Page 10

CHAPTER TEN

LOUIE ISN’T BIG on social media, but he does have a locked and mostly empty Instagram account that he uses to follow his teammates. He checks it about once a week. That’s enough for him.

The day after the game against Minnesota, Louie finds a picture of his dad and Novie, the Cards’ rookie, beaming at the camera. There isn’t a single picture of Louie and his dad where either of them looks that happy. He checks Ryan’s profile as well—he’s one of those compulsive posters. Look, it’s my lunch, look, it’s my new skates, look, it’s me at the gym with my abs out.

No picture from last night. No look, I met the great Martie Hathaway . He’s posted a story. Maybe it’s there. Louie taps on it, knowing full well that Ryan will know he peeked. It’s the grilled cheese. A video of him pulling apart one of the sandwiches to show the cheese. “Beautiful,” Ryan whispers in the background. That one is definitely a little on the burned side, so it wasn’t the one he left outside Louie’s door.

The next bit is a screenshot of a comment by hockeycarrot , one of Ryan’s former teammates: did you set that thing on fire . Ryan has added a very simple IT’S CRISPY AND DELICIOUS in all caps.

It’s not that burned. Louie would have eaten it. His dad would have told him not to put that crap into his body. So Louie savored every single bite.

He’s never made a grilled cheese, but he assumes there was a lot of butter involved. It’s a cheat meal kind of thing. Maybe he’ll ask Ryan to make him another one after their next roadie. The tomato soup wasn’t that bad, either, even though it came out of a can. Louie makes a point of not eating anything that comes out of a can. Except the cranberry sauce when the Hathaways gather at Grandma’s for Thanksgiving dinner.

Louie’s chest feels tight when he thinks about Ryan not posting that photo. He probably just forgot. He wasn’t even thinking about Louie. Why would he?

Although Ryan is surprisingly thoughtful at times. He makes coffee in the mornings and always asks if Louie wants some. “I don’t drink coffee,” Louie tells him every day. “You can stop asking.”

“Doesn’t feel polite not to ask,” Ryan always says.

So Louie doesn’t tell him to stop asking anymore.

Their next game is a good one, but Louie once again doesn’t contribute much. At least this time Coach puts him on the power play with Nick and Yoshi because Connie blew a tire and Coach needs someone out there. Louie snags an assist on Nick’s goal again and Yoshi gives him an appreciative tap on the bucket when they get back to the bench.

Despite all of that, Louie is still surprised when Coach puts him on Nick’s line during practice the next day.

“I saw something last night,” Beaulieu says. “I want to check if I’m right.”

Whatever he saw, whatever he wanted to check, Louie must have done something right because when the Cardinals go to New York for a game against the Ravens the next day, Louie is still on the second line.

“Look at you, moving up the ranks,” Ryan says, ruffling Louie’s hair in the locker room before the game.

Louie glares at him .

Ryan winks.

Louie still sits next to him on the way to the city. They end up getting stuck in traffic but arrive at the Garden with plenty of time to spare. Since they’re playing in Philadelphia in two days, they’re spending the night in the city and taking the train down tomorrow. Louie will never, ever tell anyone this, but he loves it when they take the train. One day, he’ll fly to Europe in the summer and just hop on a ton of trains. So many trains.

Since Louie hasn’t played a lot of road games with the Cardinals yet, their night at the Garden has his heart beating a little faster. It’s an iconic venue and a bunch of their fans have made the trip, cheering for them when they hit the ice.

Louie gives himself a moment to look around. Take it in.

With a whoop, Ryan stops next to him, showering him with ice. “What’s up, Lou?” He gives Louie’s butt a tap with his hockey stick. This is starting to become a thing. “Pretty decent sheet of ice, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Louie says, “pretty decent.”

The best part is that Martie Hathaway is not in this crowd. He’s not even watching on TV because Bastien is playing against the Sailors tonight. Should be a good one. A mandatory watch for Dad. And Mom will watch with him, although she’ll probably watch a recording of Louie’s game tomorrow. Dad will glance at the highlights and send Louie his thoughts. Sometimes that just means that Louie will get a text that says: Missed you in that game recap .

Dad doesn’t watch his AHL games. Or even just the highlights. Not the big league, not important enough, not worth his time. Louie suspects it’s supposed to make him want to work even harder.

He scores twice against the Ravens. Doesn’t help them win, but he scores twice. The second one is a redirect off a pass from Ryan, who barrels into him a millisecond later. Ryan’s not tall enough to actually pick him up. Well, he’s tall. But so is Louie. He’s pretty sure Ryan kisses his helmet, though .

“Lou, Lou, Lou, we have to buy you drinks,” Mikko shouts in the locker room after the game.

Which is how he ends up in a bar that’s chockfull of Ravens players—Luc, who took them here, greets all of them like old friends, even though he’s never played in or anywhere close to New York. At least not until he signed with the Cardinals.

