Three Is The Luckiest Number

by Catherine Cloud

  Elliot was legitimately scared of Blake’s grandma the first time he went to visit Blake in the summer. He soon figured out that she was very concerned, not only for Blake and Evan, but literally everyone else, made sure Elliot had everything he needed, asked about his family, kept putting food in front of him, but food he was actually supposed to eat, not just milk and cookies or whatever Elliot’s grandma makes for him when he swings by.

  Blake actually laughed at him when Elliot pointed that out, and then said, “Yeah, no cookies here. Although if you ask really nicely she might make us some.”

  They did ask really nicely and she did make them cookies and they ate all of them before anyone could stop them.

  Elliot jumped on any invitation to the Samuels’ house, at first because he felt so comfortable there, almost like he was home, then because he also wanted to spend every possible second with his lips attached to Blake’s. He always slept in Blake’s room, Blake on a mattress on the floor, Elliot in Blake’s bed, except when Blake was in his bed with him. One time they watched a movie downstairs, Evan at a friend’s house, Blake’s grandma out playing cards with her friends that Blake called the Casserole Brigade, because they apparently were always out giving their neighbors casseroles at every possible occasion. When she got home, Elliot was fast asleep, Blake’s head on his chest, but jerked awake when the front door closed. Blake, of course, didn’t fucking wake up and Elliot didn’t manage to get him off his chest either, so Blake was still plastered against him when Elliot’s grandma poked her head into the living room.

  Elliot was still scrambling for an explanation when she nodded, like she was pleased that they didn’t trash the house, and wished them a good night. Elliot let Blake keep on sleeping. He never told him about that.

  Blake’s grandma turned into one of his favorite people eventually, with her big black cat and all the kale in the fridge and her lesbian friends.

  “You don’t have to sit there, you know?” Evan says.

  “Do you want me to go?”

  Evan chews on his bottom lip. “I’m just saying you don’t have to.”

  “Okay,” Elliot says. “Well, if you don’t want me to leave, I’ll sit here.”

  Evan nods, fiddles with his phone, and Elliot thinks he made the right choice.

  #

  It’s strange, pulling into the parking lot of the Ravens’ practice facility. It’s even stranger to get out of the car and awkwardly hover in front of the door, because he can’t just walk inside.

  The parking lot is dotted with your typical hockey player cars – Blake’s Jeep fits right in. But he’s literally standing here in a Knights shirt. He pulls out his phone and gives Evan another call, tells him that he’s outside and waits.

  Evan shows up a few minutes later, escorted by Elliot, who’s looking at Blake like he’s a ghost.

  “Hey,” Blake says.

  Evan doesn’t say hello, he just walks right into him and hugs him. And Blake is still keeping it together. He mouths a thank you at Elliot over Evan’s shoulder.

  Elliot nods.

  “Okay, let’s go…” Blake says and nudges Evan over to the car.

  Evan nods at Elliot, who lingers in the door for a moment, then slips back into the rink as Evan and Blake get into the car.

  “You okay?” Blake asks.

  Evan doesn’t look at him, only shakes his head and starts crying and somehow Blake is still keeping it together. He needs to get them home first. It’s almost like it hasn’t really sunken in yet.

  Blake reaches out, squeezes Evan’s arm, and turns the key in the ignition. They’re not that far from home and the stop they make at Evan’s place to get some clothes for him only takes them ten minutes. By the time Blake pulls into the driveway of the house they grew up in, Evan has stopped crying, his eyes still rimmed red. The place looks like it always does; Blake isn’t sure why he thinks that it should be different.

  They go in, the cats running to greet them, and Blake keeps it together.

  He keeps it together all day. They meet up with Aunt Beth, they help her organize the funeral, they’re running from one office to the next all day and when they get back to the house in the evening Blake is absolutely exhausted, ready to drop into bed, and it’s only seven. He didn’t even do much, because Aunt Beth clearly knew what had to be taken care of. Blake was just driving her where she told him to go while she was making phone calls, Evan in the backseat, quietly wiping away tears.

