Page 9

CHAPTER NINE

RYAN IS SO not ready to meet the great Martie Hathaway.

He’s back in his suit, but he can’t find his tie and fuck knows what his hair looks like. Louie won’t wait, though—he’s got his fingers curled tightly around his biceps and is pushing him toward the locker room door.

Ryan, by now, knows many of the people who are milling about in the tunnels; one of them is Liam’s wife with Maja. Ida is trading what looks like hockey cards with a girl her age—one of Yoshi’s girls, going by her jersey. Although Ida is wearing Nick’s jersey but is definitely not his kid, so Ryan can’t be sure.

“Rah-rah!” Maja greets him, holding out her tiny arms, wanting to be picked up.

“Awww,” Ryan says and tugs Louie with him. No sign of Martie Hathaway, so he can say hello real quick. He grabs Maja, Louie impatiently shifting his weight next to him, and clearing his throat when things are taking too long. Ryan hands Maja back to her mom and promises that he’ll come by to play with her soon.

“Both of you,” Ella says, shooting Louie a look. “I’ll make the meatballs.”

“Can’t say no to the meatballs,” Ryan says and elbows Louie in the side.

Louie only nods, distracted, looking at a tall guy in a Cardinals jersey who’s grinning at them. He’s handsome. Really nice eyes. Kind eyes. And once Ryan has said goodbye to the Hellstroms, Louie is taking Ryan straight over there.

“There he is,” the guy says and pulls Louie into a quick but tight hug.

Louie’s smile is about as tight as that hug. “Ryan, this is my older brother Dominic.” He nods at Ryan. “This is Ryan Harris, I—”

“Your roommate!” Dominic says and shakes Ryan’s hand. “So nice to meet you.”

Louie’s older brother. The gay brother. The doctor. Or maybe not-yet-doctor. Ryan should have seen it. They have the same dark hair, the same greenish-brown eyes. “Hi,” Ryan says, instantly embarrassed that he thought the guy is handsome. He is, but Ryan absolutely cannot think that about Louie’s brother.

“Ryan wanted to meet Dad,” Louie adds.

Dominic laughs. “Doesn’t everyone?”

Ryan is starting to feel like he’s majorly inconveniencing everyone around him. “Look, if you guys don’t have time for that—”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Dominic says, still smiling. “We’re used to it. Louie and Bastien in particular. I, uh, quit hockey before people got annoying about it.” He gives Ryan’s shoulder a pat. “Not to say you’re annoying. It’s honestly fine.”

Ryan is fascinated by this guy. He would have never guessed that he’s gay. Well, Ryan hopes he looks straight to other people, too, but knowing that Dominic is into men and not getting any vibes in that direction has Ryan looking at him a little harder than he maybe looks at most other people. At first glance, he’s just your regular beer-drinking “shoot the puck”-shouting hockey fan.

“I have no idea when they’ll get here, though,” Dominic goes on. “They went to see Bastien because his team is flying out tonight.”

Ryan shrugs. “I have to wait for Louie anyway. I’m his ride. ”

“Really nice of you to let him stay with you,” Dominic says. “Louie said you just got here. Where’d you play before?”

Louie talked about him? But he didn’t mention how Ryan ended up in Hartford? And Dominic doesn’t seem to follow hockey coverage either. “Toronto,” Ryan says with some delay.

“I hear they’re big on hockey up there,” Dominic says, lips twitching.

Ryan rolls his eyes. “Yeah, you could say that.”

“Better here?” Dominic asks.

“I haven’t been here for very long,” Ryan says. He misses his friends. He texts Carrot and Slaw pretty much every day, but it’s not the same as having them around. He hasn’t found his people on the Cardinals yet. Louie is his person, technically, but only because they live together. They haven’t had time to get to know each other properly, at least not beyond hockey.

Ryan just shared his biggest secret with him. No biggie. Real talk, though, he wanted that out of the way. He didn’t want any awkwardness and he didn’t want Louie to find out by accident.

“Yeah, takes some time to get used to new places,” Dominic says, sounding like a wise old man who knows everything about getting used to new places. He gives Louie a gentle nudge. “Remember when I first moved to Hartford and got lost on the way back from the grocery store? Being a little lost is like a rite of passage. If you weren’t a little lost, did you really arrive?”

Weirdly, that makes Ryan feel a lot better about being traded here and not really fitting in. He doesn’t have time to reply, though, because Louie becomes very still next to him. Unnaturally still. Like he’s on a hike and about to be eaten by a bear.

“Here they come,” Dominic says and nods at a group of people who have just come into view. An old lady with a Cardinals hat—it’s one of the new ones they just started selling at the store—and a woman with long blonde hair and a Bears jersey, and behind them Martie Hathaway, also in a Bears jersey, this one in white, matching the team’s away sweaters.

