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CHAPTER ELEVEN

LOUIE IS KIND of fucked up. Ryan won’t judge because everyone is kind of fucked up in their very own unique and beautiful way. He’s sure people look at him and think, Wow, Ryan Harris is kind of fucked up .

And they’re correct.

Ryan is mostly just a ball of anxiety.

Louie, on the other hand, is a ball of family issues. Not even just your regular run-of-the-mill daddy issues. It’s a special kind. Sucks for him, truly.

Since Ryan is incapable of minding his business, he physically traps Louie and his nightly glass of water in the kitchen when they’re back home from their road trip. Okay, he’s not actually trapped. The kitchen has two doors, one to the hallway and one to the dining area that’s sort of muddled in with the living room.

He could escape if he wanted to and he’s choosing not to. He’s standing in the middle of the kitchen with his glass of water, vaguely amused, staring at Ryan, who’s leaning in the door to the hallway with one of his legs up so Louie can’t get past him without kicking his leg.

“Wanna come home with me tomorrow?” Ryan asks.

“Huh?” Louie says.

“Tomorrow? When we have the day off?” Ryan won’t put it past himself that he got their schedule wrong. Maybe they actually have an early as fuck practice that Ryan is in no way mentally prepared for. No. Liam definitely said he was hanging out with the kids all day so his wife could have some time to herself. No hockey tomorrow. So Ryan can safely bug Louie. “Do you want to come with me? To beautiful Pennsylvania?”

“Oh, uh… I don’t know. I wanted to sleep in.” Louie frowns at him. “Are you sure you want me there?”

“Why wouldn’t I want you there? Let’s do something fun, come on.”

“Sure, but…” Louie shrugs. “Sure.”

Ryan stares at him for a moment, wondering if he should ask, and just how deeply he’ll offend Louie if he takes this the wrong way. “What do you do on your days off in Springfield?” is what he settles on. That’s a normal question.

“I don’t know. Depends.”

“Do you…” Ryan clears his throat and stands up straight because his leg is starting to hurt. “Do you hang out with the guys?”

“Not that much, no.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t realize I was supposed to,” Louie says. He sets his water glass down on the counter, like he’s tired of holding it. Or like he needs both hands to slap Ryan for being such a nosy shit.

Unfortunately, Ryan can’t stop himself. “Do you have friends?” he asks. It’s so fucking rude. Fuck. Why is he like this?

“Of course I have friends.”

“Name one friend.” Yes, of course he has to keep going now that he has started digging this hole.

“Liam is my friend,” Louie says with a shrug. He’s being weirdly chill about this line of questioning. Ryan would have slapped himself by now. Except maybe Louie knows that Ryan has seen right through him.

“Liam. Liam Hellstrom,” Ryan says. “Really. He’s your friend.”

Louie sticks out his chin. Someone else is digging a hole in this kitchen. They’re in a hole-off.

Jesus, that sounded so wrong.

It is a competition. Louie loves a competition. “Yeah,” he says.

“What’s Lee’s favorite color?” Ryan asks, taking a step closer.

Louie attempts to stare him down for a few seconds, then he rolls his eyes. “This is stupid.”

“Yeah, it really is,” Ryan says. “So. Tomorrow. Are you coming with me?”

Louie sighs. “Fine.”

Ryan has never driven home from Connecticut, so he nearly gets them lost. Twice. But they make it and that’s what matters.

Louie is an astoundingly pleasant passenger. He doesn’t complain about the music, and doesn’t complain when Ryan stops at a gas station to buy another coffee. He doesn’t even complain when Ryan nearly gets them lost (twice). The way he just gets into Ryan’s car without ever asking about what happened in Toronto makes Ryan feel some kind of way.

He has yet to figure out what kind of way.

They don’t talk a lot and Ryan is usually very uncomfortable sitting in silence, but today it doesn’t seem so bad. Louie occasionally comments on a car, or a driver, or something he spots at the side of the road—he enthusiastically alerts Ryan to the horses that are grazing on a field that belongs to the Johnson farm. Ryan’s sisters used to be obsessed with those horses.

Almost home.

Ryan takes a left once they’ve passed the farm. He ticks off the sights one by one: the high school, the stretch of Main Street that still has stores left, the post office and—“Here we are.”

“This is where your parents live?” Louie asks, clearly skeptical.

He should be.

Ryan just parked his car outside the fire station. “We’re saying hi to a friend first.”

“A friend,” Louie says, “who works here?”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Ryan says and climbs out of the car. “I have very cool friends.”

“I’ve never been to a fire station,” Louie says.

“Oh my God,” Ryan says and nudges him toward the wide open door. “Do you want to sit in the truck? They’ll let you.”

“He would know, he wanted to sit in every truck last summer,” someone says.

“AMI!” Ryan shouts and sweeps her into a hug.

In the depths of the firehouse, someone hollers. “Oooooh, is that Ami’s hockey boyfriend?”

“Hey, hey, hockey boyfriend!”

Ryan ducks behind a fire truck because when hot men who save lives and put out fires and pull people out of car wrecks pay attention to him, he starts to sweat and blush and he’d rather not, honestly. The attention kills him. It’s too much. They’re too hot.

Ami laughs at him because she knows exactly how he feels about the buff men in uniforms. “You’re ridiculous.”

“I’m trying to be straight here,” Ryan says, rolling his eyes. He does not look very straight when he’s sweating about hot firefighters.

Ami flicks at his temple and lands a devastating hit before Ryan can duck out of the way. “So, are you going to introduce me to your friend?”