  Blake doesn’t know why he hasn’t cried yet. He isn’t a crier in the first place, but he knows that it’s coming and he wants to get it over with already. It’s been building up all day.

  They drop off Aunt Beth at her house and they pick up dinner on the way home at a diner they used to go to when they were kids and they sit down at the kitchen table and Evan doesn’t eat and Blake doesn’t have it in him to make him, because he can barely convince himself to take a bite right now.

  “I…” Evan says. He picks up his pickle and puts it down again. “I feel like I should have come home more often. I was barely here during the summer and… I just thought… I don’t know… Shit.”

  Blake was here for a few weeks during the summer, but it makes no difference at all. They probably could have spent every single day of their lives here and it wouldn’t feel like it was enough.

  “And…” Evan draws in a shuddering breath. “It’s just us now.”

  “I know,” Blake says. He was thinking about that while he was on his way to pick up Evan. It’s just them now. Aunt Beth will still be around, they grew up with her popping in several times a week, but it’s not the same.

  “I don’t even remember the last conversation I had with her, like, she called me on my day off and I was so distracted because I was about to go out with this girl and I–”

  “Evan, don’t do that.” Blake puts his pickle on Evan’s plate because he always does, even though it looks like Evan isn’t going to eat anything.

  Evan stares at him, then stares down at his burger. “She’d tell us off for having fucking burgers right now.”

  “She’d also tell you off for saying fuck,” Blake says. “And she’d tell you off for not actually eating your food and just poking at it.”

  “I hate this.”

  Blake takes a deep breath. “Me too.”

  He eats his food, watches Evan until he’s eaten his as well, including the pickle Blake gave him, then he shoves Evan out of the kitchen, cleans up their mess, and feeds Angus and the orange cat, Squid. His grandma always had the radio on in the kitchen, so now it seems too quiet. He can hear the murmur of the TV down the hall and finds Evan curled up on the couch, hugging a pillow.

  Blake sits down by his feet, phone in hand. He pretty much ignored everything all day, has a few missed calls, a bunch of notifications from the team’s group chat, texts from Mattie and Noah. While he’s staring down at his phone, trying to figure out if he has it in him to reply to any of them tonight, his phone starts ringing.

  It’s Elliot.

  Blake wonders briefly if Elliot is calling the wrong Samuels brother.

  He almost doesn’t answer but changes his mind when it’s nearly too late. Fuck knows why. “Hey,” he says.

  “Hey,” Elliot replies. “I’m sorry. Is this… I was about to ask if this is a bad time and, like, of course it’s a bad time… I…”

  “It’s okay,” Blake mutters. He glances at Evan, whose eyes are fixed on the TV. “Let me… Give me a second to go upstairs.”

  Blake gives Evan’s foot a gentle pat, then he sneaks out of the room. He doesn’t want to have this conversation with Evan listening in.

  #

  Elliot thinks about calling Blake all day.

  After Evan leaves, Elliot is distracted in the meeting he has in the afternoon, is distracted when he drives home, is distracted when he lies down for a nap and can’t even convince his eyes to stay closed. He should have said something to Blake. Anything. Even if it was just the standard my cond
olences. He wanted to hug him so badly. He doesn’t know why he didn’t do it.

  The fight they had aside, he behaved like a soulless asshole.

  So he keeps fiddling with his phone all day. He gets distracted when he makes dinner, burns his chicken, and then eats the charred chicken because it’s his own damn fault. Natalie isn’t home yet to judge him for it, so he suffers in silence. He’s actually become pretty good at cooking, except when he tries new recipes. There’s still a fifty-fifty chance of him hurtling towards a major disaster when he tries something new, but there are some dishes he’s made so many times that he’s perfected them.

  He keeps thinking about Blake.

  Eventually, he can’t deal with himself anymore, grabs his phone and calls him. He likely has more important stuff to do and won’t answer anyway, so Elliot will leave a message and tell him that he’s sorry for his loss, because then he at least said something. Blake probably doesn’t even want to talk to Elliot, which is confirmed a moment later when Blake doesn’t answer his phone.

  Except then he does.

