Okay, maybe he does get it. He needs experience and if they send him down, there’s a chance that he’ll get to start for the Raiders more than he ever did before. The Raiders are going to the playoffs for sure. Dennis got his first hatty while Blake was in Newark, although that was sadly also the only game they won, being in a bit of a goaltending pickle with both of their regular goalies on the NHL team.
So Blake packs his bags and drives back to the place he shares with Dennis, with a bag full of food from Mattie on the backseat and pictures that Mattie’s kids drew for him, of him in goal, and of him and the dogs, and of him with the whole family. Blake was experiencing a few emotions too many when one of Mattie’s tiny kids came up to him and said, “I drew you a picture of Shadow, because you always pet him and you’ll probably miss him, so you can take this and look at him and not miss him as much.”
Dennis doesn’t chirp him when he puts that picture on their fridge.
#
The Knights face the Ravens in the first round of playoffs and if Blake wasn’t so preoccupied with their own playoff race, he might find the time to be sad that he’s not in Newark to win that series with the Knights. The Knights don’t make it past the second round, though, but that only means that Mattie and his entire family are in the stands in Samuels jerseys when Blake gets to lift the Calder Cup.
That night, Blake has an entire bottle of champagne poured over his head and after that he has almost an entire bottle of champagne poured into this mouth, thankfully much slower, but still with little precision. Some insanely smart person has covered their entire locker room in plastic, so no one even blinks when Dennis lies down on the floor and starts making champagne angels, although at this point there’s probably some beer mixed in there, too.
They take the party and their Cup to a local club that has likely never seen so many people and someone starts buying shots.
Blake has never been this drunk in his life.
He knows that because he doesn’t even protest when the boys drag him onto the dance floor. Someone’s shouting something about getting tattoos – Blake got two last summer, is working on a sleeve, but at least his brain is alert enough to consider spontaneous tattoos a terrible idea.
“Blake, this is Elena,” someone shouts into his ear and then he’s dancing with a girl who smiles at him and laughs when Blake gives her a twirl. He doesn’t know how to dance. He doesn’t know what to do with a pretty girl.
She wraps her arms around his neck and Blake does his best not to disappoint in the dancing department, then he asks her if she wants a drink, but she shakes her head and they keep dancing. When the song fades into another, he tells her that he’d also buy her mozzarella sticks, or whatever else she wants, because it’s not like drinks are the only thing on the menu, and she laughs and says that she’s just fine right here.
Blake kisses her, because that’s what’s expected from him here, right? He kisses her, because maybe it won’t be so bad.
He should feel something. Anything. He wants to sleep. The room is spinning and he needs some fresh air. He excuses himself and escapes to the bathroom, slips into a stall and sits down, leans his head against the cold wall, and breathes. The smell makes him nauseous, but he can’t go back out there yet.
This isn’t him, he can’t kiss a girl and pretend that it’s okay or that it’s what he wants. He left that behind when he was fifteen. Or so he thought. He misses being close to someone, and it’s not even so much about sex, a hug would be fine, but maybe one that doesn’t end.
He needs to drink some water.
“Yo, Fish, is that you? You okay in there?”
“I’m fine,” Blake says.
He’s fine.
Everything is fine.
He makes it out of the club, makes it home, curls into bed and gets back up to throw up in his bathroom a little while later, only barely making it to the toilet bowl.
Dennis finds him there in the morning, nudging him with his foot. “Shit, dude, wake up.”
Blake blinks at him and glares. Dennis looks like he just crawled out of bed, his hair all over the place. Blake doesn’t know how Dennis is standing up straight right now. He wants to be on this bathroom floor forever. “No. I live here now.”
“Come on.”
Someone behind Dennis snorts. Probably his girlfriend. “I’ll get you both some water.”
Blake sits up and immediately regrets it. Somewhere, something is buzzing. “What’s that noise?”
“Probably your phone.”
It’s on the floor. Why is his phone on the floor?
