie-wise, and only watch hockey together. It works well enough.

  Sometimes Elliot eats food that isn’t his and then Adam will give him the evil side-eye, but he usually forgives him quickly when Elliot cooks him pasta. Because Adam will eat pasta for breakfast, lunch and dinner if you let him, and Elliot knows his way around pasta, because he will also eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner if you let him.

  The guys in the room actually seem to like having him around. He got pranked into oblivion early in the season, but it appears as though the guys have finally settled down. Tape balls hitting him in the neck are still a daily occurrence, though, because he sits close to Moby and Moby needs to bother at least one teammate a day and usually that teammate is Elliot.

  They’re halfway through February and Elliot is tired, sleeps more than he ever has in his life, is skinnier than he’s ever been, but there’s a buzz under his skin that keeps him going. They’re working their way up to a wildcard spot. There’s a chance they’ll actually make it there.

  “Earth to Moo.”

  Elliot looks up.

  Riley is looking back at him expectantly. They’ve been plane buddies ever since Riley got traded to the Ravens to be their new backup goalie a month ago, with their other backup out long-term. They hit it off instantly, like the same shows, and Riley’s from Oshawa, so they grew up pretty close to each other, know the same people.

  “What?” Elliot asks. “Sorry, I kinda zoned out there…”

  Riley snorts at him. “You wanna come to my parents’ house for dinner tonight? You said your parents both have other stuff going on, right?”

  “Oh, uh…” Elliot hadn’t even thought about it. His mom is working late at the hospital, his dad is out of town for work, so he won’t even be able to make it to the game tomorrow. His mom will be there, though, and some of his childhood friends, too.

  “It’s cool if you have other plans, but I figured I’d ask because you said you weren’t seeing your mom until tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, thanks, that’d be nice.”

  “Cool,” Riley says and goes back to watching whatever he was watching.

  Elliot grabs his laptop, too, because his only other choice would be to think about Blake again.

  He’s not doing that to himself.

  #

  In the summer, Blake finally caves.

  It’s four days after the NHL Awards, where the Carolina Comets’ Jamie O’Rielly won the Calder. Blake wouldn’t say that Elliot deserved it more, but he did deserve it at least just as much and Blake vividly remembers Jamie O’Rielly skating right into him during a game in juniors, so Blake is somewhat biased.

  He’s sitting in the backyard of his grandma’s house, his grandma and Evan out to buy some new clothes for Evan, because the boy can’t dress himself, and Blake decided to stay out of it. He didn’t want to be the one to explain to his grandma that neither of them has ever developed much of an interest in fashion, but he has at least enough sense to wear shirts without holes when they’re at her house. Evan brought this upon himself.

  So Blake is left alone with his thoughts, a glass of iced tea, a book he’s not going to read, and his phone, replying to teammates’ messages, deleting stuff he doesn’t need anymore, all mindless things he forgot to do during the season.

  He’s going through his photos when he stumbles across one of him and Elliot that they took before the Draft, maybe the day before. Elliot, with those big brown eyes and the almost-curly hair, in a shirt that was Blake’s once, smiling like he won the Stanley Cup. Something in Blake’s stomach twists and after that his brain signs the fuck off and lets his heart do whatever the hell it wants.

  So he calls Elliot.

  And Elliot, of course, answers after the first ring.

  He sounds breathless when he says, “Hey, Blake… uh, hey.”

  “Hey,” Blake replies. And then he says nothing, because… Why did he do this? Hearing Elliot’s voice feels a punch in the gut. Or at least he imagines that this is what being punched in the gut feels like. He’s never been in a fight.

  There’s a small pause, a hitch of breath that might be hidden laughter, then Elliot says, “What’s up?”

  “Well,” Blake starts. “My grandma was asking how you’re doing and I… wanted to ask… how you’re doing.” It’s not even a lie, Blake’s grandma did ask how Elliot was doing and Blake didn’t have the heart to tell her that he had no idea, because the only word they seem to be able to say to each other is congratulations.

  “I’m okay,” Elliot says. “How about you?”

  “Yeah. Me, too. The team is great and… yeah. All good.”

  “Good.”

  “Yeah,” Blake says. “Good.”

  Silence falls, but Blake can’t say goodbye yet and Elliot doesn’t say anything either. His grandma’s cat, Angus, comes over the garden wall and plops down next to him, belly up, waiting for pets.

  “Angus is here,” Blake says, because Elliot loved Angus more than anyone else in the world.

  “Aw, Angus,” Elliot coos. “Pet him for me, yeah?”

  Blake scratches Angus’s head. “Sure.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Yeah.” Blake takes a deep breath. He should hang up, because he’s out of things to say and he still can’t figure out why he called in the first place. Definitely not to tell Elliot that he misses him, because that wouldn’t be fair.

  A few summers ago, Elliot was sitting in this very backyard with him, and he told him a se
cret that changed everything. Blake can’t quite bring himself to wish that Elliot had never told him, had never said, “I think I like boys, sometimes,” but it cost him a friend in the long run.

  “Blake?” Elliot says eventually.

  “Yeah?”

  “Why’d you really call?”

  Blake sighs. “I was just… thinking about you.”

  He can hear the breath Elliot draws in at the other end of the line. He shouldn’t have said that. It sounded too much like I miss you.

  Again, there’s silence.

  Angus meows at Blake when he does a terrible job at petting him and eventually wanders off to murder a mouse or a bird or whatever it is that cats do when their humans fail them.

  “I’m sorry, Blake, I gotta…” Elliot trails off. “We can’t do this.”

  “Call each other?” Blake asks.

  “No, you just can’t…”

  He just can’t call and say something that sounds too much like I miss you. It’s been a year. How does this still hurt?

  “I’m sorry,” Blake says. “I shouldn’t have called.”

  “It’s fine,” Elliot mutters, even though they left fine behind in a stairwell in Ottawa. “I’m glad you’re okay, Blake.”

  Blake doesn’t know how to say goodbye.

  “Say hi to your grandma from me, okay?” Elliot says.

  “I will.”

  “And good luck next season.”

  “You, too.”

  “And…” Elliot pauses again, apparently out of things to say now, too. “Blake?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I need some time to…” Elliot clears his throat. “We’re still friends.”

  “We are.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay,” Blake echoes. “Bye, Elliot.”

  “Bye.”

  Blake doesn’t hang up right away, waits until the line goes dead, except it doesn’t, because Elliot isn’t hanging up either and so Blake stares down at his phone and wonders if Elliot is doing the same, until his battery decides that it’s had enough two minutes later and his phone dies.

  Should have charged it last night.

  So he could sit in his grandma’s backyard and not talk to Elliot on the phone a little while longer.