  “Hey,” Blake says.

  “Hey,” Elliot says. For a moment, he can’t remember what he called to say. “I’m sorry. Is this… I was about to ask if this is a bad time and, like, of course it’s a bad time… I…”

  He’s an idiot. He shouldn’t have called.

  “It’s okay,” Blake says, voice low. “Let me… Give me a second to go upstairs.” Elliot can almost see him stomping up that narrow staircase. He hears a door creak, then Blake says, “Okay.”

  “I’m so sorry, Blake,” Elliot says.

  Blake takes a deep breath on the other end of the line.

  And then Elliot’s mouth just runs away with all the thoughts he’s had all day for some reason. “I wanted to hug you so much when I saw you earlier and… I should have. Blake… I…” Elliot pinches the bridge of his nose, because he can’t cry right now, this is not about him. “And I’m so sorry I called, I just wanted to check on you… and on Evan… and… I’ll hang up now, but I’m sorry and I hope you’re okay.”

  Which is ridiculous, because of course Blake isn’t fucking okay.

  All he gets from the other end of the line is a shuddering breath and a very quiet, “Don’t hang up.”

  “Okay… Okay, I won’t.”

  “It’s…” Blake trails off. “She had a stroke, she wasn’t… She just went to sleep last night and… Yeah. That’s good, I guess? It didn’t hurt, I don’t think. And the funeral is the day after tomorrow and…” His voice cracks. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” Elliot still wants to hug him. He does entertain the absolutely insane idea of driving to Norwalk to give Blake a hug. He knows Blake is crying on the other end of the line, can hear him sniffle. Fuck, he’d drive to Norwalk to bring him a tissue right now. “Blake?” Elliot says.

  “Can you… talk to me? About… whatever?”

  “Sure. You wanna hear about… I don’t know.” All he does is play hockey. Blake probably doesn’t want to hear about his personal life and Elliot doesn’t have much else going on. “I can tell you about my teammates.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay,” Elliot says.

  And so he tells Blake about Andreas’s ridiculous pregame ritual that involves a lot of muttering in German, and about Moby, who keeps taping dicks on people’s jerseys, even though he’s way too fucking old for that kind of shit, and Swan, who lost a bet and had to get a tattoo of an actual swan, and their rookie, baby-faced Keith Taylor who keeps getting pranked by Dima and gets so red every single time that the guys have started calling him Crab.

  Natalie gets home, peers into the bedroom, where Elliot is sitting at the foot of their bed. He points at his phone, gets up and closes the door. It’s not something he’d usually do, he doesn’t hide his phone calls from her, but this is different.

  He talks about the Ravens’ latest road trip, about a restaurant he found in Nashville that he liked. He can’t remember the name, knows he has a napkin somewhere, but he gives Blake directions on how to get there from the arena.

  He tells Blake about Adam and picking a ring for his girlfriend. He tells Blake how much he misses Magnus, who’s a Comet now.

  He keeps talking. He doesn’t know for how long, slipping from one story into another, trying not to think about how Blake is probably all by himself in his old room, crying quietly while Elliot prattles on and on about nothing in particular. Somehow, he doesn’t run out of things to say.

  Eventually, Blake says, “Thank you.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m not supposed to like any of the guys on your team, but I guess I’m, uh… weirdly fond of some of them now.”

  “They’re jerks.”

  “Yeah, my guys are jerks, too,” Blake says. “I love them a lot.”

  Elliot laughs.

  “Thanks for calling,” Blake says softly.

  “If there’s anything I can do…”

  “Thank you.” Blake clears his throat. “I should go check on Evan.”

  “How is he?”

  “He’ll be okay. You’ll keep an eye out for him when we’re back, yeah?”

  “I will,” Elliot promises.

  They’re both quiet for a moment. They both have other things to say, but now is not the time. If Elliot makes one wrong move, something will break.

  “Blake?” Elliot finally says.

  “Yeah?”

  “When you’re back, can we… hang out?”

  “Yeah,” Blake says. “I’ll…”

  “Whenever you have time.” Elliot drags his fingers through his hair. “Take care of yourself.”

