Three Is The Luckiest Number

by Catherine Cloud

  “Sorry, I should have called, I dug up this cookbook earlier and I wanted to try a recipe and now here we are…”

  Elliot’s kitchen is a mess. Every surface is covered in pots and pans, some in use, some a little dirty because Elliot tried to use them and then realized they were too small. There’s food wrappers, spices, empty plastic bags, food that dropped out of pans that he hasn’t managed to clean up.

  “Can I help?” Natalie asks.

  “This is probably not edible,” Elliot mutters.

  Natalie wraps her arms around him from behind and gives him a squeeze. “We’ll try it and if it’s really terrible, we’ll figure out what you can do better next time.”

  He waves at his mess of a kitchen. “Are you suggesting that I should do all this again at some point in the future?”

  “That’s usually how you learn how to do things,” Natalie says, amusement creeping into her voice. “You do it several times.”

  “I know… It just wasn’t…”

  “What?”

  Elliot sighs. “This is stupid.”

  Natalie’s arms disappear and she leans against the counter next to him. “So, I’m guessing there’s something else going on here and you definitely don’t have to tell me, but if I can help… even if it’s by cleaning up some of those pans, let me know, yeah?”

  “I’m cooking because I’m stressed, I thought this was going to help, but now I’m even more stressed, because… look at this mess.”

  Natalie’s fingers curl around his wrist. “It could be so much worse. Not that this isn’t a pretty impressive mess, but…” She reaches up to run her fingers through his hair.

  Elliot sighs and leans into it. “I met an old friend last night and we fought. He… he said something that was… I don’t know… I probably shouldn’t be mad.”

  Except he is, and it’s burning low in his stomach, even when he’s not thinking about it. Doesn’t help that he’s tired and maybe a little hungover.

  “It’s okay to be angry. He clearly hurt you.”

  “Yeah, but…” Elliot shrugs. He shouldn’t be as affected by this, they’ve barely been talking anyway. He thought that Blake wouldn’t be so ignorant, that he’d understand that this was as hard for Elliot as it was for him. It’s not the same, but–

  “Hey,” Natalie says and pulls him into a hug.

  Elliot’s food burns and Natalie quickly lets go to pull it off the heat, but there’s likely nothing salvageable about it now. Not that it was a culinary masterpiece in the first place, but now half of it is black and crusty. Elliot turns off the stove and pushes the window open. He’ll have to accept that the last twenty-four hours were an absolute disaster and move on with his life.

  “I’m so glad you brought food,” Elliot says and peers into the bags Natalie put on the counter. It’s from their favorite place and it looks like she got them a generous amount of dumplings. “You’re the best.”

  “We can have them with…”

  “Extremely charred vegetables and chicken? Yeah, sounds delicious.”

  Natalie cackles and grabs them plates. “You’ll get there. Next time you’ll know which pans to use and maybe you can banish your girlfriend to the living room, so she doesn’t distract you.”

  Elliot gives her a nudge. “I’ll try.”

  He doesn’t let her help clean up the kitchen later, because it’s his mess and if his mom taught him one thing it was that he had to clean up his own messes. He wasn’t always good at it, still isn’t good at it sometimes, but he needs to do one thing right today. He asks Natalie to pick a movie and digs up some ice cream for them instead. Elliot is pretty sure that it’s Adam’s; he’ll buy him a new one tomorrow. Maybe he’ll get him two. Adam had to deal with his shitty mood this morning, so he deserves them.

  Natalie curls against him on the couch and Elliot starts to slowly get his shit back together. The kitchen is clean, he can close his eyes now, and he’ll figure things out with Blake somehow. Not right now, not at any point in the near future, because the season is about to start and he doesn’t need this kind of distraction and he doesn’t know how to stop being angry yet, but somehow…

  He eventually falls asleep, head on Natalie’s shoulder, so he at least gets a good ending to a shitty day.

