Page 167 of Hockey Bois
Good luck I’m rooting for you??
But also if you hurt him and/or make this worse I’ll murder you in your sleep??
Nick (7:20 p.m.)
honestly that’s fair
terrifying, but fair
*
If he were being completely honest, Nick was hurt when Brady didn’t reach out to him the next day. Intellectually, he understood that even if Lucy had magic powers that would get Brady out of her house that night, he’d have to pack, drive back, and then presumably sleep before it’d be possible to see him.
That didn’t mean he felt any better about the continued radio silence for the next few days.
Lucy’s text warning him of Brady’s impending return helped ease his mind and made him nervous all over again. He worked through practice conversations with Jenna, Terry, and Gail, all of whom did a terrible job of impersonating Brady but at least gave him a sounding board for trying out different things.
He did his best not to rehearse anything in particular. He was practicing, but he wanted whatever he ended up saying to Brady to be real. Memorizing a big speech about his feelings would never be the way to go. With him and Brady, it’d always been better when they were flying by the seat of their pants.
Do I text him…? Call? Stop by unannounced? Try to time it so I run into him on the Metro? I know he’s back in town…
He was put out of his misery a day later when Brady textedhim.
Brady Jensen (3:14 p.m.)
heading to Krazy Dan’s for dinner tonight
gonna try and watch a preseason game
Goosebumps rose on his arms, and it was all Nick could do not to go to the barright now.
Mustering all the chill he possibly could (which admittedly wasn’t very much), he typed out a response with shaking fingers.
Nick (3:19 p.m.)
cool what time?
God he felt like he was in middle school again, talking to his first crush and trying to look cool and failing miserably.
Brady Jensen (3:20 p.m.)
game’s at seven
Nick (3:20 p.m.)
??
Normally he’d get there early and start their tab for the night. These weren’t normal circumstances, not by a long shot, so instead he set an alarm for 6:55 p.m. and would NOT let himself get ready a second before that.
It’d be an understatement to say he was a mess for the next few hours. He tried to mindlessly lose himself in TV, in stick-handling, in video games, even in work for all the good it did, but nothing helped. He’d blissfully forget for maybe five minutes if he was lucky, and then he’d tense up as his mind inevitably wandered to Brady.
He checked his phone at 6:32 p.m. He put it aside, pretended to care about whatever commercial was on TV, and checked it again.
6:34 p.m.
He paced back and forth across his living room, through his kitchen, looked out the back window at the bike path.
6:37 p.m.
