Page 108 of Hockey Bois
Nick J. Porter: really excited about that chance to play in the tournament - try not to tank the team’s standings while I’m out??
And then, before he could be tempted to do more, he turned off his phone and put it aside. The one symptom he hadn’t shaken yet was how tired he was, and the best part of being home from work was getting to nap whenever he wanted.
*
There was a knock at the door.
Nick hung out with people, Nick interacted with other human beings, and Nick was friendly with his neighbors and knew most by name.
No one knocked on his door, though.
Ever.
Jenna and Terry and other family members likely to stop by had a key. Anyone else, he’d meet them wherever they were going. He hadn’t ordered any packages, as far as he was aware, and Mormons didn’t come to this neighborhood.
So who the hell was knocking at his door at 6 p.m. on a Wednesday?
He considered ignoring it. If someone was trying to sell something, he wasn’t interested, and he wasdefinitelynot interested in dancing around ways to say “get the fuck off my property.”
But in his heart, he was too damn polite for it, and he begrudgingly went to answer when he heard a second knock.
There, on his doorstep, wearing a Team USA jersey, was Brady friggin’ Jensen.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, and immediately felt like an idiot. “Sorry, that was rude—”
Brady looked him over with a raised eyebrow, his eyes lingering on his ratty old sweatpants. “Get dressed. What, you nap all day?”
Nick gawked at him. “I’m injured,” he said defensively. “And big words from someone who wears friggin’ joggers and shorts all the time. Sweatpants are perfectly acceptable home wear.”
“Yeah, but we’re going out. Get dressed. I’ll wait in the car.”
“Going out—?”
“The Jagr Bombs’ve got a game and neither of us can go, so we’re going out to the bar instead.”
“I can’t watch the TVs—”
“I know. I got it covered. Get dressed, for fuck’s sake.”
Nick knew he wouldn’t get anywhere by arguing, so he went upstairs to put on something he hadn’t been wearing for two days straight. There wasn’t enough time to shower. He maybe overdid it on the body spray, but oh well. Better than smelling like his hamper.
When they ended up at Krazy Dan’s (though at a table farther from the bar with no clear line of sight to a TV), Brady set a speaker on the sticky tabletop. He fiddled with his phone until the speaker lit up, and then the familiar sound of hockey commentators filled the space between them.
“Is that—?”
“Game Four? Yeah. I don’t care about this Sharks/Blue Jackets thing, but hockey’s hockey, and it’s all we got.”
Nick smiled widely and pulled the speaker close so he could hear. One of the minor disappointments he’d suffered was avoiding TV. No streaming his favorite shows or movies, no NHL playoffs, nothing that he’d normally use to fill his time. This was a great alternative, one that was very old school. It reminded him of how his dad described listening to games as a kid, him and his siblings crowded around the family radio in the kitchen.
“This is awesome,” he said, then gestured to Brady’s jersey. “Do either of the teams have Team USA players?”
“Fuck if I know. I don’t follow these teams. I just want to skip to who wins the Cup so I know who I want to see dive-bomb next year. No beer for you, but you want to share some nachos?”
“Sure.”
*
“How much do you remember?” Brady asked carefully when the first intermission hit. “From the concussion?”
