Page 41 of Delay of Game
Gags took a large gulp of the beer and wiped his mouth and the foam on his upper lip away with the back of one hand. He was really trying for facial hair, but he’d mostly managed a horrible little mustache spread sparsely across his pale skin. “Howdo you learn it, though?”
“I don’t know how to give you specifics,” Zach admitted. “It’s just, like, you know. The more games you play, the more mistakes pile up. And the good stuff too. But at a certain point it’s all kind of a blur. It just helps to focus on the game at hand, and then after that’s over, just on preparing for the next game.”
“If you say so,” Gags said doubtfully.
“Come on!” Zach clapped Gags on the shoulder and the beer he was holding sloshed dangerously at the rim of the pint glass. “It’s New Year’s, bud, and we actually pulled out the win. You don’t need to be beating yourself up about this. Go have fun with your friends. Bells is looking a bit overwhelmed there.”
They both turned to look: there was Belsky, in the corner, talking to two women who were probably at least five years older than him, the kind of Brooklyn transplant hipster moms who went to yoga classes in the morning and werereallyenjoying having a babysitter for the holiday. Belsky was a handsome kid, big and muscular and sharp-featured, but for all of his size, he looked like a deer in the headlights.
Gags laughed, and Zach gave him a little swat on the arm again. “Go on.”
He watched Gags’s back as he wove his way through the crowd, frowning a little.
“Hey,” Nate mumbled in his ear, halfway through the night. The rest of the guys didn’t notice. They were too busy at the bar, or drinking, or pursuing some of the very pretty girls who’d come out in their fancy New Year’s dresses. “Do you wanna get out of here?”
Zach thought about it. He thought about how even last year, he probably would’ve been chasing after the woman in the shimmery gold dress, the one who looked like little bits of twinkly fringe all sewn together, who slipped between them with a murmured apology on her way to the bar. He would have been distracted by literally the shiniest thing in the room.
This year it wasn’t even a question where he was going and who he was going with. If this was what growing up felt like, he didn’t mind in the least.
Zach said, “Sure.”
It didn’t take them long to walk back to Nate’s house from Fishtown; the night air was chilly and crisp and Zach was only wearing his thin sweater, but he didn’t feel cold at all. He wasn’t even really that drunk, just a little tipsy. Tipsy enough to bump his shoulder companionably against Nate’s as they walked, tipsy enough to feel the warm satisfaction of having Nate all to himself.
Once they got back to Nate’s house, they went up to the roof deck, sprawled themselves out on Nate’s comfortable outdoor couch, with its deep pillows that he conscientiously brought inside when he wasn’t sitting on them—the kind of tiny detail that made Zach’s chest squeeze when he thought about it too long. They sat in silence for a long time, watching the explosions above them. He glanced sideways at Nate’s handsome face in profile, turned up to the sky, the warmth of the gas firepit glowing between them.
One of the most beautiful things about New Year’s in Philly was that somehow, even though they technically weren’t legal, everyone had fireworks going off in their backyard. It was frustrating, as a dog owner, because the barking went pretty much nonstop during it. But you couldn’t deny that it was a sight to see. No matter which direction you turned your head, something was exploding. Chaotic and untimed, flowering bursts of pink and blue and green, streaks of red and yellow and orange. Sparkling white snowfalls. In the distance you could hear people cheering and the crackle and hiss of the rockets going off.
It wasn’t anything like where he’d grown up, but lately, it seemed more and more like home.
At midnight, when the screams and gunshots and fireworks really went over the top, Zach leaned over on a brazen impulse and kissed Nate firmly on the mouth, ignoring the pain in his lip. It was risky: there were neighbors on the roof decks around them, none of whom were looking at them; there were windows, none of which he could see beyond.
But there was Nate, flushed face and wide blue eyes, and there was the New Year, and the knowledge of the promise he’d made.
“What was that for?” Nate asked, after Zach had pulled away.
“Happy New Year, dummy,” Zach said, fingers on his knee.
“Well, yeah,” Nate said, and licked his lip.
He asked, even though he already knew the answer. “You wanna go in to celebrate?”
Nate was smiling. He was smiling at Zach, and Zach thought his chest might burst. “Of course.”
Nate tried not to think about how easy it was to adjust to the new parameters of things with Zach. It was easy in some ways, but not in others. He still felt self-conscious whenever he got naked, at least until Zach distracted him.
And it was still a game thing, but also, it wasn’t.
If it wasjusta game thing, then they wouldn’t have spent New Year’s together. If it was just a game thing, Zach probably wouldn’t keep crashing in Nate’s hotel room after they’d hooked up. If it was just a game thing, Zach would probably be weird about it when Nate woke up pressed naked against his back, face tucked into the space between his neck and shoulder. If it was just a game thing, he wouldn’t roll over, laughing, and breathe his disgusting morning breath in Nate’s face, and kiss him anyway.
But if it wasn’t just a game thing Nate didn’t know what it was.
Maybe this was just what happened when you had a thing going with someone you knew as well as he knew Zach. Maybe this was just what happened when you had a really good hockey buddy, when you had an intense friendship like the kind you had in juniors and instead of things ending when you got drafted, it just kept...going. It was easy to mix up what parts of your life were what.
“Hey,” Zach said, on one of those days where the morning breath was vile but neither of them was in a rush to get out of bed and brush their teeth. They were in Philly the day after the last game, and after a morning skate, they were flying to Dallas later that day. Zach’s hair was messy; he hadn’t really cut it after the playoffs like he usually did, and it was still long enough to tie up in a weird-looking hipstery topknot. Nate knew this because he’d pulled the topknot out the night before. “We’ve been playing some pretty great fucking hockey, dude.”
“We have,” Nate agreed. He felt unusually cautious, like if he said the wrong thing, something unexpectedly bad would happen. Or he didn’t want to say too much, reveal too much.
Zach seemed equally cautious, which was unusual. He looked, searching, into Nate’s face. “It’s good, I guess. That’s what I wanted to say. It feels like everything’s finally clicking.”