Polite acceptance taken care of, he started scrolling through Benns’s profile.
Gregg Cox. Add Friend.
Ed Hughes. Add Friend.
Gail King. Add Friend.
Donnie Owen. Add Friend.
Alex Warner. Add Friend.
Guy Prince. Add Friend.
Marc Garcia. Add Friend.
Gregory Smegory. Weird choice, but Add Friend.
He’d gotten nearly to the end of the list and still hadn’t seen him. Maybe Brady was just not on Facebook. Lots of people weren’t, it wouldn’t be that weird—
He almost scrolled past him because the picture showed a teenage kid, but he doubled back when he registered it was a teenage kid in hockey gear, and then instantly slammed the “Add Friend” button when he read the name “Brady Derek Jensen.”
If he were going to lie to himself and say he wasn’t interested in Brady in particular, he was adding the whole team, he would have kept looking for the rest of them.
Right now, he wanted instant gratification. He could make up a lie to soothe himself later.
There wasn’t a whole lot to see on Brady’s profile, possibly because of the pending friendship request, possibly because Brady didn’t seem like the type to post much. There were a couple pictures (notably ones he was tagged in, not ones he’d posted himself), a map showing a road trip he must have taken over the summer, and a picture of a beer cross-posted from Untapped a good four years ago.
Despite his higher brain functions warning him not to, he clicked on the profile picture.
There he was: teenage Brady Jensen in full hockey gear taking a knee on the ice. He was wearing a blindingly bright purple jersey, the team name obscured by the huge gold medal he was wearing. He wasn’t smiling—that would’ve been too uncharacteristic—but he definitely looked pleased with himself. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen, and he was friggin’ adorable.
It explained why he was so damned good at hockey, too. Nick had assumed Brady had been skating a while, and now he had proof in the form of Young Brady, winning MVP at some tournament a dozen or so years ago and yeah, Nick was a goner.
He was a total fucking goner.
Almost instantly he got notifications from teammates accepting his friend requests. Painfully (but unsurprisingly), he didn’t get one from Brady.
Hedidget an invitation for a group chat thatincludedBrady, so that was something.
Curtis Bennet: Thanks to everyone for joining the chat! I thought this would be an easy way for us to keep in touch while we’re in the off season and to keep track of who’s in/out for games next season.
Curtis Bennet: I also was hoping we could take this as an opportunity to talk strategy and improve as a team. You all know that I appreciate the skills you bring to the table and that we have had success the past few seasons, and I don’t know about you guys, but I’d like to bring home the Wheaton Cup one of these days.
Nick J. Porter: what’s the wheaton cup (unless it’s exactly what it sounds like)
Gail King: It is absofuckinglutely exactly what it sounds like
Gail King: Except instead of being 35 lbs of solid metal glory it’s a giant coffee mug that’s got a million chips in it because every team that wins it gets blackout drunk and puts a new dent in it
Nick J. Porter: for real???
Gail King:[wheaton_cup.jpg]
[Image Description: Photo of a hockey team on the ice, huddled together in front of the benches. The goalie sits front and center; he holds a large coffee cup that he could probably turn over and fit on his head. Handwritten letters on the side of the cup read “THE WHEATON CUP” in black marker. The cup is chipped and dirty.]
Gregory Smegory:[notworthy.gif]
[Image Description: A gif of two men bowing profusely with text that reads “We’re not worthy.”]