  #

  The season doesn’t start well for Blake. He’s doing fine in the preseason, but once the Knights give him the nod and he gets to start in net in the second half of back-to-back games, he somehow can’t get it together. The D kind of leaves him hanging, too, the guys tired from the night before.

  When Blake lets in the third goal within ten minutes, Coach Franklin pulls him.

  It’s a mercy.

  Mattie gives him a tap with his stick as Blake heads to the bench. He can’t decide if he wants to smash something or cry, so he sits down in the spot that Mattie just vacated and pulls his baseball cap down low so no one can see his face. He gets a pat on the back from one of the assistant coaches and that makes his mood even worse.

  During the first intermission, Coach Franklin is poking his finger in every direction, yelling at them to get off their asses and start playing. They’re down 5-0 and they still have forty minutes left to play, but it would be a mighty comeback and they all know it. The least they can do is break the shutout. Blake tries to disappear because half of that score is basically his fault, terrible defense or not.

  The game ends with a score of 7-2, the team quiet on their way into the locker room. Blake tries to look at absolutely no one, but still has to talk to the media. The first question he gets thrown his way is how he felt when he got pulled.

  “Not too great,” Blake says. What the hell kind of question even is that?

  “Do you feel like you got pulled too early?”

  Blake looks up at the face of the reporter who’s implying that Blake is in a position where he has any choice whatsoever in when he gets pulled by his coach. “I feel like Coach Franklin did what he felt would give us a chance to win this game.”

  It goes on and on like that and once the crowd of reporters finally disperses, Blake wants to curl up on the floor and never move again. He’ll stay here until the next game. Which he’ll be spending on the bench. And then they’ll send him down again. Because he wasn’t ready for the NHL after all.

  “Hey.”

  Blake looks up and finds their captain hovering over him. Brian Kelly is a huge dude, only 28, doesn’t look old, but still somehow like he already has 50 years of NHL experience on his back.

  “Hey,” Blake says, and even that sounds defeated.

  “Not your fault, kid.”

  “I–”

  “We left you hanging,” Kells goes on. “We’ll do better next time, all right?”

  “All right,” Blake says.

  Doesn’t mean that Blake didn’t fuck up out there, but he appreciates it nonetheless. Being a goalie, people tend to either give you too much credit or unload all the blame on you. Kells ruffles his hair and then wanders away, patting backs on his way to the shower.

  Blake stays in the shower way too long, is still in there when all the other guys are done. He belatedly remembers that Mattie gave him a ride to the arena and is waiting for him out there, probably tired because he had to play two nights in a row, both of which is Blake’s fault.

  Mattie is indeed sitting in his stall, fully dressed, most of the guys already heading out.

  “Sorry,” Blake mutters and gets dressed as quickly as he can, keeping his head down.

  Mattie doesn’t talk on the way to the car, doesn’t talk as they get in, doesn’t talk as they leave the parking garage. Blake should apologize, but doesn’t know how, and while he chews on that, Mattie seems to remember how to talk.

  “I’m not really sure what to say to you and I’m thinking about what would have made me feel better when I was your age and got pulled during my first start of the season and I… I got nothing.”

  Blake sighs. “I’m sorry.”

  “No
, listen, we all got bad nights and you didn’t stand a chance with the first one and you were kinda alone out there for the other two, so I can promise you that no one’s blaming you. Hell, no one would be blaming you if all three of them were your fault.”

  Blake has a hard time believing that, but he nods anyway.

  “There’s always the next game and the next and you’re still growing, you’re at the very beginning of this and not every game’s going to be a win, but you know that already.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “No, I get it. I’ve been there. We’ve all been there. You just keep going, okay?”

  “Okay,” Blake says. It sounds small. He feels small.

  “What do you need? You need to go back in next game or do you need a break?”

  “I don’t think that’s really my choice.”

  “No, it’s not really your choice, but we have Tanner on our side and if we tell him that you’ll fucking drop dead if they don’t put you in net the day after tomorrow, he’ll talk to Coach.”