Blake only stares at it.
Dennis reaches down to ruffle his hair. “It’s okay, Fish, we all feel like we’re dead, but the show must go on.”
“I wanna sleep.”
“Yeah, me too. Nap time is later. Breakfast time at Timo’s house is now. Come on, Liz is gonna drop us off.” Dennis wanders out of the bathroom, muttering, “Fuck, I hope I don’t throw up in the car.”
Blake takes a deep breath. Yeah, he needs to get off the floor.
“Calder Cup champions, baby,” Dennis shouts downstairs. “Braden, Oscar, time to wake the fuck up! And Braden get your fucking shoes off the couch, you savage. Who raised you?”
Blake had no idea that Braden and Oscar were staying over. He grins, but doesn’t move yet. Things could be worse. Yes, he’s on a bathroom floor and, yes, he’s one wrong move away from a slow and painful death, but that’s just because they won the Calder Cup.
With a sigh, Blake closes his eyes.
“Don’t sleep, Fish!”
Something soft hits him in the face, presumably a clean shirt.
Blake groans.
#
Elliot can’t decide if he should give Blake a call back. To see if he’s still alive. He sounded beyond wasted on the phone last night.
Pictures of the Raiders show up on Twitter not too much later, from the team breakfast they were having at their captain’s house and Blake is holding a mug that might have once said something like World’s Best Dad, except someone’s put tape over the last word and scribbled Goalie on it. He looks tired and rumpled, but he has the smallest of smiles on his face.
Elliot is so proud of him and he told Blake that last night on the phone, but only because he was reasonably sure that Blake wouldn’t remember. Blake essentially won the Raiders the final series. He’ll play in Newark soon enough.
Elliot’s season ended earlier than he would have liked, but he’s still happy with how they played, how hard they all fought. He’ll be staying in New York, because he can see this team going somewhere. He’s signed his contract. Eight years. Eight million a year. It was a lot easier than he thought it would be, making all those choices, asking for what he wanted. His agent did most of the work, of course, but Elliot wasn’t completely out of his depth.
Nothing is going to change, really. Maybe, in a year or two, he can find himself his own apartment, but for now he’ll be Adam’s roommate. Adam almost looked relieved when Elliot asked if he could stay in his room for another year. “For sure,” Adam said, “We kinda need each other to keep each other alive, you know?”
He has a point there, because one of the two of them always remembers that they should maybe buy some food, and it works really well for them. They’re both still alive.
Elliot spends some time in Toronto with his parents after the end of the season, then he goes to Sweden with Adam for Magnus’s wedding. They stay for two weeks and then head back to the city together. Adam has a trainer in New York that he really likes, so Elliot sticks around to train with him and a few of the other guys this summer.
He likes the city. He lets Adam drag him along to baseball games, they try new restaurants, they hang out at the park and elbow each other when they see a dog.
They find their new favorite takeout place that summer, down the street from their apartment. They have the best dumplings in the world and Elliot goes way too often, especially when Adam is out with
his girlfriend and Elliot isn’t in the mood to cook.
It’s where he meets Natalie. She’s a college student, pre-law, works in the café across the street a few times a week, and is also weak for dumplings apparently. They start talking while they wait for their orders and then end up eating together at one of the tiny tables by the window instead of taking their food home.
Natalie has never been to a hockey game, but has heard about the Ravens. Her college friend’s dad works for the Comets down in North Carolina. She likes basketball, but isn’t tall enough to play professionally and has a black cat called Vader that lives with her parents and she shows him pictures and he offers to buy her dessert because he doesn’t want to stop talking to her yet.
“I know a place,” she says and they walk five minutes to a bakery that Elliot has never seen before, even though he’s lived here for three years. They get cupcakes and coffee and they talk until the place closes, after they’ve also tried the brownies and the red velvet cake.
Elliot is gonna have to watch it for the rest of the week, but it was worth it.
