For a moment I debate just swiping it away.
I’m still pissed at him.
Hart has been a fucking douchebag to me for years now, and my brother still finds new excuses for his behavior. The radio interview after the draft definitely escalated the situation, but he also hadn’t been exactly forthcoming before.
So I’m tempted to tell him to run to Hart with his memes and gossip texts but then bite my tongue when I take his words in.
Call me ASAP.
This alone wouldn’t worry me either. My brother has a dramatic streak. If he had not been drafted by the New York Pioneers, he could probably take up a career in acting.
Thumbing upward with a sigh, I scan the remaining twenty-two messages, my green eyes flicking over the screen. The more I read, the heavier my conscience gets.
“Fuck. I’m sorry, Linden, but I need to go,” I tell my best friend as I jump up from my chair. I’m about to grab my tray but Linden pulls it toward himself while waving me off with his free hand.
“I got this. Go run,” he tells me, then calls after me while I make my way through the students streaming into the dining hall: “I hope Nate is okay!”
Half an hour later I’m turning off my car in the parking lot next to Nate’s dorm. With the Campus of Bonham Tech being located right in the city’s center, traffic can be rough, but right now most students are still in class.
“Hi, Nate!” the dorm guard, Marv, greets me as I shoulder open the door on the ground level.
“It’s Nicko,” I correct him in passing, already on my way to the staircase.
Personally, I will never understand why people have such a hard time telling the two of us apart. Just looking at pictures of us, the differences are so blatantly obvious that I’m often questioning whether people are just pretending to mix us up.
“You look likeshit,” I greet my brother when he opens his dorm room for me.
“We look the same, little brother,” Nate grumbles and throws me a dark look.
“Oh, no, we don’t. Not right now,” I laugh, although I feel sorry for him. I remain standing in the door for a moment, scrutinizing him.
My brother’s skin is as white as limestone, fiercely competing with the uninspired paint of their dorm. It makes the rings under his eyes appear much darker. Strands of his blond hair—usually gelled back with great care—hang limply on his forehead, giving him an especially pitiful look.
“Shit,” I sum up dryly and finally step into the dimmed room. “By the way, it also smells like that in here,” I inform him, scrunching up my nose as I speak.
I cross the room with two big strides, opening the window on Hart’s side first before turning to Nate’s.
“Shut up,” my brother complains, his words muffled by the pillow from where he has dropped face-first onto his bed. “Noooo, it’s cold,” he whines a moment later as the fresh air slowly spreads inside the stuffy room.
Unimpressed by his protest, I start unpacking the plastic bag I brought along, lining up a bottle of Coke, salt pretzels, bouillon cubes, and a small variety of snacks on his desk.
“Have you eaten today?”
“Yes, but I also flushed it down the toilet already,” Nate informs me. He has turned his head to the side so he can watch me.
“That’s what you get for drinking like a pirate,” I huff. Nate can stomach a lot more liquor than I—which probably results from me being our designated driver as soon as I got my license. It took Nate a few extra rounds to get his own, and our father swears to this day that teaching him how to drive was his biggest challenge.
“It’s a stomach flu! The whole Kappa Tau house is currently shitting their brains out,” Nate protests, offended by my assumption. “I didn’t even drink that much.”
“Well, drinking probably didn’t help!” I insist, but sigh the next moment. All my childish anger vanished when I finally checked his messages over lunch. Shitting your brains out is bad enough, but it’s worse if you actually get to play and not just warm the bench on the weekends.
Nate and I both entered the draft, but while I’m the 7th overall pick, my brother was only drafted in the 3rd round by the Pioneers. He has fought hard since then to stay on their radar. Finishing our degrees first instead of going directly to the NHL was a gamble we were both willing to take because of our parents. Dad may have played a few solid seasons, but his achievements have long since been forgotten. It’s his witty comments and sharp critiques in theGame Daypodcast that he’s known for today.
Getting drafted doesn’t automatically mean getting signed by the team, but until last December, things looked great for me. The Rebels even reached out and offered their best wishes after my injury, but it’s been months since I last heard from them.
“Try this,” I command, as I hold a glass of Coke out to him. He groans as he slowly gets into an upright position, back leaned against the wall, his legs hanging over the bed frame. I placethe glass into his shaky fingers then drop beside him onto the mattress.
“You’ll catch it,” he warns me in between the tiny sips he’s taking, his foot coming up in an attempt to push me off his bed.
