Page 19 of The Trade Deadline
Lars nodded as he considered. “And you’llbothbe there?” he asked. He kept his focus on Vorny, who did the same, and Ryan suddenly felt like he was a bargaining chip in some weird poker game.
“If you will be, then he will be,” Vorny agreed.
“I—” Vorny elbowed Ryan before he could finish.
“Then I guess we’ll both be there,” Lars eventually said with a business-like nod.
“Good,” Vorny said, then pointedly shooed Ryan away before he could argue.
“I don’t want to go,” Ryan whined. It wasn’t the socializing—he frequently went out with the guys, both in town and on road trips—or even the drinking. They’d overdo it for sure and tease Ryan for abstaining, but that generally didn’t bother him and he’d long ago accepted that his role on most teams was to babysit drunken teammates who forgot how to order an Uber. He was just…tired. Drained. The amount of energy he put into practice, plus the added mental gymnastics of the Lars situation, had him in Tanner’s apartment most evenings eating takeout and falling asleep to the sound of video games.
“And yet you will,” Vorny said. He patted Ryan’s shoulder and walked away. Ryan had no way to back out without looking like a weasel. Great.
He caught a glimpse of Lars leaving the locker room, blond hair a damp mess from his shower. Once out of sight, Ryan vividly recalled the younger Lars he'd met at a hotel bar. His hair wasn’t long anymore, and all of the baby fat had melted away, but he hadn’t quite escaped the boyish twinkle to his eye. Heart suddenly in his throat, Ryan resigned himself to going to Rangoons.
* * *
Ryan sipped his soda and watched Vorny and the Ivans (Nikita Ivanov and Ivan Petrovich, forwards on the same line that also seemed to come as a duo off the ice) at the pinball machine. All three held the top scores, their places marked by their last initial and jersey number. Well,usuallythey had the whole leaderboard. Tonight they’d come into the back room reserved for the team and found, to their dismay, that three of the top ten places now belonged to a mysterious ASS. They’d be there all night until they reclaimed the spots. Even if it meant bribing the owner into manually resetting the machine.
Vorny was cursing in Russian as the other two nudged the machine to tilt it to help him when a large figure sidled up to Ryan.
“What are you wearing?”
Ryan turned and found himself almost nose to nose with Lars. Ryan tensed and wished he were a pinball nerd so that he wouldn’t be alone with Lars. This wasn’t a rink; he couldn’t hide behind hockey here.
“Huh?” he asked a little too gruffly.
“That.” Lars pointed to his chest. “Whatisthat?”
He got lost in Nordic blue eyes before he snapped himself out of it and looked down. He was wearing a light blue Hawaiian shirt with a crab pattern; his hands clenched fistfuls of the fabric under the table.
“Oh. I’ve got a bunch of crab-themed clothes. This is my favorite,” he said, surprising them both with his honest answer and even more when he expanded with a self-deprecating, “I don’t know what I’ll do with it all if they trade me.”
“Why would they trade you?” Lars asked, way too serious. If he hadn’t figured out by now that Ryan was a nobody on the team, Ryan didn’t really want to get into it now.
“Did you find this place okay?” He expected some push back from the subject change, but Lars either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
“It’s close enough to my apartment that I walked here.”
That didn’t surprise him. Rangoons was a high end sports bar in a swanky part of town. Of course Lars would’ve picked a place nearby. A couple other guys from the team were within walking distance, mostly the younger ones with no families and healthy contracts.
“The hostess nearly fainted when she saw me,” Lars said with a pleased little smirk. “Hard to find a real sports bar where they recognize players.”
“Yeah,” he said. And then because he felt like an ass for stopping there, he added, “They play every Baltimore sports game here. You should see them during football season.”
“Portland doesn’t have football. Will I have to learn?”
Ryan snorted. “No.” Just this morning, that was where he would’ve stopped; when he just kept going, he wondered if someone had spiked his soda. “You don’t have to, but it’ll impress the fans if you mention literally anything about the other teams.” He spotted their server coming over, his eyes wide and eager as he zeroed in on Lars. “You gonna get a strawberry daiquiri?” he blurted out.
Lars perked up. “Do they have those?”
“No,” Ryan said as their server arrived. “Lots of beer, though. Like,lots.”
“One hundred different beers on tap,” the server confirmed. He looked like he wanted to ask Lars for his autograph, but didn’t. That was one thing the Rangoons had going for them over other places in town: the staff never treated them any differently than other patrons. “Need a recommendation?”
“Something light,” Lars said dismissively, his eyes never leaving Ryan.
“And three orders of rangoons,” Ryan added. It was his one cheat food, and they were delicious. He’d ordered knowing the smell would attract Vorny and the others, who would then steal most of them.