He walks her to the Subway after and she thanks him and he says, “Can I give you my number?”
He’s new at this, except for the few dates that his teammates set him up on, one disaster after the other, and maybe he should have asked for her number instead, but she only laughs and hands him her phone. Elliot is almost surprised when she doesn’t say no, is pretty sure that he made a complete ass of himself. He talked about hockey way too much, even though she told him that she didn’t know much about it and then he got distracted by two dogs on the way to the Subway while she was talking. When he puts his number in her phone, he gets the numbers mixed up twice, his face going red when he finally hands back the phone after what seemed like an eternity.
Natalie has dimples when she smiles at him. “I’ll call you,” she says.
“Looking forward to it,” Elliot replies.
As he turns to walk back home, he realizes that he actually meant it, that it wasn’t just something he said to be polite, like he usually does. He genuinely wants to spend more time with her, get to know her, hear more about that murderous cat of hers.
Even now that the streets are dipped in a bright orange glow, the summer heat still clinging to the city streets, the air heavy and thick, Elliot feels light.
Chapter Four
Blake gets an invitation to Brammer’s house on Long Island for an end of summer party before they have to report for training camp, so Blake leaves his grandma’s house in Connecticut a few days earlier than planned, kisses her goodbye and pretends that he doesn’t notice all the food she’s sneaking into his bags as he gets ready to go. Evan has already taken off, only spent two weeks at home around the time when Blake had his day with the Cup.
The drive down to Long Island isn’t terrible, so Blake gets to Brammer’s house about an hour earlier than planned, but Brammer waves him off when he apologizes and pulls him into the house, which is already full of people.
Most of them are Knights, some are their girlfriends, some of them Blake has never seen before. When Brammer introduces one of the strangers as Noah Andersson, Blake realizes that he probably does know most of them and doesn’t recognize them without their gear on.
Noah Andersson plays defense for the Brooklyn Mariners. He got drafted the same year as Blake. And Elliot. They weren’t really friends or anything, but as far as Blake knows, no one’s ever uttered a single bad word about Noah. Blake doesn’t particularly like the way he plays, but he doesn’t particularly like the way anyone on an opposing team plays when they’re putting pucks into his net.
“Almost didn’t recognize you without the pads,” Noah says. He’s tall and blond and when he smiles, his eyes crinkle.
“Same,” Blake says.
Noah winks at him. “I’m the guy who kept taking your net off.”
“Yeah, as if I could forget,” Blake says.
“Here, let me get you a drink and we’ll call a truce until tomorrow morning,” Noah says and nudges him further into the house. Brammer has disappeared to fuck-knows-where. “What’ve you been up to?”
Blake shrugs. “Hockey, training, you know…”
“Yeah, hockey, training, winning the Calder Cup… That kinda stuff, huh?”
For some reason, Blake’s face goes hot under Noah’s scrutiny when he doesn’t reply right away. There’s something sheepish about Noah’s smile. “Yeah, stuff like that,” Blake eventually says.
“Did you have a good day with the Cup?”
Blake nods. “I took it back home. Put some ice cream in it.”
“Where’s home?”
“Norwalk.”
Noah’s eyebrows twitch. “Connecticut?”
“Yeah,” Blake says. Noah would know it, of course, because he spent a little over two seasons playing for the Mariners’ farm team in Bridgeport. They played against each other quite a bit and Noah somehow took his net off every time they played against each other, until the Mariners’ entire D-corps completely fell apart last season and Noah got called up and never got sent back down again.
Blake follows Noah through the kitchen and a set of doors and then they’re next to the pool, where they instantly get soaked by one of Noah’s teammates – if Blake remembers correctly – who is chasing one of Blake’s teammates around the pool with a water gun. Blake and Noah get caught in the crossfire.
“Oh, great,” Blake says gruffly.
Noah laughs and grabs a drink from a table that’s probably supposed to be safe from the fighting in the pool area. The drinks are very blue. “Try these. Brammer’s girlfriend made them and they’re amazing.”
