Page 137 of Hockey Bois
Brady rolled his eyes and grabbed more chicken. “You want sex, just say you want sex.”
“I want sex,” Nick said quickly, shamelessly.
“Then stop trying to sneak into your work email like I haven’t noticed and eat your damn dinner.”
Nick sighed dramatically and put his phone, screen down, on the counter. He slid it over to Brady and went back to his Pad Thai. He only eyed his phone a few more times.
“Dude,” Brady scolded as he grabbed the phone and put it in his pocket. “You have a problem.”
“But I have so much work to do,” he whined. They both knew Nick was not above reaching into Brady’s pants to get his phone if he wanted it. Of course, they both also knew that Nick would get distracted once he made it into Brady’s pants, so he supposed Brady had made a good choice.
“How about we do stick-and-puck tomorrow morning?” Brady said. It wasn’t a subtle change of subject; Nick knew there was no point arguing about his work, though, so he didn’t.
“How early is it?” Nick asked dubiously. He was on board in theory, but he needed a reset that only a good eight hours of sleep could provide. Admittedly, he’d been sleeping better the past week and hadn’t been flying on autopilot as much. The switch seemed to happen about when Brady started showing up at his door with food, beer, and the promise of sex if Nick could stay awake for another half hour.
He usually couldn’t, but the company was appreciated all the same. Even if it meant the minor concession of sharing his bed.
“Ten,” Brady said. “I’d need to stop by my place to get gear.”
Nick smiled at the implication that Brady’d be spending the night with him.
“Ten’s doable.” He pushed his food around a bit to build up his courage. “You got any plans for the weekend?”
“Other than making sure you don’t do any math? Nope. Why, there something you wanna watch?”
Knowing they were going to hang out was amazing, perfect, and buoyed Nick’s flagging spirits. “You don’t wanna go to Krazy Dan’s or something? I’m going a little stir crazy between work, the Metro, and the house. Feels like I do nothing but move from one box to another.”
Brady’s expression wavered; he hid it by moving around the last scraps of food on his plate. “Krazy Dan’s is a box, too.”
“True, but like—”
“You don’t wanna maybe… hang out here?” And then quickly, like he had to make the idea sound better, he added, “You fell asleep during that hockey documentary the other night. Missed all the Jagr stuff.”
So Brady wanted to hang out… but alone. In private. With no other witnesses to whatever it was they were doing right now.
That stung.
“You finished it without me?” he said, hopefully without sounding too disappointed. He tried for more teasing than hurt; if he sounded hurt, let Brady think it was about the stupid movie.
“I’ve seen it five times. I stopped it before the good stuff, don’t worry. They haven’t even gotten to Jagr’s dramatic entrance to the NHL when he was drafted back in 1990.” Whatever other motivations Brady might have, there was his usual Jagr-induced enthusiasm shining in his eyes; hewantedto share this with Nick, and that counted for something.
“Grab some beer and let’s head upstairs. Wouldn’t want to keep Jagr waiting.”
He tried to stay awake, he really did, but he zonked out somewhere between Jagr winning the Cup and winning gold. He dreamed about hockey, some nonsense where Jagr was at the rink watching their game and proudly drinking from the Wheaton Cup while cheering for them. Then, he dreamed about being literally chained to his desk at work as Chad and his sales bros dropped off more and more receipts, sales reports, and a bag of coins. Then, thankfully, he didn’t dream about anything worth remembering.
When he woke up, groggy and hungry, his bed was empty and something feltoff.
Not bad, just…different.
Nick rubbed his eyes to chase away the weird dreams and looked around his room. The sun shone too brightly and cheerfully to actually tell him anything more than that it was sometime between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. His bed was empty, which belatedly told him Brady had disappeared at some point, and he heard noises from downstairs.
Pulling on the first pieces of clothes he could find, he grabbed his phone and wandered downstairs.
Brady was in the kitchen, reading the weathered copy ofStat Shotfrom Nick’s bookshelf, wearing nothing but his boxers and a loose tee, drinking a cup of coffee. It smelled like the good stuff Nick got from a place in Baltimore, with a rich aroma and a perfect amount of caffeine. Easy to make, too, even with his shitty coffee maker.
He stood in the doorway enjoying the view.
“What time is it?” he said around a yawn.
