Guns set down his cutlery and gave the group his quiet, steady, nothing-gets-past-me goalie stare.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “I meant to tell you.”He pointed at me. “You’re coming.”
“Of course I am.” I sighed. “But I’m not eating any of the mushrooms.”
Bo looked personally wounded.
Before we left, Guns called over.
“Nate! Don’t wear your good shoes. It’s a barn.”
“Why would I havegoodshoes? Do I look German?”
Everybody laughed as we filed out, and I followed Bo into the cold autumn air, already overthinking thebarnof people I’d have to meet in two days.
It’s fine. I’m fine.
My teammates had meant well when they’d invited me to the birthday party of one of Guns’ friends.
The birthday boy, whose name I forgot two minutes after Guns introduced us, had turned twenty-nine. The barn was already packed with party guests, andthere were about a hundred beer crates stacked in a corner.
People sat at beer garden tables covered with tacky red-and-white checkered paper tablecloths. Most were already on the way to drunk and talked about…whatever. The alcohol didn’t make their accent any easier for me to understand.
Not that I get what they say when they are sober.
Ihadtaken German at college but, honestly, I’d never paid much attention in the few lessons I actually visited.
Hockey had always been my top priority, leading to my contract with the renowned Veitsreuth Pumas. The locals’ accentwaschallenging. I was freaking thankful we mostly spoke English at work. The people at the shops were okay with my rudimentary knowledge of their language. Some of them even took pity on me and changed to English when they heard my standard phrases ‘Mit Karte bitte’ or ‘Nein, ich brauche keine Tüte, danke.’ That way I’d never be able to improve, but I couldn’t blame them.
I know I suck.
“Hey, you must be Martin’s team member.” I turned and met the pretty eyes of a woman around my age. She checked me out over her beer.
“Yeah, hi, I’m Decks.” She tracked my hand as I swept it through my hair, then dropped to where my biceps bulged under the thin long-sleeved shirt I wore.
I’d lost my hoodie the minute we arrived—it was boiling hot in here—and dropped it somewhere by the bar.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Esther. Wanna have a beer and sit with us?”
I agreed, grabbed another bottle, and joined her and her friends at one of the long, rectangular tables.
“Hey, guys, this is,” Esther tried to introduce me to the group, but apparently my name hadn’t made a deep impression.
“Decks,” I supplied but got hardly any reaction from the others.
They asked me a bit about myself, but their interest soon waned. A couple of minutes later most of them were speaking German again. I’d never been the sensitive type, but tonight I felt left out.
I shouldhave stayed home and watched something on TV instead.
What intrigued me was the lack of diversity. As far as I could tell, our Swedish Forest Troll team member Bo was the only non-human guest.
So strange.
Bo had made acquaintances with a few of Guns’ friends and was entertaining them with funny stories. Bo was like that, the life and soul of any party. My frat would have loved that big green guy. You couldn’t help but like him and have a good time when Bo August Persson was around. We’d become pretty close over the past couple of months.
Bo’s German was a lot better than mine so it wasn’t really a surprise that he fit in well.
I spotted Guns occasionally. He kept his phone in his hand as if he was waiting for a call or a late comer he needed to give directions.