A light breeze ruffles Noah’s hair. He has a scar that cuts through his eyebrow and it makes him look a little like a pirate. Who’s also a Disney prince. And a model. All at the same time.
“What did you do this summer?” Blake asks, mostly to distract himself.
“Went to the Caribbean with some of the boys, said hi to my mom. She lives in LA, because Dad used to play there way back in the day and after they got divorced, she didn’t want to stay in Vancouver, so she went back.”
Ten minutes later they’re deep into a conversation about how Noah wouldn’t call himself Swedish, having grown up in Canada, with a few trips to Sweden sprinkled in here and there. His dad is working in Vancouver, for the local broadcast crew, but it seems that Noah isn’t too keen on talking about his famous hockey player dad and quickly changes the topic back to his mom. She is probably a model or a movie star, and that’s why Noah looks like he should be playing a character on Baywatch.
They watch the water gun battle come to end with all parties jumping into the pool, splashing everyone who hasn’t managed to duck behind something. Blake is only fast enough to shield his drink, but ends up getting splashed from head to toe. Noah, next to him, has somehow mostly stayed dry.
“Great,” Blake says again. He’s wearing swimming trunks, but his shirt is pretty much soaked through.
“Sorry, Fish,” Henny shouts from the pool. Going by the shit-eating grin on his face, he’s not sorry at all.
“Fish,” Noah echoes.
Blake waves him off, because he doesn’t want to explain the salmon thing again. He wipes a few wet strands of hair out of his face.
Noah gives him an approving look, eyes dipping to the sea monster tattoo on Blake’s arm. “You know, that’s a good look on a guy whose nickname is Fish.”
“Thanks,” Blake says dryly.
“Maybe we should hop in, too.”
“Huh…” Not the worst idea. Blake, pale even after spending a decent number of days in the summer sun, looks like a ghost next to some of the other guys, but he’s used to it. He’s never been self-conscious about the way he looks. His height was an issue for a while, but he literally grew out of that.
When Noah tugs off his shirt and leaves it by the side of the pool without a care in the world, Blake can’t help but feel… something. Blake quickly
looks away, spreads out his own shirt on a chair so it’ll dry in the sun while he’s in the pool, and jumps into the water alongside Noah.
Blake ends up on a floating unicorn, feet dangling into the water, then someone puts heart-shaped sunglasses on him that likely belong to someone’s girlfriend, next is a drink in his hand and then Brammer is snapping a picture, cackling as he keeps fiddling with his phone, probably putting that picture on Instagram for the entire world to see. Blake quite likes the unicorn and stays where he is, but gives back the sunglasses when a blonde girl at the side of the pool asks if she could please have them back. She blows a kiss his way when he hands them over.
Noah eventually tips over his unicorn and takes off, legs kicking, but Blake catches him quickly and pulls him under, laughing when Noah tries to retaliate but goes under again because he’s not tall enough to stand.
“You always look so serious on the ice, I didn’t realize you even…,” Noah grins, “know how to smile.”
Blake huffs.
“Honestly, your murder eyes are scary.”
“I don’t have murder eyes,” Blake protests.
“Yeah, you do,” Henny throws in, now chilling in the hot tub at the side of the pool. “I’d be so scared if we weren’t on the same team.”
Noah nods. “Now imagine how I felt.”
“Next time you come at me with the puck, I’ll smile,” Blake says, even though he has no idea when they’ll even be on the same ice again.
Noah laughs and clambers out of the pool, bathing suit hanging low. Blake doesn’t look. Except that he does, but only for a second. He hasn’t allowed himself to find anyone attractive in a while. Too big of a risk to hook up with random guys, too big of a risk for anyone to know when they don’t have as much to lose as he does.
So usually he doesn’t look, considers nothing, and walks away when he starts thinking about doing something stupid.
Not that he’s thinking about anything of the sort right now.
Three Is The Luckiest Number Page 4