Miraculously, they find a table. It’s like they saved it for them. Or for Luc.

“How do you know all of them?” Louie asks him two drinks in.

“Oh, uh, when I was still ages away from getting back on the ice, I saw some specialists in New York and I went to a Ravens game because one of my former teammates was playing for them and they… took me here.” Luc laughs, glancing at the Ravens captain and his alternates. “I didn’t have a team back then, but for an evening, I was on their team, you know. I stayed in touch with a bunch of them.”

“Oh,” Louie says. “That’s… that actually sounds a lot like them.” He doesn’t mean that in a negative way, and Luc clearly understands as much.

He smiles. Gives Louie a tap on the head. Then he leaves to hug a bunch of Ravens and is greeted like a king. Good for him.

Louie doesn’t understand how he can get along that well with guys who are his competition. Obviously you look up to the really exceptional guys, the generational talents. But even on your own team, you have to keep an eye on who’s around you and who may overtake you. Louie just moved onto the second line and it worked for them tonight, and he wants to stay where he is. That just means he has to work for it, at least as long as Petrov is out of the picture.

When Luc is gone, Ryan slides into the empty seat next to Louie. “Dude, you speak French,” Ryan says. “Right? That was French just now?”

Louie narrows his eyes at him. “My mom’s from Montreal.”

Ryan shrugs. That shrug is tipsy. “You don’t have an accent like Lucky.”

“Not everyone has an accent,” Louie says. He can’t help but laugh. “My name is literally Louie.”

“Anyone can be named Louie. And your last name is Hathaway,” Ryan says and really sounds it out and it actually sounds weirdly nice.

Because Louie is also a little tipsy and suddenly thinks it matters how someone pronounces his last name. He shakes his head when he realizes that he kept staring at Ryan’s lips even when he was done talking. “Seriously, how did you not know this?”

“I thought your folks were from Boston.” Ryan giggles and pats Louie’s upper arm. “I’m so sorry, I’m a terrible friend.” He sticks out his bottom lip and pulls out the most serious puppy dog eyes Louie has ever seen.

“It’s fine,” Louie says. His folks are from Boston, he is from Boston. It’s where he grew up.

Ryan gives him a nudge. “Say something in French.”

Louie rolls his eyes. “I just said several things in French.”

“Please?”

Louie leans as close to Ryan as he can without it being weird and says, “Non.”

Ryan just stares at him for a moment, his mouth hanging open the tiniest bit, then he starts giggling again. “Wow.”

“It was French,” Louie says and picks up his drink. “You’re welcome.”

“Well,” Ryan knocks his drink against Louie’s, “I actually took French in high school, so. Listen, listen… Quel est ton numbéro de téléphone?”

“It’s numéro,” Louie says gently.

“Close enough.” Ryan grins. “Enough to get hot guys’ phone numbers at—” His grin grows wider “—the C?te d’Azur.”

Louie snorts. “Uh-huh.”

“So many phone numbers, Louie,” Ryan says. “It was raining numéros de téléphone, I’m telling you.”

“Good for you,” Louie says. He means that. It can be tough for guys like Ryan. Not just gay guys, but gay hockey players who are essentially stuck in the closet. Unless they want to be the very first NHL player to come out.

Luc passes their table and sets down a drink in front of Louie. “From the Ravens. I made sure they didn’t poison it.”

“Hm,” Louie says, although he’ll trust Luc on that. He didn’t actually want another drink. He barely ever drinks. Only sometimes during the season, and a little more often in the summer. When Dominic invites him over and makes Long Island Iced Tea. He’s never invited Bastien along—those two hang out on other occasions. Probably. Louie wouldn’t know.

Three-drink-Louie is one hundred percent ready to go home. Nick and Liam are sitting with him now—Ryan went to the bathroom and afterwards disappeared into a gaggle of Ravens—and they’re talking about how well the game went for their line today, all things considered. The Cards didn’t win, but those two want to keep Louie.

They’re not the ones who decide, but Nick at the very least has some pull and if he tells Coach he likes Louie on his wing, then Louie has more of a chance of keeping that spot. It makes Louie all light inside, although he doesn’t have much to contribute to the conversation because his thoughts are too blurry.

So he wants to go home.

He finds Ryan, tugs him aside. Because when Ryan got traded here, he decided that they had to be best friends or whatever, and now he has to deal with the consequences of his actions. “I want to go home,” Louie tells Ryan.

“Okay,” Ryan says. “I’ll take you back to the hotel.”

“The Ravens got me a very strong drink,” Louie says once they’re out on the sidewalk. “I think they did that on purpose.”

“They didn’t,” Ryan says and pulls at Louie’s jacket. “We’re turning right.”

“Okay, but what if they did? ”

“We already played against them,” Ryan says, “and we’re not playing tomorrow.”

