Page 24

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

LOUIE CAN’T STOP staring at the little bit of chocolate at the corner of Ryan’s mouth.

A normal person would hand him a napkin.

Louie does not feel like a normal person. For one completely wild second, he thinks about kissing Ryan right where that bit of chocolate is. Louie isn’t Louie right now. He’s someone who eats pasta salad with mayo in it and follows that up with a huge chunk of chocolate cake.

Someone who thinks about the corner of Ryan’s mouth.

Someone who hasn’t thought about making the Cardinals roster in days.

Someone who’s remembered how to breathe.

They stay at Ami Kuroda’s party until midnight, then Ryan decides he’s had enough and tugs Louie over to a tipsy Ami, who wraps her arms around him and gives him a long, tight hug. When she’s done with Ryan, she hugs Louie as well, even though Ryan tries to tell her not to.

Something in Louie’s stomach tips over dangerously when Ryan tries to come to his rescue. Ami makes it a quick one, since Ryan’s protest comes a second too late.

“Sorry,” she says and almost falls over when she pulls away. Louie catches her by her elbow .

“You okay?” he asks.

“I was okay two tequila shots ago,” she says brightly. She glances at Ryan, who is now talking to her girlfriend, and turns back to Louie. “You’re so much better for him than I could have ever been.” She gently pats his biceps. “You should kiss him if that’s what you want. Maybe I’m just drunk and, yeah, you don’t know me, but I see you. And if I know one thing, it’s that life is too short to not kiss the people you want to kiss. If they want to be kissed by you. You understand what I’m saying?”

“I—no,” Louie says. He does understand that she’s telling him to kiss Ryan, except he doesn’t… oh, whatever, he won’t admit it to her, but he can at least admit it to himself. He wants to. He’s been staring at the corner of Ryan’s mouth all evening.

“Yeah, you do,” Ami says. What is she, a mind reader?

Well, then. He will admit it to her, which is just another not-Louie thing to add to tonight’s list. “I do, but—”

“Uh-uh.” Ami wags her finger at him. She gives him another pat. “Sometimes you just have to turn off your brain and stop thinking about everyone and everything else and go for what you need. You’re the most important person in your life.” His arm gets a poke in emphasis. “For the record, I’m glad he has you. Thank you for taking care of him.”

Then she leaves Louie standing there to give Ryan another hug.

Of course he’ll take care of him. That’s what you do when you’re on a team. Although Ryan isn’t the kind of guy who needs anyone else. He thinks he does, and wants everyone’s approval, but in the end, he’ll always be fine on his own.

He was fine coming to Hartford. He carved out a place for himself on that new team. Everyone thought it was a bad move and then he helped take a struggling team to the playoffs. They didn’t make it far, but having Ryan gave the Cardinals a chance.

Louie waits until Ryan and Ami are done saying goodbye, until Ryan has gathered up their empty dip bowls, then they climb over a wooden fence onto a dirt road. It’s the way they came, a shortcut, Ryan told him earlier. And one where they won’t get run over.

“Is it okay if we head back after lunch tomorrow?” Ryan asks as he turns on his small flashlight. “I really wanna sleep in one more time. Even if you get up at the ass-crack of dawn to go for a run.”

Louie went on a run twice since they got here. He’s just not very good at sleeping in. On most days, he quietly sneaks downstairs and sits on the porch with Ryan’s dad before he goes to work—which is to say, his garage. One time, he got to tag along with Ryan’s dad and watch him paint furniture for an hour. He literally just sat there and did nothing but look and he was okay with that.

He almost asks Ryan if they can stay for another day, but they’re meeting their trainer bright and early the day after tomorrow, and Louie can’t blow up everyone’s schedule like that.

“What?” Ryan asks.

“I didn’t say anything,” Louie says.

“Your thoughts are very loud.”

“They’re not.”

“I wasn’t saying I know what you’re thinking, don’t worry.” Ryan laughs. “God, can you imagine? If people could read minds?”

Louie thinks of Ami, who can definitely read minds. He pushes that away with all his might. “Don’t want people to know that you think about tacos in bags all day?” he quips.

“Yes. And the occasional penis. You know how it is. I mean, you don’t.”

“I kind of do,” Louie says. He’s afraid he’s been thinking about ‘the occasional penis’ more than Ryan has.