“You know him,” Ryan says and turns around to grab Louie by his jacket sleeve and pull him forward. “If anything, I need to tell him who you are.”

“Just be a polite little boy like your mom taught you,” Ami says.

Ryan sighs. “Ami, this is my friend and roommate and teammate Louie Hathaway. Louie, this is my sun and stars, Ami Kuroda.”

Ami lived one street over from Ryan when they were kids. They were backyard buddies essentially. When they were little, long before hockey, they always played together. She let Ryan use her Barbies and he let her borrow his dinosaurs. Sometimes the Barbies opened their very own Jurassic Park, and sometimes they got eaten by the T-Rex.

She was Ryan’s very first kiss during a game of spin the bottle in middle school. She was the first person he told that he wasn’t really feeling it. She wasn’t exactly surprised. She still went to his junior prom with him, even though they didn’t go to the same school anymore at that point.

They kind of lost track of each other for a little bit while Ami was dating Brody—the guy who convinced her that sometimes men are evil, actually. After they’d broken up, Ami came to one of Ryan’s games and then they were back to texting all the time. Although Ryan has been neglecting their friendship a tiny bit ever since he got traded.

Ami is wise. Much wiser than Ryan will ever be. She told him to break up with Kaden when he stood Ryan up the first time.

He should have listened.

Anyway, he couldn’t come home without seeing her. She is home, in a way. And Ryan likes firetrucks, okay? Who doesn’t fucking love a firetruck? (Except some of them aren’t trucks but engines, as Ami has very helpfully taught him.)

Louie shakes Ami’s hand and says, “Nice to meet you.”

“She pretends to be my girlfriend in the summer,” Ryan adds, just in case Louie didn’t understand the my sun and stars part.

“Voluntarily?” Louie asks.

Ami cackles. “I like him. He can sit in whichever vehicle he wants. Hell, I’ll turn on the lights for him.”

Ryan gasps. “You’ll turn on the lights for him? But not for me? I’m breaking up with you.”

“Oh no, whatever am I going to do?” Ami rolls her eyes. “Come on, you guys have to come meet Derek. He’s from Danbury and he loves the Cardinals. I didn’t tell him you were coming and I can’t wait to see his face.”

It’s an unfairly handsome face .

Ryan is such a sucker for a handsome face, although Derek from Danbury has a girlfriend (who is from here and worships the Foxes), so Ryan will not be making out with him in Ami’s backyard during the summer. Unfortunate. He has made out with Firefighter Alvarez behind a shed and Firefighter Alvarez promised he wouldn’t tell anyone. Alvarez is Ami’s work husband, so he knows that Ryan and Ami are not actually a thing.

Thankfully, Firefighter Alvarez isn’t here. He has studied the art of turning Ryan into a puddle with one look.

Handsome Derek shares the cookies his girlfriend made for the station with them and when Louie, who is pretty quiet the entire time, takes a second one, Ryan feels like he did something right when he asked him to come along today.

Derek also gives them plastic firefighter hats to put on when they take a picture in front of the engine and the ladder truck. Handsome Derek turns the lights on for them and Louie gets to sit behind the wheel and Ryan snaps a bunch of pictures for him. When they leave to head to the Harris house, he has a huge smile on his face.

“Louie, it was so great to meet you,” Ami says. “Can I borrow Ryan for just one second before you head out?”

“Of course,” Louie says. “Thank you for…” He points at the engine. “Thank you.”

Ryan hands him his car keys, then he turns to Ami. “Why do I have a feeling that you’re about to use my full name and tell me off for something?”

Ami takes his hand. “Ryan Atticus Harris,” she says and smiles, “I’m so sorry, but I met someone.”

“What?” Ryan asks and gives her a shove. “Who is she? Why are you telling me this now , when I’m about to leave ?”

“Because I’ve only known her for three weeks and it isn’t anything yet, but I want you to be prepared…”

“Prepared for—oh.” Ryan gets it now. This isn’t just his friend telling him about her crush. “You’re breaking up with me.”

Ami makes a face. “We can still be friends.”

“Ugh, fine .” Ryan pulls her into a quick hug. “Guess I’ll be single and ready to mingle this summer. I’ll always have Firefighter Alvarez.”

Ami bites her lip.

“Oh, hell. He’s got a boyfriend now, too?”

“I’m sorry, babe,” Ami says and gives Ryan’s arm a gentle squeeze. “Promise we’ll still hang out?”

“Obviously, you’ll have to introduce me to your girl.”

“What if it’s a guy?”

Ryan narrows his eyes at her. After Brody, she said she was never dating a man again. She could have changed her mind because sometimes love just does its thing, but that’s something she definitely would have had a crisis in Ryan’s texts about. “Is it?”

“No, I’m just fucking with you,” Ami says. She nods at Ryan’s car. “What about your, uh—”

“My teammate, Ami,” Ryan says, seeing right through where she is going with this. “My very straight teammate.”

“Is he?” Ami asks.

“Yeah?”

“Okay,” Ami says and gives him another hug. “Don’t be a stranger. Text me. Invite me to a hockey game.”

“I keep inviting you,” Ryan complains.

“Well, invite me when I don’t have to work.” She winks at him. “All right. I have to get back in there. Thanks for dropping by and showing me you’re still alive.”

“Can’t come home without seeing my sun and stars,” Ryan says. He’s about to turn away, then—“Wait, you think Louie isn’t straight?”

Ami shrugs. “None of my business. Probably none of yours either.”

She is one hundred percent correct about that, but Ryan will still quietly make it his business until he knows for sure. Because Ami knows these things. She knew Ryan was gay before Ryan did.