  Again, Blake says, “Yeah.” Then he says goodnight.

  Elliot stays where he’s been sitting for the past hour or so, staring at the floor, trying to piece himself back together into a presentable person.

  He resurfaces eventually, because Natalie got home about forty-five minutes ago and the longest Elliot usually spends on the phone is ten minutes. He makes an exception when he’s on a long roadie and calls her, but even then they’re usually done talking after half an hour.

  She’s on the couch, watching that TV show with the vampires she likes, munching on a bowl of popcorn. “Hey,” she says and it sounds like a question.

  “Sorry,” Elliot mumbles. “Old friend. Got some bad news today.”

  “Oh,” Natalie says. She’s looking at him like she’s expecting him to say something else, but he doesn’t really know what else to say, so he asks if he can have some popcorn and then nudges the remote back to her so she can go on watching her vampire show.

  #

  Blake sits in his old room for a few more minutes. There’s not too much left in his closet and on the shelves, just some old gear, some clothes he left, stuff from when he was a little kid that his grandma apparently didn’t want to throw away.

  He rubs his eyes. They’re dry now, after he cried for half an hour while Elliot was talking about stuff that Blake barely even registered. Elliot has always been a talker, even during difficult situations, never tried to wiggle his way out of a conversation, because he could deal. There’s something soothing about the way Elliot talks, now even more than six years ago. He has that captain thing down.

  He talks himself into moving, because he really should check on Evan. Looking at it now, Evan’s intermittent crying is probably a much healthier way to deal with this than Blake trying to keep it together until he just couldn’t do it anymore and then letting it go while he was on the phone with his fucking ex.

  Evan is still exactly where Blake left him, watching TV. There’s a tear clinging to his eyelashes, like he stopped crying into the pillow he’s hugging to his chest no two minutes ago. He sits up when Blake joins him on the couch, eyes lingering on Blake’s face.

  “Who was that?” Evan asks. “Girlfriend?”

  The thing with the truth is that in some moments it seems easier to say than in others. Considering the situation they
’re in, this should not be one of the easy ones, but Blake will take it. “Ex-boyfriend,” he says. It’s the worst time to say it, but it’s never felt easier.

  What Blake isn’t expecting is Evan’s, “Why’d you break up?”

  “What?”

  “You and the boyfriend? Why’d you break up?”

  “Really, I tell you that I’m gay and that’s what you want to know?”

  “You didn’t technically say you were gay,” Evan says. “What was I supposed to say?”

  “I… don’t know.”

  “Did you think I’d pass out because I couldn’t deal or some shit? I’m not a total douchebag, Blake.”

  “No, but…”

  “Believe it or not, but you’re not the first gay person I’ve met,” Evan says. “Chill.”

  “Okay,” Blake says, taken aback.

  “So?”

  “What?”

  Evan pokes at Blake’s knee. “Why’d you break up?”

  “It just wasn’t… working. At the time.”

  Evan seems to accept that as an answer and then says, “You have a boyfriend now?”

  “Not really.”

  “Not really is not a no.”

  “It’s a thing.”

  “A thing.” Evan shakes his head at him, like he’s deeply offended by the term. “Can I meet him?”

  “It’s not… no.”

  “So you’re saying you have, like, a dirty mistress.”

  Blake rolls his eyes at him, even though Noah would probably find this whole conversation hilarious and would in no way object to being called a dirty mistress.

  “I’m curious, since we’re talking about your love life for the first time ever. I thought you just hated talking to me about it, you know? I always told you about my girlfriends.”

  “You told me too much about your girlfriends.”

  Evan cackles. “When things get serious with… your guy… can I meet him?”

  “It won’t get serious,” Blake grumbles. “But I guess if there ever is someone serious, you can meet him.”

  “I can live with that.”

  Evan fiddles with his phone and Blake nearly has a heart attack when Squid jumps into his lap, purring as he makes himself comfortable. Evan changes the channel, then gets up to get himself some water and picks up Angus on the way. He almost disappears against Evan’s black shirt.