Page 169 of Hockey Bois
Brady grimaced at the bluntness of the statement, a blush creeping up his ears as he turned to face Nick. “I mean, yeah, but—”
“You’ve never liked a guy before? Never fooled around with one? I don’t buy it, because you’re waaay too good to be a dude-virgin.”
“Thanks?”
“Sure, take the compliment and ignore the rest of what I said.”
Brady stared at a spot a little to the left of where Nick’s eyes actually were. “I’ve… been with guys before. I played a lot of hockey as a kid. We had away games. We shared rooms. We were horny teenagers without a lot of adult supervision…”
Nick nodded in encouragement. “And?”
“And it was fun? I guess? But it was convenient. I didn’t like guys; I was taking advantage of an opportunity. An opportunity that heavily featured guys, but when there were girls, I fooled around with them, too. It was easy to just have fun and not put labels on stuff.”
“It was fun,” Nick repeated, and then added. “Until it wasn’t…?”
“Yeah,” he said bitterly. “Until it wasn’t.” He didn’t elaborate, and Nick hated to see him stew in the bad memories. He was making Brady relive this crap. Maybe he should stop—
No. Brady was fully capable of telling him to shove it if he didn’t want to talk about it. Brady rarely said shit about himself, even benign things like having a sister or being from Pittsburgh, so if he was talking aboutthis, hewantedto. He was trusting Nick with this, and Nick would do his best to help him get through it.
“How’d you break your ankle?” he asked. He had a hunch that a lot hinged on that. Brady made a pained face, and Nick’s instincts were to pull back and let it go. Maybe this was too much, too fast. “Look, never m—”
“No,” Brady said and grabbed Nick’s wrist, squeezed it like a lifeline. It was the first time they’d touched in weeks, and Nick swore he felt a spark of electricity roll through him at the contact. “No, I can…” Brady took a moment to collect himself. “It was stupid, okay? There was this guy who joined the team, older than the rest of us. Everyone thought he was cool shit. Andhe… he didn’t… whenhe heard, uh…”
“Not okay with the fooling around stuff?” Nick offered, trying to keep his voice calm and soothing.
Brady laughed humorlessly. “Understatement of the decade. He, uh… he said a lot of shit, shut the sex stuff down. I didn’t care much because despite this dickhead thinking he was God’s gift to hockey, he wasn’tthatgood. Even if he was, fuck that guy. He spends two weeks on the team, and he thinks he’s got any say in what we do off the ice behind closed doors?”
Nick’s stomach turned a bit trying to piece together how homophobia escalated into an injury. He almost didn’t want to know. Turning his wrist so he could hold Brady’s hand, he asked, “What happened?”
“I broke my ankle, that’s what happened.” Brady took off his hat with his free hand and ran a hand through his hair in an out-of-character display of nerves. “I was his main target. Aside from not liking the other stuff, apparently I got on this guy’s shit list because I play decent hockey. He was a douche to anyone who played better than him, and I guess that was me one too many times. He knew just what to say to get under my skin…”
Brady’s voice dropped to a whisper. Nick held his breath as he listened, leaned in to make sure he caught every word. “It was a scrimmage. Two of our practice teams playing each other to prep for a tournament. He’d been pushing my buttons all week, and it was way worse that game. He scored on me once and wouldnotshut up. He wasconstantlyin my face, knocking me down between whistles… even during play, he was rougher than he needed to be. Slashing my legs, pushing me along the boards. If he’d done half that shit in a real game, he’d have gotten a couple penalties for sure.” Brady’s eyes glazed over like he was watching his younger self, that game, the accident Nick knew was coming next. His hand tightened in Nick’s grasp. “And then there was this one icing. Easy call, but he raced after it and then I raced after it because fuck him thinking he could beat me. Fuck him bullying me at a stupid scrimmage. I could show him. I could get the whistle. I could make him look stupid for trying.”
Brady stopped on a shaky breath.
“And you got hurt,” Nick said. “He hurt you.”
“I hurt myself,” Brady said bitterly. He put his hat back on and turned away. Worse, he pulled his hand away from Nick so he could discreetly rub at his eyes. “I lost an edge and went into the boards hard. Didn’t know it was broken until I tried to get up.”
“I’m so sorry.” Nick barely recognized his own voice.
“Yeah, me too.” Brady clenched his hands. He was angry now, and that was better for a whole two seconds until he kept talking and Nick realized he was angry at himself. Then it was so much worse. “Apparently, to my teammates, it was one thing for the good players to fool around for fun, and it was entirely another when I busted my ankle and couldn’t play. People who’d stood up for me before suddenly had a change of heart. I wasn’t one of them anymore. I wasn’t a teammate experimenting or blowing off steam or whatever; I was the loser who liked to give blowjobs to hockey players.”
Nick winced. He’d been lucky that his own classmates hadn’t cared to spread rumors about him, true or otherwise, when he’d been in school, but he’d met plenty of people who weren’t so fortunate. It killed him to know that teenage Brady had to go through this shit, and it put a lot of their relationship into perspective.
“So you stopped fooling around with guys,” Nick guessed.
“Yeah. Stopped hockey for a while, too. Stopped skating, even after my ankle was better… Lost my scholarship to a D1 school and stayed local. Didn’t even join my college team because I couldn’t bring myself to step foot in a locker room for a couple years.”
The idea that Brady Derek Jensen had stopped playing hockey for literal years did not compute. Nick completely understood Brady’s reluctance to start anything… and his fear of what would happen if someone found out. It hurt that Brady hadeverthought Nick was like those guys, but he could understand. Fear wasn’t rational.
“Eventually, I got back into hockey because I missed it too much. I remember thinking, if I was going to be miserable, I should be a miserable guy who played hockey. So I did some rec league and some pick-up, but that was about it until I finished grad school and moved out here.”
Nick reached out and squeezed his arm. He wanted to do more. He wanted to wrap Brady in a blanket until he forgot his shitty youth. He wanted to travel back in time and save Brady from the shitstorm he’d had to deal with, or maybe drive up to Pittsburgh, team up with Lucy, and kick some ass to retroactively defend Brady’s honor.
He couldn’t do those things (or at least shouldn’t do the last one), so he settled for that small point of contact.
Brady accepted the gesture, but it sparked a look of shame that Nick didn’t understand.