“But occasionally,” Ryan rambles on, “not at the rink, I’m not thinking about the guys’ dicks, I swear, but, like—wait. What did you just say?”

“Nothing,” Louie says. Why did he say that? He’s not even drunk; he has no excuse. The truth just slipped right out of his mouth because he’s not himself today .

Ryan stops walking. “Louie?”

Louie stops walking a few feet ahead. He can barely even see Ryan, just the patch of light on the ground from the flashlight. “Can we just go back to the house?”

“Sure,” Ryan says, but he doesn’t move. He’s looking at Louie differently than he was a minute ago and Louie wishes he could take it all back.

His heart is racing like it does after a long shift. Ami really got to him with what she said; he has no idea how she knew. Possibly, she caught him looking at the chocolate at the corner of Ryan’s mouth and jumped to the correct conclusions.

The wind picks up, goosebumps rising on Louie’s arms. Leaves rustle all around them. Louie tears his eyes off Ryan to look up. Not a star in the sky. Right then, a raindrop hits him right in the forehead.

“Aw, crap,” Ryan says and finally gets a move on, looking back at Louie once before he starts running.

Louie can’t do anything but follow.

The rain picks up long before they reach the end of the Harrises’ driveway. When they stumble up the stairs to the front door, Louie is swimming in his sneakers and his shirt is sticking to his skin.

In the distance, lightning strikes, the thunder rolling over them a moment later.

“Fucking hell,” Ryan mutters and pulls off his sneakers outside the door, where they finally have the porch roof over their heads. “I have ponds in there. Lakes.”

Louie wordlessly unties his Converse, the tips of his hair dripping when he bends down. It’s gotten messy and shaggy since the end of the season and Louie barely even noticed since his mom wasn’t around to nag at him about it. He can barely get his wet shoes off, nearly tripping over himself.

Ryan reaches out to steady him, fingertips cold against Louie’s skin. He lets go quickly, without saying a word, but then he just stands there with the house key in his hand and doesn’t unlock the door.

“Are we going in?” Louie whispers, the wind almost whipping the words away.

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Ryan says and fumbles the key into the lock.

Thunder hides their footsteps on the stairs up to Ryan’s room. The lights seem too bright when Ryan flicks them on. He quietly grabs towels and throws one to Louie, who only barely manages to catch it because Ryan’s pale blue shirt with the flamingo pattern, now drenched, is practically see-through.

Ryan goes for his socks first and makes a face. “Is there anything worse than wet socks?”

On a regular day, Louie could probably think of a few things. Except today is not a regular day.

Ryan stops toweling his hair dry and stares at Louie when he doesn’t reply. “What is going on right now?”

“Nothing,” Louie says and pulls off his own socks.

“You keep saying that.” Ryan stops what he’s doing to stare down Louie some more. “I’m not buying it.”

Louie sighs. He almost made it out the other side of this trip without embarrassing himself, without forgetting who they are to each other and who they will be to each other when they go back home. How did he become this person? He’s convinced it’s all Ryan’s fault. It’s Ryan and the way his thighs look in those shorts and his see-through shirt and the corner of his mouth that doesn’t even have chocolate on it anymore and the way he looks at Louie when he’s worried about him.

Louie’s never met anyone who cares this much about other people. People who weren’t even that kind to him when they first met. Being around Ryan makes him wonder if he should care about other people more.

“Did I do something?” Ryan asks and takes a step closer. “Did I say something stupid without noticing? I do that sometimes, you know me. I swear, it’s all cool, what you said earlier just threw me off, but it’s not… wh at did I do?”

“It’s just something Ami said.” Louie shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

Except it does matter. It matters because it struck something in him the way lightning sometimes splits trees straight in half. And now there’s a part of him that thinks he can’t and there’s a part of him that believes her, and one of those parts is just a little bigger than the other.

Ryan huffs. “What did she say?”

“Something about…” Louie looks up at Ryan. He only has an inch and a half on him, but he’s just so much bigger than Louie, although Louie doesn’t notice much right now. Because there’s the corner of Ryan’s mouth and Louie’s world has zeroed down to just that.

“Oh,” Ryan says, like he understood something, even though Louie didn’t say a word.