  Blake doubts that Tanner has that much say in the final lineup, only being the goalie coach, but Mattie has been around longer than him.

  “So, what do you need?” Mattie asks.

  “Go back in.”

  “I thought you’d say that. You’re a tough kid.”

  Tough is just about the last word he’d use to describe himself right now, but if he gets benched for a few more games, he’ll get more and more scared of the next time they’ll put him in net, to a point where he’ll believe that losing is the only option. He’s been there before. He wishes he was over it.

  There’s no way of telling if it’s really Tanner who talks to Coach Franklin, or if Coach Franklin sees that Blake is working his ass off at practice the next day, but Blake is between the pipes again for their next game, on the road, in Hartford.

  They win 4-1 and when the guys line up to pat his head after the game, Brammer hugs him so hard that he nearly lifts him off his feet.

  #

  For Elliot, the new season begins with an ankle sprain.

  He gets injured in their last preseason game against the Foxes. It’s nobody’s fault, just an accident. It’s not as bad as it could be, but he would have preferred to be on the ice for their first regular season game instead of watching it from the press box.

  It’s unfortunate that it happened at the beginning of the season, because they have a bunch of new guys on the roster that Elliot wants to get to know better and it’s hard when he’s not practicing with them. He tries to spend as much time with the team as possible, travels with them, hangs out at the rink, gets there early, has lunch with the team. Through it all, Andreas Wagner still follows him like a duckling, much like last season. He cracked the regular season roster this time and Elliot suspects that he’s a little scared of Jacob and that’s why he comes to Elliot with all his questions.

  He misses their first game of the season, a road game against the Knights. Elliot gets on the bus with the rest of the guys, even though they’re literally going one city over and will all sleep in their own beds tonight. Blake is on the bench, stone-faced, glaring at the puck as he follows it around the ice with his eyes. He saves one of the trainers from taking a puck in the head during the second, still stone-faced. He throws the puck to a little girl behind the bench and she straight-up kisses the glass, which finally tickles a smile out of him.

  Elliot tries not to look his way too much, even though Blake probably doesn’t even know where he’s sitting. The fight they had a few weeks ago still doesn’t sit well with him and the only thing Elliot currently wants to tell Blake is to go fuck himself, so maybe it’s not the best time for a conversation. It still hurts, and Elliot can’t tell what hurts worse – what Blake said to him, or that it was Blake who said it.

  He goes down to the locker room after the game to make sure the rookies are okay, because after an evenly-paced first period, the Knights snatched the game from them in the second, outshot them, outscored them and eventually won the game, 5-2.

  “Come back soon,” Adam says when they’re on their way home.

  “As soon as I can,” Elliot promises.

  When it’s time for Elliot to return and he starts skating again, first on his own, then with the team, he often stays after the official end of practice, usually with at least a few other guys, amongst them Adam and Andreas, often with Riley still in goal, swearing at them loudly every time they score on him.

  The night Elliot returns to the lineup, he leaves the ice without a single point, and he’s not exactly disappointed, but he was hoping for at least an assist and even wouldn’t have cared if it was secondary. Natalie is waiting for him at home, hugs him and tucks him into bed, holding on to him like she knows that it’s exactly what he needs.

  It’s not like she’s ever seen him during the season. He’d hate for her to realize that this isn’t what she wants after all, now that everything’s changing after the summer. Elliot will be gone for roadies, sometimes for nearly two weeks at a time. It’s a tough schedule, even when they’re at home. It takes him ages to fall asleep that night and he grumbles at his alarm in the morning.

  The next game goes better. A goal, only an empty-netter, but it’s better than nothing.

  After that, they’re on the road for two games and it’s another two games without a point. Elliot is starting to get frustrated, but not quite as frustrated as Riley, who hasn’t won a single game this season and, being their backup, also doesn’t get too many starts, and also not quite as frustrated as Andreas, who hasn’t scored a single goal, despite being in the lineup since the beginning of the season.