“Louie, my sweetheart,” the old woman says and pulls Louie into a hug. He looks like he wants to die, but he obediently says hello. Must be his grandma.

“Mom, Dad,” Louie says, not going in for a hug with either of them—Ryan’s mom would never let him get away without a hug. “Glad you could make it.”

It almost sounds like he means it. Ryan can’t even put his finger on why he’s not buying it. Something about the smile on Louie’s face. Ryan has seen that smile before: when Ryan asked him to smile.

“Of course,” Louie’s mom says. “Wouldn’t have missed seeing all my boys play.” She smiles at Dominic. “Well, almost all my boys.”

“Yeah, no one wants to see me play,” Dominic says and laughs.

“Who knows, if you’d stuck with hockey, you could be playing with these guys,” Martie Hathaway throws in.

Dominic shrugs. “Yeah, well…” He’s definitely over the whole hockey thing and is absolutely not interested in what-ifs. “Can’t eat a $20 burger while you’re playing.”

Martie Hathaway looks deeply offended by the burger comment.

“We had a good time, that’s what matters,” MamaHathaway says. The words of someone who’s been trying (any maybe failing) to keep the peace over the decades.

“And we would have had an even better time if Louie had kept his head up and scored, hmm?” Martie says and gives Louie a pat on the back. “Empty net was wide open, kid. Can’t expect them to keep giving you chances when you don’t convert on opportunities like that.”

Okay, harsh .

Ryan feels slightly invisible and maybe no one will notice if he slowly backs away, but he can’t just leave, right? Louie’s face is ghostly white, his left hand balled into a fist. Yeah, Ryan is not going anywhere.

“Did you see Bastien’s game against the Grizzlies?” Martie goes on, hand still on Louie’s shoulder. “That was one beautiful goal. ”

“Most players don’t score every game, Dad,” Dominic says. Another peacekeeper. He reminds Ryan of his older sister Emery, who spent most of her teenage years keeping the peace between the twins.

“Our Louie is overdue for a goal, though,” Martie says good-naturedly.

Louie’s lips have become a thin line, like he’s trying to keep something in. Words. Or maybe vomit.

He must have known. All day, he must have thought about what his dad would say to him tonight. He must have known it wouldn’t be kind. That’s why something seemed off about him.

So this is what it’s like to have a dad who knows his way around hockey. Ryan will keep the carpenter dad who builds wacky furniture in the garage and paints it weird colors and tells him that he did a really good job, even if it was the worst game of Ryan’s life.

“Don’t make that face, Lori,” Martie says to his wife. “Your son’s a forward—he knows his job is to score and he’s not doing that right now.” He ruffles Louie’s hair. “He just needs to work harder. And to get a haircut.”

Louie works harder than most of the guys Ryan has played with. He would know because he always gives Louie a ride after practice and Louie likes to stay late. Ryan has started to stay on the ice with him and a few of the other guys because it’s better than waiting around. Louie also makes sure he only eats food the team nutritionist approves of, he doesn’t stay up too late to play Minecraft like Ryan, and in the mornings, he goes on runs. Yesterday, he even did push-ups.

Ryan will only do a push-up at gunpoint.

He desperately wants to say something, but he has a feeling that Louie wouldn’t like it.

“Dad,” Dominic says, “Louie’s teammate wanted to meet you.”

“Oh!” Martie Hathaway brightens and turns to Ryan like he only just noticed him standing there. “Ryan Harris, drafted 2017. Second round if I’m not wrong? ”

“That is correct,” Ryan says, shaking Martie’s outstretched hand. That man could shake hands for a living and it’d make him as much money as hockey did.

“You’ve been playing a lot of minutes,” Martie says. “Looks like these guys made a solid move.”

So he does know how to say nice things. Well, he said nice things about his other kid, the goal he scored, so maybe, if he’d tried just a teensy bit, he could have found something nice to say about Louie’s game as well.

This, all of this, seems like a big mistake.

“Thank you,” Ryan says, once again telling himself that Louie wouldn’t appreciate it if Ryan brought him into this. “It’s so great to meet you.”

“Want me to take a picture of you guys?” Louie asks.

Ryan hands him his phone and Louie snaps the picture, then the Cards’ rookie sneaks up on them to ask for a picture as well and Ryan extracts Louie from that huddle. Dominic follows them.

“You didn’t want to bring Cameron?” Louie asks Dominic. That must be the elementary school teacher fiancé.

Dominic laughs. “Right. Like I’d do that to him.” He turns to Ryan. “It’s not the hockey. Dad doesn’t like Cameron.”

