Page 19 of Delay of Game
“Shut the fuck up,Singer,” Cameron snarled.
Nate rolled his eyes at the tone; he’d heard it before. Often followed by a word that started withK. Even then, he’d never dropped the gloves. He wondered what Zayde would’ve thought about that.He’dbeen a fighter. Nate was a competitor, but fighting? It just wasn’t in his temperament. He’d learned to shrug things off even if his friends didn’t like to let them go.
Cameron skated to the box, Zach dogging his heels, chirping him the whole way. Nate frowned as he dragged himself back to the bench. That wasn’t like Zach. Zach was cheerful, Zach made lighthearted jokes, Zach was the life of the party, even when the party was on the ice. Right now, Zach looked like he would’ve ripped Cameron’s throat out if it wouldn’t have immediately negated the power play and put them back at four on four.
It was a very weird experience.
“You okay, Cap?” Bee asked, slowing her pace to match his.
“I’m fine,” he assured her. “It’s kind of sweet everyone’s so worried about me, but I’m a big boy. I can handle it.”
She patted him on the shoulder. “You shouldn’t have to.”
“Don’tyougo fighting him either.” Bee could hold her own, but the last thing Nate wanted was more violence when his ribs still felt like they’d been run over by a tractor.
“Cross my heart and hope to die,” she said solemnly.
“That’s really not necessary—” Nate started, then stopped as Zach drifted back across the ice toward him. Circling the wagons, as it were. “Hey, bud. You good?”
“I’mfine, I just...”
“Hey,” Nate said softly. “You’re gonna have to go take that face-off. I’ll be right behind you. You don’t have to worry about me.”
“You know I—”
“I know.”
Zach clapped him on the back, and Nate wheezed again. “Jesus, Singer. Maybe you should get it looked at by the trainers?”
“I’mfine.”
Zach won the face-off, swiped it clean back to Nate, ready to receive it, ready to sprint it up the ice and ignore the fact that every movement hurt. He thought about Cameron, the word that he hadn’t articulated but that both of them had been thinking.
The goal light and the goal horn blaring. Zach screaming in his face after he’d roofed it top shelf over the Calgary goalie’s shoulder. Zach’s gloved hands gripping his shoulders. That was better than his fist in anyone’s face. Nate exhaled, long and slow. It hurt to do it.
That was hockey.
Chapter Five
November
They went out after the game in Columbus to celebrate the win. Salonen—Sally—the ridiculous Finnish menace that he was, had already started buying drinks. Zach was always sure that Sally was drinking too, but no matter how deep into closing out the bar they got, he never seemed to show a single sign of intoxication.
Gags hadn’t scored, but he’d had a solid game, and he was in the thick of it now, beaming and drunk and red-faced and wide-eyed, talking a mile a minute about a tricky play he’d broken up, batting a saucer pass right out of midair to cut the defenders off before they’d been able to complete the move. Zach watched him, frowning a little. Something about the way Gags was gesturing and laughing set him on edge. He made a mental note to keep an eye on him next time, but Nate had already begged off, so Zach made his way toward the door to start the walk back to the hotel, only a few blocks away.
Zach, are you alive?Mom texted him. He’d just been gearing up to go up to Nate’s room to hang when he saw it.I know you’re alive because I’m watching you on TV, but that’s about it.Zach immediately regretted leaving the banner alerts up on his phone.
She picked up on the first ring, and he sighed. “Hi, Mom.”
“Look, I didn’t mean to be a jerk about it, but you’ve been even less communicative than usual, kiddo.”
“You have Mark’s kid and Catie and Carrie’s games to keep you busy. You don’t need to hear from me all the time too. And you know what the travel schedule’s like.”
Mom made a tutting noise low in the back of her throat, a noise that made her sound about fifty years older than she was. She might have been a grandmother before her fiftieth birthday, but she was also the kind of mom who made teammates take the piss out of him and whistle and say shit like,damn, dude, your mom’s hot as fuck. He’d known even back then that saying anything would only have made it worse, so he’d rolled his eyes and ignored it, but. She wasn’t like Nate’s mom, even though they both had that kind of anxious mom energy that made you feel like shit when you didn’t call.
“Of course we need to hear from you. You know we worry when we don’t.”
Zach sighed again, more explosive this time, because he knew exactly where this was coming from. Sure. He’d fucked up in Montreal. And he’d hidden exactly how much he was screwing up in Montreal from them until it had been too late. His parents hadn’t known any of the details until they ended up on the internet. Videos of Zach on TikTok, naked and fucked up out of his mind in some random girl’s hotel room. A picture of him doing lines in a bar bathroom. In and out of peoples’ social media like some kind of particularly screwed-up cryptid. That kind of shit. He hadn’t been careful once in his life, and people he’d partied with had taken full advantage.