They’re not even practicing tomorrow. Big thanks to the people who make the schedule. Louie really needs to sleep. Right now. He sways against Ryan, who catches him like a pro. “You should be a goalie.”

“No, thanks,” Ryan says. “My precious little heart couldn’t take the mean chants. I’d legit cry. The first time they wrote mean things about me in Toronto, I actually did cry.”

“Nooo,” Louie says.

“Yeah, I totally did.”

“No, I mean… that’s… so mean.” Louie frowns. “There are two means .”

“Yeah, there are two of a lot of words,” Ryan says. “Because the English language is fucked.”

Ryan stops to flag down a cab, which he manages instantly. A wizard. He gives the driver the address for their hotel, which Louie didn’t even know. He always knows. What’s wrong with him today?

“I don’t get drunk,” he tells Ryan.

“Well,” Ryan says.

“I don’t,” Louie insists. Then he falls asleep in the cab and Ryan pinches his nose to wake him up again, which was totally uncalled for.

They have a late curfew because they’re not practicing in the morning, although they probably got back early compared to the other guys. Louie has lost all sense of time. It may as well be four in the morning.

Ryan takes him to his room, unlocks the door for him and ushers him inside.

“I’m not helping you take your clothes off,” Ryan says. “Maybe your shoes. But that’s it.”

“Why, are you into feet?” Louie asks and promptly trips over his own feet. He lands on his bed.

“Jesus,” Ryan says. “You should get drunk more often. You’re actually fun.”

“I’m not.” Louie starts unbuttoning his dress shirt. “Can you get me a shirt?”

“Sure.” Ryan pulls a shirt from Louie’s bag and chucks it at him. “Need your, uh, beautiful polar bear pj pants?”

Louie shakes his head. “Don’t make fun of those. They’re cozy.”

“But you don’t want them? Even though they’re cozy?”

“Go away,” Louie says.

Ryan laughs. “So, you’re good?”

“Ugh.” Of course Louie is good. He’s always good. “I’m always good.”

“Maybe that’s your problem,” Ryan says. “Gotta let loose more often.”

“I don’t do that.”

“Yeah, we’ve established that.” Ryan looms over him, hair sticking up around his head and lit up like a halo. “Why not?”

“Because I have somewhere to get to and I’m not there yet,” Louie says, the words coming out a little garbled and sloppy. “You’re already there, you don’t get it.”

“You mean, like, an NHL team.”

“What else could I possibly mean?”

“Louie,” Ryan says. He huffs as Louie struggles to get his dress shirt off. “I’ll help with this one thing and that’s it. I don’t want you going around saying your gay teammate hit on you.”

Louie glares at him. “I’d never do that.”

In the most satisfying way, that wipes the smile right off Ryan’s face. “Okay. I’m sorry, I… I know some people are very cool with this, Carrot was, but I’m not expecting it and—”

“Just help,” Louie snaps and waves his sleeve at Ryan, who undoes one button and there it goes. He pulls on the old t-shirt Ryan grabbed from his bag and pulls it on, then he wiggles out of his pants, snatching his phone before Ryan can take them away .

He’s too drunk to even unlock his phone, but he manages on the third try—he still has a passcode because only he knows the passcode and his face is just… right there. He pulls up the scores from this evening and—he groans.

“What?” Ryan asks. “Don’t throw up.”

“I’m not throwing up,” Louie grumbles.

“Then what ?”

“I scored two goals,” Louie says. “Two.”

“And they were great.”

“Yeah, well, Bastien scored his second career hat trick in Seattle tonight.”

Ryan sits down on the bed and takes Louie’s phone. “Hey, but the Sailors still won.” He narrows his eyes at Louie. “Do you compare everything you do to your brother or—oh, shit, you do.” He locks Louie’s phone. “Don’t.”

“If I don’t check, my dad will let the family group chat know tomorrow.”

Ryan blinks at him.

“My dad cares a lot about that kind of thing,” Louie says. “But Bastien just does more things, you know? He does all the things. And he does them better than me. That’s what Dad cares about. That Bastien is doing all those amazing things. I wish he could stop being sooo amazing for just one second and give me a chance. Look at me, I can’t even stay on an NHL roster.”

He shouldn’t have said that. None of that. Now he actually is going to throw up.

“Lou,” Ryan says softly, “that’s fucked up.”

“No, I mean, he just wants me to work harder,” Louie says. “And he’s right. I’m not living up to my potential. I’m not—”

“You scored two goals tonight,” Ryan says and starts pulling at the sheets. “Get in bed.”

Louie obeys. It didn’t sound like there was any room for an argument. His thoughts are too messy to argue anyway.

“You did well,” Ryan says. “Fuck your dad.”

“You can’t say that,” Louie whispers.

“No, you can’t say that.” Ryan pulls up the sheets all the way. “I can.”