Page 9 of Hockey Bois
Nick made a beeline for Brady, who was patiently stick handling in front of the home bench.
“I’m glad I’m not the only one who dresses in full gear for these things.”
He’d come to associate “good players” with the kind of lackadaisical approach to gear he saw in gangly teenagers and even the older players who couldn’t be bothered to suit up for anything less than a real game (complete with bitching about how “in their day they didn’tneedhelmets”). Nick already felt better knowing Brady did the same as him.
“I’m not fucking crazy,” Brady scoffed, glaring at the group of kids hanging out by the net. “People dick around, take slapshots without looking up, try to start pick-up games, make damn fools of themselves. If someone else is on the ice, I gear up.”
Nick bit back a grin. “Someone hit you with a puck at one of these things, didn’t they?”
“Like five pucks!” Brady said emphatically. “I ain’t getting bruises because some dumb guy can’t aim.”
Nick saw the look of righteous indignation on Brady’s face and tried not to laugh. It’d probably come out as a high-pitched squeak, and he didn’t want to ruin his streak of actual coherent words now that they were having a real conversation. He did, however, file the moment away with all the other moments when Brady showed a spark of personality. Something more than “hockey robot.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. No shooting the puck in your general direction.”
That earned him an honest-to-God smile.
“What brings you here,Nicki?” The way Brady said the nickname was downright sinful.
He shrugged to suppress a shiver. “Practice. I want to do better.” He frowned. That question went both ways. “Why areyouhere?”
“I want to do better,” Brady shot back, without even a hint of teasing.
“Seriously? You’re the best on the team. You skate circles around the rest of usandyou outscore us, which is ridiculous since you play D. What’s left to practice?”
Brady shrugged, idly bouncing the puck off the blade of his stick. “Doesn’t mean I can’t do better.”
He tossed the puck to Nick; Nick barely caught it in his glove and most definitely did not almost fall over doing so. Which, no fair, Brady was using astickand still Nick couldn’t keep up with his hand-eye coordination.
“Jens for Norris,” he said. It amused him to imagine Brady winning the coveted trophy for best defenseman, and he wondered if their league did anything similar. Probably not, which was a damn shame.
Brady twirled a finger in the air. “Send in your votes now. I’ll start booking flights to Vegas.”
Between the dry, deadpan delivery and the unimpressed look, it was so fucking hilarious Nick couldn’t help laughing this time.
“Why you here?” Brady asked again. He nudged Nick with the butt of his stick. “Just for fun? Or you got something specific you wanna work on?”
“Oh,” Nick said. He hadn’t actually come with a plan, at least not a plan that would incorporate another person, and he was a little embarrassed to admit it. “No, no plan. I was gonna work on carrying the puck. And some skating, I guess.”
“You carry the puck just fine.”
Was that a compliment? Fuck, his cheeks were burning so bad he wondered how the ice wasn’t melting. “I still lose it,” he mumbled.
“So? Even Crosby loses it sometimes.”
Nick blinked, completely thrown off to hear the name Crosby within the hallowed halls of the Wheaton Ice Arena, walls decked out in red Caps banners.
“Uhhh…” It took a second to recover. “But he probably doesn’t lose it once a shift,andhe still practices on a regular basis.”
“Fair.” There was a definitive note of approval in Brady’s voice. “You wanna do some passing practice with me?”
“You pass just fine.”
Brady gave him A Look. Right. It wasn’t forBrady’sbenefit.
“Yeah, okay.”
They fell into a simple but surprisingly rigorous practice. Passing while carrying the puck, stick handling, one timers, cross overs, and then Brady talked him into doing suicides right into the middle of the teenagers’ pick-up game.
