Page 72 of Delay of Game
“Look. We’re all adults here. I know you have experience mediating conflicts between team members. It was a damn good job you did here your first year when Morin was having trouble. But I need you to figure this the fuck out, Singer. This isn’t the kind of team we can take into the playoffs. It’s just not going to work.”
“I understand,” Nate said, swallowing down bile. “I’ll fix it.”
“See that you do.”
His mom called on his way out into the hall. Nate frowned at the phone and double-clicked the button on the side to send it straight to voice mail.
It didn’t make him feel any better.
Zach remembered what it had been like his first year in Philly, when they’d made the playoffs for the first time in five years and then promptly shit the bed because Bee and Mäkelä had broken up and both of them were suffering. He almost wanted to laugh hysterically because here he was, two seasons later, and he was going to end up dooming the team exactly the same way, without even meaning to. He was truly trying to keep it the fuck together, because the playoffs were so long if you were able to make a deep run, but he couldn’t.
His stall was still next to Nate’s, and since they’d broken up, every time after a game, every time they changed, he regretted that placement. He tried not to look at Nate’s familiar body, the way he knew Nate’s abdominal muscles would clench and shiver under his hands, or how soft the hair on his powerful thighs actually was. Nate never looked at him during those times and Zach knew the silence was probably as loud as a scream to the rest of the team.
He should probably start trying to pretend that things were fine. He should probably go back to making jokes with Nate the way he used to, tease him until he turned red and couldn’t meet Zach’s eye. But he couldn’t. They’d just dropped the first game of the first round by a disappointing score of 2-1, and every time he thought about it, he knew it was his fault.
This close to Nate it felt like all of the hair on the back of his arms was standing up, electrified by the proximity, a magnetic current running between them. Nate, who studiously refused to look at him while the reporters went around the room for the scrum. They were converged around Netty now, on the opposite side of the round of stalls.
“Can we—at least pretend things are normal?” Zach said, before he could stop himself. He’d managed to keep it quiet, at least, so only Nate could hear. “In front of everyone else?”
Nate lifted his head slowly and stared at him. His eyes were that fathomless blue that used to remind Zach of the ocean in Tulum but now just looked cloudy, shadowed by the dark circles under his eyes.
“If that’s what you want,” Nate said, after a moment.
“It’s just, it’s just been really tough. To make things go right around here. When we aren’t even talking,” Zach found himself babbling, even while his brain was screamingshut the fuck up, you fucking idiotat him. Nate was looking at him still, with that sad, serious expression on his face. There was absolutely no way this could end in anything that wasn’t disaster. But the playoffs were here, and they had already lost a game and he had totry.
“I... We can try. At practice. But Zach, I just... I can’t,” Nate said. He was looking at his feet again, bruised where he’d blocked a bad shot with his skate and more than visible through the slides he was wearing. He swayed a little in place, like his body wanted to magnetically orient itself toward Zach’s, before he caught himself and pulled back. “I’m not good at pretending.”
“I’m not either, but...we can’t do to the team what Bee and Mäkelä did my first season here, Nate. I won’t be responsible for that.”
Whatever Nate had been about to say was lost when they both noticed that the beat reporters had finished up with Netty and were turning toward their end of the half circle of stalls. Nate swallowed any words that might have been on his tongue and looked at them like he was about to face a gallows and executioner.
Pretty much any other time, Zach would have stayed with him, backed him up without thinking about it. Now his instinct was to melt into the shadows and flee. It was a cowardly fucking feeling, and he kind of hated himself for it. That was something that Old Zach would’ve done, caring more about himself than about his teammate. His brother.
With a huge sigh, Zach took one step to the side so the bright lights from the cameras weren’t shining right in his face and waited, just in case Nate needed the assist.
Nate’s eyes darted sideways to look at him, just for a second, registering that he hadn’t left after all. A tight smile creased his mouth before it disappeared. And then he turned back to the beats, like Zach wasn’t even there, and they just—had to go on like that.
Nate hadn’t known how to react when Zach had asked him to just pretend, at least when they were at the rink. He hadn’t lied when he had said that he wasn’t any good at pretending. He was probably the worst person ever when it came to pretending things were normal. Maybe it was anxiety, but also, maybe he was just that obvious about his feelings.
The thing was that Zach wasright. Coach wasright. They were hurting the team by acting like this, and if he could have been a less selfish, braver person, he would have been able to get his shit together and just pretend. But he was himself, and he was a fucking mess.
The first round of the playoffs started. They scraped together a win against the Railers in Long Island, and if they could manage another one, they would keep the home ice advantage for the series. But it hadn’t been a win that feltgood. It wasn’teasy. The plentiful offense that had carried them through large parts of the season was worn down by the Railers’ neutral zone trap, by the clutch and grab of the playoffs. There was a time when the Cons had been known as the Broad Street Bullies, but that time was many decades in the past. They were still a weird, scrappy underdog team, but they’d lost a lot of height and a lot of weight and sheer nastiness in the process.
Gags, for example, was getting absolutely bullied out there. The bigger Railers’ defensemen were targeting him on every shift, and he didn’t have an answer for it except popping right back up and back checking furiously to recover the puck. It happened: it was one of the rites of passage for younger players. He had been on the ice for both of the goals against, but that wasn’t anything to be ashamed of. Again: a rookie rite of passage. But Gags was... Nate didn’t know how to describe it except that it felt off.
Gags was as full of nervous energy as he usually was, but he seemed too twitchy, laughing too loud. He kept touching one of the bruises on his arms, like he was surprised it was there, and when Netty tried to sling an arm around him in commiseration, Gags wrenched out of the embrace and said, “I’m gonna go back to my room.”
Nate checked in on him in the hotel after they took the bus back. He was rooming with Belsky, who Nate had run into heading downstairs to buy a late-night snack from the concierge. That was good: he wanted to talk to Gags alone. When he knocked, he could hear something drop, like Gags had hit something or thrown it against the wall. Or maybe fallen off the bed. Some scrambling.
“Uhhh, one sec!” Gags said, coughing.
“It’s just me,” Nate said. “Singer.”
“I know, I’m coming, just—”
The door opened. The hotel room looked like any other rookie’s room, and Nate smiled to see it. Gags’s stuff was strewn all over the place like his suitcase had exploded on the hotel desk, while Belsky’s was all neatly folded and in separate little dividers inside the case itself, his dirty laundry separated out into a bag. Both of their beds had the rumpled, disarrayed look that hotel beds got when hockey players came home from the rink at weird times to nap and missed the housekeeping schedules. All of that was normal.
Gags, on the other hand, looked kind of ill, his pupils huge and his face flushed and sweaty. “What’s up, Cap?”