  “They’re going to scratch me soon,” Andreas mutters. He was on the third line at the beginning of the season, now he’s on the fourth, slowly slipping down the ranks.

  Elliot is still centering the second, but he’s not producing so who knows how long that’ll last. He was hoping that at some point he’ll get bumped up to the first line, but that’s pretty much a distant dream right now.

  When he gets home, ridiculously late at night, Natalie is at his and Adam’s place, waiting for him and he hugs her for about fifteen minutes without saying a word and she lets him, gently rubbing his back. Adam sneaks away, doesn’t stick around to chirp him and doesn’t say anything about it when they’re going to practice the next day.

  Before practice, while they’re skating around, waiting for the rest of the guys, Andreas catches up with him, face red, and says, “You want to stick around after practice?”

  “Yeah,” Elliot says.

  Slowly, so slowly, he starts racking up points.

  December begins with a hat trick on the road, and it’s like he can’t stop scoring after that. Their line is on fire, Adam and Magnus on his wing, giving him the most beautiful passes as early Christmas presents. Another hat trick three games later, and he’s now on a seven-game point streak and when he gets out on the ice, it’s like he’s flying. After the second hatty – this one at home, hats raining down onto the ice – the amount of messages he receives is completely insane.

  Nothing from Blake, not that it matters, but a year ago he would have at least sent him one of those congratulations texts.

  He sees Blake in late December, a few days before Christmas. The Ravens are playing against the Knights in Newark and it’s the first game of a back-to-back for the Knights, and of course they decide to put Blake in goal against the Ravens, because the Ravens are, objectively, doing a lot worse than the Grizzlies, who will be in town the next day. Despite Elliot’s point streak, the Ravens aren’t winning enough games. Elliot is one goal away from overtaking Morozov, even though he missed several games at the beginning of the season and Morozov hasn’t missed a single game.

  The game against the Knights is dirty, but they always are, same with the Mariners. They’re too close, the fans riled up as much as the players. Less than five minutes in, Moby drops the gloves with the Knights’ Ian Hennings for something that happened in
a previous game, but the fighting doesn’t stop there. Power plays and penalty kills are chasing each other and they go into the third tied at three.

  Elliot scores on Blake halfway through the third and Blake looks fucking pissed, slams his stick against the goal and glares out at the ice, past Elliot, like he’s not even there.

  The Knights tie the game again, not a minute later, no power play this time.

  Things somehow get even uglier, one of Elliot’s teammates – he’s not even sure which one – takes Blake’s net off and trips Blake in the process. Blake seems to be okay, but someone touched the goalie, and when someone touches the goalie, any goalie, you can expect gloves to go flying. It’s Moby again, now exchanging blows with the Knights’ captain, the most terrifyingly large D-man in the Eastern Conference. Another Knight tries to jump in, Elliot tries to pulls him back, then someone tries to pull him back. Elliot shoves his elbow back blindly and is shoved back in return. Elliot turns around and finds that it was Blake.

  “Fuck off,” Elliot shouts in his general direction, but Blake won’t and practically cross-checks him out of his crease.

  Before Elliot can retaliate, he has two Knights on him, then Blake pulls one of them off of Elliot saying something that sounds like, “It’s okay, we’re all good, all good…”

  Then one of the officials gets between them, but not before Johnny Brammer can lay one on Elliot.

  The officials start dealing out penalties, minor and major alike, and the Knights end up on the power play. They convert within twelve seconds and the Ravens don’t manage to tie up the game again.

  Elliot is on the ice when the final horn goes, Blake’s teammates taking off, surrounding Blake, about five of them trying to hug him at the same time and Blake hugs all of them thoroughly one by one. As Elliot gets off the ice, memories gnaw on him, memories of being in that line, Blake crushing him against his chest after games.

  He doesn’t dwell on the thoughts of Blake, mostly because thinking of him also makes him think of last summer, of what Blake said, and just like that he’s done with his trip down memory lane.