“Why?” Ryan asks. “He’s… Louie said he’s an elementary school teacher?” How do you dislike an elementary school teacher? Shouldn’t be possible.

“He is,” Dominic says, his smile never faltering, “but he’s also a guy.”

“Oh,” Ryan says. He already knows where this is going.

“Dad would never say that he has a problem with it out loud,” Dominic says, “but we all know. And since I love Cameron, I’m not doing Dad to him.”

Dad Hathaway barely exchanges another word with Louie and eventually he collects his people to take them to the hotel they booked for the night. Dominic is going back to his place. Before he goes, he tells Louie to come by on a day off sometime.

Louie makes vague noises about it.

On the drive home, he doesn’t say a word. Ryan doesn’t try to strike up a conversation, just turns up the radio and takes them home through gentle snow flurries.

At the house, Louie immediately takes off down the hall.

“Hey,” Ryan says. When Louie stops and turns around just outside his bedroom door, Ryan realizes that he doesn’t even know what he was going to say. “You okay?” he finally asks, even though it’s obvious that Louie isn’t. At least he asked, at least he gave Louie a chance to tell him if he needs anything.

“Not really,” Louie says. Then he disappears into his room.

Ryan does not know what to do with that. Is that a cry for help? Is it Louie telling him to leave him alone? Ryan takes off his suit, then he tries to find an answer in the mostly empty fridge. He grabs the cheese and eats a slice, then he takes the bread and the butter. A grilled cheese sandwich can’t fix everything, but at least it’s delicious.

And Ryan’s exceptionally good at grilled cheese.

He also grabs a can of tomato soup, which Louie scoffed at when Ryan brought it home, but it’s part of the experience. He heats up the soup while he makes the sandwiches. Two. One for himself, one for Louie. And if Louie doesn’t want it, Ryan will just have a second one.

He scours the kitchen for a tray, finds a pale pink one with polka dots, and carefully arranges the bowl of soup and the absolutely perfect sandwich. Ryan will eat the one that’s less perfect (he flipped it too late).

Careful not to drop the tray, which would be very Ryan of him, he walks down the hall and sets it down just outside Louie’s door. He knocks and makes sure it’s loud enough that Louie will actually hear it. “Um, so, I made grilled cheese and I made you one, too, and it’s outside your door. You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to, I’ll just come back in five minutes and if it’s still there, I’ll eat it, so no worries. Uh. That’s it.”

He’s about to leave, but he forgot some crucial information .

He knocks again. “Oh, and I should mention, I’m really good at grilled cheese. Like, this isn’t normal grilled cheese. It’s my grilled cheese and it’s better than all the other grilled cheeses. But, again, if you don’t want it, just leave it right where it is.”

With that, he shuffles back to the kitchen and dunks his own sandwich right into the pot with the leftover tomato soup. He’s so glad no one can see him right now. His mom would be appalled.

He does stop eating for a second when he hears a door click. No one says no to a Ryan Harris grilled cheese.

Ryan is cleaning up the kitchen—somehow there are tomato soup splatters everywhere—when Louie comes shuffling into the room in sweatpants and a shirt from his AHL team.

“You were right,” Louie says, voice soft, as he sets the tray with the empty dishes down on the counter, “it was really good.”

Ryan nods. Glances at him. Louie’s eyes are a little red. “While other people were out partying, I studied the grilled cheese. And I made out with my hot neighbor. In that order.”

Louie laughs and opens the dishwasher, putting away the bowl and the plate and grabbing Ryan’s from the sink as well. “Thank you,” he says.

“Well, you said you weren’t okay…” Ryan shrugs. “And I know you don’t eat chocolate.”

“I sometimes eat chocolate,” Louie whispers.

“Oh, so you’re saying I could have just dropped a Hershey bar outside your door?”

“I eat good chocolate,” Louie says.

Ryan snorts. “Blasphemy.” He gives the counter a little pat. Spots more tomato soup. “I, uh… I’m sorry. Y’know, for asking you to introduce me to your dad.”

“You didn’t ask me,” Louie says. “I offered. It’s all right. Everyone wants to meet him and when he’s busy meeting people, he says less about how I need to work harder. ”

“Hey, that’s…” Ryan shakes his head. “You don’t need to work harder.”

“Maybe I do.”

“No,” Ryan says. He reaches out to pull Louie into a hug because he definitely needs one. “No, really, if you work any harder, you’ll probably die.”

Louie freezes and awkwardly pats Ryan’s back. “I’m fine now, don’t worry.”

Ryan lets go of him after a short moment because hugging is clearly not Louie’s thing. “I know you’re not,” Ryan whispers, “but I’ll pretend that I believe you if that’s what you want.”

Louie stares at him like he’s grown a second head. Then he says, “Thank you.”