Page 82 of Hockey Bois
“Brady!” Nick screamed from the bench. “One hard! Behind the net!”
Brady shifted his stance, and for a second, Nick thought he’d both heard and understood Nick’s help. Instead, he turned toward Nick’s voice, lost an edge, and went careening into the boards. It was only Guy’s work in-net that kept the other team’s resulting push from ending up in the back of the net.
After that, Brady was fuming.
He slammed the door harshly when he stepped onto the bench, then kicked it for good measure to vent his frustration.
“You all right there, bro?” Young Greg asked cautiously. He leaned away from Brady in case the tantrum wasn’t over.
If looks could kill, Young Greg would’ve been bleeding out on the ice.
“I’mfine,” Brady snapped. “I’m having an off game.”
“Off season,” Donno muttered safely from the far end of the bench.
“You know what,” Benns said in his most diplomatic, most captainy voice, “I think we’re gonna have Lexi and Mags play a bit more. Gail, Brady, I hope you don’t mind pulling back a bit.”
Gail cursed under her breath; Brady looked like he wanted to cry.
Great.
Nick did an admirable job pretending none of this was his fault. That was giving himself too much credit, right?
No one said anything either way. They ignored the whole Brady mess, they ignored any involvement Nick might have had, and Benns did his usual solemn post-loss speech.
“We could be better,” he said. The whole team was sullen as they changed, close to mutiny if he pushed too far. Benns read the room and finished with a weak, “I’ll send out some new strategies. Let’s try for better next time.”
Brady was the first one out the door. Nick lingered longer than necessary, mostly to avoid having to look anyone in the eye. He prayed the team would ignore him and let him stew in his own misery; the last thing he wanted was to talk.
So he wasn’t even surprised when Gail blocked his path out of the locker room. He’d never beenthatlucky.
“Let’s go grab a drink,” she said.
“Who, me?”
He and Gail got along fine, but they’d never hung out. Hell, he didn’t even have her phone number or anything.
“You see anyone else?” she said.
Nick looked around. He was the only one still there.
“Uhh, I mean, I’ve got—”
“Not asking. Let’s go. There’s a bar like two blocks from here. You can follow me.”
He was too scared of her to say no, in part because heknewshe’d follow him home if he tried to ditch her. “Yeah, um… okay.”
He followed her to a dilapidated building that gave Krazy Dan’s a run for its money. Her car was right out front with an empty spot next to it. He took it, thought better of it, and reparked two spots down. In the extra two minutes he needed to back into the spot, Gail had disappeared inside.
It was easy enough to find her at the bar, where she was taking off her coat and seating herself on a stool in front of the taps. He took the adjacent seat and lamented that he couldn’t take the safer one two seats away like he had with his car.
“Two beers, please,” Gail said, using up all her politeness with the cute bartender. “Yuengling.”
Nick waited quietly until the bartender had poured their beers and moved on before turning to Gail. “You know I’m gay, right? Just in case this is you trying to take me on a date.”
Gail looked at him like he was quite possibly the dumbest person she’d ever met. “Yes, I know. That’s part of the problem. I know you’re gay and no, this isn’t a date.”
“Oh. Good.” A pause. “Wait, part of the problem? What? What’s this about?”
