Page 95 of Hockey Bois
Videos!
Nick was only human. How could he possibly ignore an opportunity to see what Brady was like outside of the world of hockey?
So he did.
Full stop: Brady wasclean-shaven. Brady literally always had a beard. It was well-manicured, it looked great on him, and it was ever-present. ItwasBrady.
A lot of respect for his sister if she could get him to shave. Also, a lot of thanks to his sister for showing him the vision that was a clean-shaven Brady. Holy fuck, if he weren’t crushing on him already, he would be after these pictures. Honestly, how fucking dare he attack Nick personally like this?
If Nick were a smart man (spoiler: he wasn’t), he would’ve stopped then. He would have realized he was emotionally compromised, closed out of the app, and moved on. Maybe even gone for that run despite the rain.
Instead, he clicked on Brady’s profile and gorged on the feast of posts now tied to his account.
There were pictures of Brady baking cookies. There were pictures of Brady at the dress rehearsal. There were pictures of Brady and his sister and their parents and grandparents. There were awkward pictures of Brady with the other groomsmen, clearly all people Brady didn’t know well but who had accepted him as one of their own.
There were pictures of Brady in a three-piece suit, for fuck’s sake, and Nick just about died. As far as Nick had seen, Brady’s entire wardrobe consisted of lazy jock-bro attire: shorts, joggers, T-shirts, hoodies, backward caps, and the oldest, most worn pairs of flip-flops and sandals he’d ever seen. And now Nick would never be able to unsee him in a fuckingsuit.
Nick thought he’d seen his fill… and then he started on the videos.
There were a few about the minutiae of getting ready for the actual wedding. Lucy Jensen was a fucking angel, posting videos of her grumpy brother helping to arrange chairs, babysitting the flower girl and ring bearer, arranging flowers for the centerpieces, and wrestling with their dad while waiting for the actual ceremony to start.
The greatest find, though? Better than Brady with no beard and a nice suit, acting like a cute dope? The videos of Brady drunk dancing. All the classics were there: Chicken Dance, Electric Slide, YMCA, and a glorious rendition of the Macarena. Brady was part of all of them, at least a half step too slow. His level of drunkenness was easily apparent by how enthusiastically he participated in the dances, ranging from “I’m doing this because my little sister made me” to “I don’t fucking give a shit, I’m having fun.”
It was quite possibly the greatest thing he’d seen in… well, he couldn’t really pinpoint when he’d last smiled so much.
Damn.
*
If he were “pre-tournament Nick,” he would have texted Brady immediately about the mess he’d found on Facebook. He’d have teased him about it and enjoyed anything and everything he learned about the wedding, the trip, and Brady’s family.
He was “post-tournament Nick,” though, and post-tournament Nick had to maintain some semblance of distance.
So he did not text Brady.
He did not comment on the Facebook pictures.
He did not seek out more pictures or videos after that initial Sunday morning.
He did his best not to think about those pictures. Or Brady.
And failed.
He focused on other things. The weather improved, so he ran. Work was behaving, so he cooked more instead of eating out. He’d found a hockey blog that recommended exercises he could do off the ice to improve his skating and stick-handling, so he did them in a corner of his living room while watching TV.
And when Gail sent him an invite to a bar to watch a game, he accepted because having friends on the team outside of Brady seemed like a good idea.
He walked into the sports bar, a trendier place than he would’ve picked, and scanned the crowd for Gail.
Nick almost tripped over his own feet when he saw Terry sitting at the bar.
“What are the chances that you’re here for some completely unrelated reason?” he said as he grabbed a seat a few down from his cousin, noting the empty seat and abandoned jacket between them.
Terry frowned. “Unrelated to what?”
“Beauty, brains, or brawn,” Gail said. She moved her jacket and took the chair. “Nobody gets all three. Some people don’t even get two.”
“Or one.” Nick wrinkled his nose at his cousin. He loved Terry, he did, but some days he felt like Terry was living on a completely different wavelength than the rest of them.
