The room burst into laughter.
“Fuckin’ Maxy,” someone to my right said.
I offered an apologetic grin. “Has been long week. Too much going on.”
Rohan nodded. He didn’t seem upset. “So long as you’ll have your head in the game.”
“I will have whole body in game, don’t worry,” I assured him.
He chuckled and nodded. “Well. Thank you for entertaining me and welcoming my son.” He gestured to the man in the sweater. It made sense. “He’ll want to talk to each of you, but then he’s moving on to the PPHL for a while.”
My heart jumped, and I wanted to ask if he was going to sled or blind hockey. If he was going to Micah’s team or Jonah’s. If he was going to go be all attractive and nice and charming to my boyfriend and?—
Well.
Fuck.
This was hard. I wasn’t prone to jealousy, but right now, I wanted to wrap myself around him and hiss at this poor man for my entirely imagined scenario.
Turning away, I started to kit up, and I was most of the way through my leg pads when a body slid beside me on the bench, and I realized it was Rohan’s son.
He was even better-looking up close.
“Ivan, right?”
I bristled, but I also didn’t mind that this man was calling me Ivan. “Yes. Best goalie—except for Ferris, who is rookie. You talk to him?”
“You mean one of like four South Asian players in the league?” the guy asked with a slight sneer. “Yeah, I talked to him. He’s amazing.”
I grinned. “He is also going to be best goalie ever.”
The guy stared at me, then stuck out his hand. “I’m Aravind Gupta. You can call me Ara. I’m with ESPN PPHL Online.”
I frowned. “PPHL? Why you reporting here, then?”
“Because the Glaciers were the first team to openly embrace co-training with the PPHL blind league, and it seems like it’s improved your game over the last two seasons.”
“Yes. They are good guys. Amazing players. Goalies for the Legend and Fury are monsters on ice. Wouldn’t want to play against them, you know?”
He shot me a curious look, then shrugged. “So you’d say you learned something important?”
“Many things. Good plays, but different. Their puck is not the same, and the net is smaller. Also the sticks. But it help me learn to listen, not just watch. And to pay attention to the way the puck is moving and not just track with my eyes.”
He held his phone a little closer to me, and I realized he was recording. “And you don’t feel like they’ve made your game more…difficult? Having to share an arena, having to change things around, or?—”
“No.” He blinked at my tone, but I didn’t care. I could tell I was being baited. “What is that saying? There is room for everyone at the table? Anyone who complains is just bad player if he can’t adapt.”
“Does that apply to Zeki? He didn’t say anything today, but there are rumors going around he attempted to kill the integration program before it got started.”
I burst into laughter. I couldn’t help it. “You ask him who his boyfriend is?”
“Uh—”
“Because trust me, if he feel that way before, he changed his mind now.”
“Interesting.”
Alexio was probably going to kill me for that, but he also wasn’t shy about his love for Jonah or his bias when it came to the Legend now that he was their biggest fan.
