“Is that all? You don’t seem to appreciate the teams, so if you’re looking to talk shit?—”
“Not at all,” Ara said. “I just wanted to get some idea about how it all works. I mean, surely the players aren’tblindblind, right? That wouldn’t be possible to play the way they do if they couldn’t actually see the puck.”
I stared at him for a long beat, then stood up and brushed past him as I reached for my stick and mask. “You have a lot to learn. Maybe turn off mouth and turn on ears.”
And then I left him on the bench looking a little confused, maybe a little irritated, but wearing a small smile all the same.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
MICAH
Vanya: There’s a reporter here asking terrible questions. If you see him, just ignore. He’s very pretty. Purple color on eyes. Cute sweater.
Me: You know I can’t actually sea that, rite
Vanya: Ask friend just in case. He is dickhead.
Me: Fine, if I sea a very pretty reporter with purple eyes and a cute sweater I will run away
Vanya: Good boy. Love you.
I didn’t answer back,but I shivered hearing the words Vanya left in the text. The “good boy” got me. The “love you” threatenedto end me, just like it did every single time he’d said it over the last week.
Leaning against Tiago, I sighed. “I appreciate you being here, but also why? Shouldn’t you be at home icing your elbow or something?”
He groaned softly. “If I have to stay home one more fucking day, I’m going to lose it. Literally. I’m going to build a giant ladder and fling myself into the sun.”
“Drama,” I said, but I didn’t really mean it. I appreciated the company. Tiago had lost his driving privileges not that long ago, and he was mourning the loss of that independence—something I had never experienced myself, but it was easy to imagine how hard it was.
On top of that, he’d taken a bad check and was thrown right into Jonah’s stick, which hit him in the single, vulnerable spot over his elbow and had torn a few tendons.
He was out for the season and on strict orders to jerk off with his right hand, and no using his cane unless he absolutely had to.
Which was kind of ridiculous to say to a blind man, even one with usable sight.
Shifting the hockey pad on my lap, my fingers found the little bump for the puck, and I followed it as it bounced around the ice. NHL games were a little more enthusiastic than ours, and the crowd was louder while the guys on the ice were quieter.
It lacked people shouting which team had the puck, or which way the shot had gone, and Iwondered what it would be like to play without that kind of a guide. I wasn’t sure I trusted myself to follow the puck and nothing else.
But I was also kind of tired of thinking about hockey.
I was tired of a lot of things—mostly of being in some rental away from my home, not that I had a home anymore. Vanya found a company that was going to fix the damage done to each of our places, and we both agreed it wasn’t worth keeping them.
The repairs were being done, and we were projected to have our all clear to put them on the market by the time he got back from his roadie.
“So,” Tiago said. “A stalker.”
I groaned and flopped my head backward. “Who told you?”
“Come on, bud. You really think anyone here can keep a secret? Not one single person has ever kept gossip to themselves.”
He wasn’t wrong, but it was annoying. “Tell Jonah I owe him a stick to the balls.”
“Will that go for the whole you and Maxy thing too?”
I lifted my middle finger and put it right in his face. “Can you see this?”
“Yes, fucker.”
