Page 109 of The Trade Deadline
Ryan
Ryan didn’t like being traded.He felt he’d earned that dislike. No one had ever asked him about a trade beforehand or even had the decency to warn him. No one had cared if there were teams he preferred or ones he absolutely didn’t want to go to. They just…did it. And then told him about it, uncaring what he thought about it.
Even without the whole Lars thing, he hadn’t wanted to leave the Crabs. That had been his one goal going into this season: to stay in Baltimore.
The Otters were making it really hard to hate the move, though.
The team was welcoming, which made it sound like the other teams hadn’t been. They had, friendly and patient as he figured things out. This was different, in little ways. The staff was more helpful finding him a place to stay. He was invited out for drinks right after his first game. The coaches were excited to have him, running him through the systems and seeking his input on where he would best fit.
And they let him pick his number. That alone had worn down his defenses.
Most welcoming of all had been Anders.
“I don’t see many of my brother’s former teammates,” he’d said in the locker room the first night and offered his hand. “Good to see you again, Ryan.” A pause. “Or do you prefer RJ?”
Again, people asking what he wanted. Wild.
“Ryan,” he said and accepted Anders’s hand. “Gotta say, I preferred playing with you than against you.”
Anders’s crooked half-smile was on the opposite side of his mouth as Lars’s. “Now that he’s not here to defend himself…” Anders leaned in like he was about to tell him a secret, and Ryan found himself leaning in as well. “Did you like playing with Lars? He can be…”
Anders left the sentence hanging, generously not pinning anything negative on his brother and letting Ryan fill in the blanks.
Ryan briefly considered lying. Trying to get on Anders’s good side by agreeing that Lars could be a pain. It wouldn’t even be a lie, really, just stretching the truth to what Anders expected to hear.
He didn’t have it in him.
“He can be a little intense,” he hedged, “but only when he’s playing you, honestly. He was great to play with. Probably my favorite teammate on the Crabs.”
Or anywhere. But his communication with Lars since he’d left the day before had been lacking, and he wasn’t sure how much he wanted to reveal to a virtual stranger who had a personal stake in the answer.
The crooked smile was back. “Yeah, the kid’s a little shit, isn’t he?”
That was it. A weirdly fond statement about how Lars was kind of a dick to him. Not really anything to justify Lars’s absolute loathing for his big brother, except that maybe Anders didn’t take his grudge very seriously.
If Ryan were built like Anders Nilsson, he probably wouldn’t take it seriously, either.
* * *
Ryan scored in his first game as an Otter, which helped endear him to the whole team. They gave him the puck with a label and crudely drawn Otter, and they gave him Player of the Game, complete with a hat that was shaped like an Otter’s head. It was nice to be appreciated, and he couldn’t remember being appreciated like this in years.
Except by Lars, who had only sent him a single ?? emoji in the last 24 hours.
* * *
“Ryan!”
Ryan whipped around in surprise at the female voice calling his name. He’d just finished his first practice with the Otters and worried he’d have to do media stuff while all sweaty and exhausted. They’d already done a bunch of promo pictures of him in his new jersey, and he’d thought that would buy him some more time.
But when he turned around, there was a beautiful blond in an Otters jersey, something about her familiar but unplaceable.
She took pity on him and smiled brightly, perfect white teeth shining. “Sorry, I’m Amanda. Anders’s wife. The boys have talked so much about you, I feel like I know you already, but of course we’ve never actually met.”
Anders’s wife? Yeah, that fit the blotchy mental picture he had. “I remember you guys coming to our game in town. You were there with your kids and had a sign for Lars.”
She beamed at him. “Oh my gosh, the kidsloveUncle Lasse. We do it every time Lars comes to town. Used to only be once a season. The kids were so excited when they found out he was moving closer and it could be twice.”
“I met Anton at the All Star Game,” he said. “Cute kid. Made Lars act like a kid, too.” He laughed, realizing she must know Lars as well as he did. “Well, more of a kid.”