“We should go to bed,” Louie says. He can’t do whatever he wants. He can’t kiss Ryan because he feels like it. Except Ami said—she said something about the other person wanting it, too, and maybe that was supposed to tell him something about Ryan.

“Did you know,” Ryan says, his voice a little breathless, “that Pennsylvania is a little bit like Las Vegas? And that whatever happens here—”

Louie doesn’t let him finish. He should have let him finish. He should have asked for permission. Scratch that, he shouldn’t have come here in the first place. Because coming here led to this: his lips on Ryan’s and his hands on Ryan’s sides and a tornado in his head.

The lights flicker and thunder rumbles and Louie should take that as a warning, but he doesn’t because Ryan is kissing him back like he’s been waiting just for this, like he’s needed exactly this. And Louie wants . He wants to get closer, he wants to grab Ryan’s hair, and he wants to feel his skin and he wants to kiss his neck and he wants to get that shirt off him and he wants and wants and wants.

The rain is loud against the big window behind Ryan’s bed, but not loud enough to hide the low whine Louie lets out when Ryan grips him just a little tighter. Louie lets go of Ryan’s damp shirt, curls his fingers around the back of Ryan’s neck, touches his cheek.

Another roll of thunder, another flash of lightning and the power goes out, leaving them in total darkness.

Ryan pulls away, hands still on Louie. “Huh.”

Louie tries to catch his breath somehow. He’s never felt his heart beat this fast. He can’t remember, can’t think. What happens now? How is anything ever going to be normal again? He wants to push Ryan away and wants him closer at the same time.

“Not gonna lie,” Ryan says into the silence, “I wasn’t expecting that.”

“I…” Louie shouldn’t lie either. He was expecting this. Has been expecting this for weeks. “I think I’m bi.” Another truth, a different truth. One he couldn’t hold in any longer.

“Congratulations,” Ryan says, voice soft now. His thumb gently rubs at Louie’s side. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t think so,” Louie says. He shakes his head. He hasn’t felt okay in a long time and it has nothing to do with this kiss.

“Hey,” Ryan says, his hand falling away. The flashlight he’s been carrying around with him comes back to life and Ryan puts it on the dresser with the hockey sticks and pucks on it. “It’s late and we…” He grabs Louie’s towel and wraps his around his shoulders. “We should get some sleep.”

“Yeah,” Louie says. He’s suddenly cold all over.

“By the time we get up, the power will probably be on again,” Ryan says casually.

Nothing about this is casual. How the hell did he flip that switch so fast? One second they’re kissing, the next they’re having a completely normal conversation. Louie’s world just shifted on its axis and for Ryan it’s business as usual?

Louie turns away, peels off his wet clothes, and digs through his suitcase for a shirt that’s at least dry. His heart is still fluttering at the thought of Ryan’s hand at the small of his back. Like he’s never been touched by another person before. Between Ryan being his teammate and Ryan making his heart explode with how much he wants his hands back on him, at the small of his back, or anywhere, really, anywhere else, Louie is completely lost. Unmoored. Adrift. Staring at Ryan in the flashlight’s small beam that’s pointed right at Ryan’s thighs.

This is the universe mocking him. Pointing and laughing at him. Look, there is Louie Hathaway, and he’s a total mess. He kissed his teammate because he wanted to, even though he knew better. He can’t look at the guy’s thighs without fainting like an eighteenth century damsel. He can’t talk to him without wanting to ravage his mouth like a romance novel hero. That’s not him; it can’t be him.

He needs to focus on hockey. He’s going to make the roster next season. Everything else doesn’t matter; can’t matter.

Louie gets into bed, Ryan’s bed, and pulls up the sheets and closes his eyes. One more night, then they’re going back to Connecticut. They’re going back to real life.

Ryan’s footsteps move around the room and whenever they get close to the bed, Louie freezes up. Obviously, Ryan won’t get into bed with him, but that doesn’t make Louie want it less.

When he fell asleep in Ryan’s bed last season, maybe he wanted to wake up next to him a little. Louie grips the sheets harder; forces himself to stop. He counts to ten along to Ryan’s footsteps.

Then something rustles beside the bed. Ryan’s sheets. “Lou?” he says after a moment.

Louie takes a deep breath. “Yeah?”

“I meant what I said,” Ryan whispers. “This can stay here if that’s what you want.”