Page 64

Nolan headed upstairs to remove the sheets from the guest room bed. It was almost too quiet in the house. King had only been in town for about twenty-seven hours, yet in that short amount of time, he’d managed to fill the house with the type of chaos that only came with thirty years of friendship and fill the empty spaces in Nolan’s life that were different from the ones Eli filled.

Now that he was gone, the silence felt deeper than it had before.

He walked into King’s room and there, on the nightstand, was the three-hundred-dollar, all-you-can-drink Trailblazers souvenir cup. Stuck to it was a Post-it note.

Consider this one night’s rent :) Plus, let’s face it—you’ll get more use out of it than me.

xo KR

All Nolan could do was laugh.

chapter

eleven

The following Sunday, the Trailblazers had a rare early afternoon kid-friendly game in Seattle. There was a part of Eli that was rooting for Seattle, if only because it would suck for all these kids to see their home team lose on the unique occasion that a game was timed just for them.

There was a bigger part of Eli that wanted the Trailblazers to take home the win, so he gave it everything he had.

They were on day five of a five-day road trip, first playing against San Jose and then Seattle. Eli had still been fired up from his assist against the LA Waves, and he’d expected that energy to follow him to the West Coast.

Except it seemed he’d left his hockey skills—what there was of them—in Burlington.

He was exhausted.

Last week, Nolan had arrived on his doorstep with takeout breakfast from a local café. After they’d eaten, they’d spent a couple hours in bed where Nolan had proceeded to make constellations out of Eli’s freckles. But when Eli had casually mentioned that he had a research project to work on for his Sociology of Sport class that was due in nine days, Nolan had zipped back home and returned with his laptop, and they’d worked on their own projects while sitting on opposite ends of Eli’s huge couch.

It had been sweet. Cozy.

Eli wanted more of that.

Then he’d hit the ground running on Monday with practice, followed by a team meeting, followed by a multi-player photo shoot that had gone longer than planned because Deeley and Sandbaker wouldn’t take it seriously, followed by a couple of hours with his course reading material. Tuesday had been more of the same, but replace the photo shoot with his sociology class at UVM, and replace the course reading with a game against Minnesota.

His mom had called almost as soon as he’d walked into his hotel room in San Jose on Wednesday afternoon, and a casual mention of the guy he was dating had led to a total oh-shit moment.

At some point in the recent past, he’d completely forgotten that Nolan had once dated his sister.

“I didn’t know you were seeing someone,” his mom had said. “Tell me about him.”

“Uh . . .” Eli had scrubbed his forehead. Hard. “You’ve met him, actually. Do you remember Nolan Madolora?”

“The name doesn’t ring a bell. Is he a friend from your school days?”

“No. He dated Michelle for a few months, like, ten years ago.”

“Oh, honey, I don’t remember all the men Michelle dated. Especially not someone she only dated for a few months.”

“But . . . he came to our house for dinner a couple times.”

“Ten years ago, Eli,” Mom had said with a laugh. “Forgive me for not remembering someone who ended up not mattering.”

Ouch.

But okay, yeah, he saw her point.

“Well, he matters now,” Eli had muttered. “Because I’m dating him. And planning on keeping him, but he doesn’t know that yet.”

Mom had gone quiet for a moment, and the fatigue from that morning’s early flight to California had slammed into him like hurricane-force winds.