Page 8

Nicko, October 17th

I loiter around the showers until everyone is packed up and ready to go. Everyone, except for Hart, who sits on the bench waiting for me when I exit the showers with a towel wrapped around my hips.

“Hurry up, beauty queen. I’m hungry!”

I roll my eyes even though I can relate. After only taking a few bites of the spicy noodles, I feel ready to collapse.

“What are we ordering?” I have my back turned to Hart while toweling off. The surgery scars on my right knee are the only visible difference between Nate and me. Since they can’t be fixed with some hair products and contact lenses, I’d rather give Hart a chance to look at my ass than have him discover them.

I haven’t paid much thought to my knee during training, but now I’m suddenly aware of the subtle strain in my upper leg. Maybe I pushed too hard during the last play, but I really wanted Baker to make that goal.

“We still have ramen,” Hart points out while scrolling through his phone, probably to give me some privacy while changing. His concentration on the screen is a bit too intense, but the gesture is familiar.

I’m not fully out to my team. Some guys know I’m bi because I mentioned it at the start of my freshman year, but most of them have graduated by now. It’s never been worth an actual conversation and I think—or at least hope—it wouldn’t be a big deal for my current teammates. Nevertheless, I catch myself trying to pointedly avoid looking at even their hairy toes inside the locker room. I can’t imagine how that must be for someone who is openly out as gay, especially after reading what the internet has to say about him.

The rage about Resnikoff’s leaked video footage and the Rebels’ media intervention with Hart died down quickly. But with us being in our final year of college, people start to remember that the first openly gay player is about to enter the NHL. And I’ll be there right beside him if everything goes according to plan.

The thought alone is enough to give me a massive headache.

“I need some real food,” I grumble as I pull a St. Bernard’s hoodie over my head. The dark green looks so unfamiliar on me, I scrunch up my nose when I catch my reflection in the mirror. I should probably put some kind of gel in my hair, but I don’t have the patience to sort through Nate’s stash of jars and tubes. So I opt for a beanie to tame my damp strands instead.

“What’s unreal about noodles?” Hart finally puts his phone away, frowning at me.

I want to argue when I remember that he’s at St. Bernard’s on a full ride. I don’t know much about his family except that he has two mothers, whom I saw at the draft, and that money seems to be a sensitive subject. It’s also the reason why my brother hasn’t moved out of the dorms after freshman year.

“I don’t think my stomach is up for hot sauce yet,” I point out, which is not a lie. My stomach definitely isn’t up for hot sauce again, now or ever. “My treat?”

“I don’t need a treat,” Hart huffs as he stands.

Good to know that we agree on some things. Unfortunately, I can’t tell him that.

“Yes. Yes, you do. For putting up with my vomiting.”

This makes him reconsider. “It was nothing,” he murmurs with a shrug, but there’s no more complaints when I read the menu out loud to him on our way back to the dorms.

***

“Soooo, how was training?”

I narrow my eyes at my brother’s voice. There’s a slight smugness drowning out the feigned innocence of his question.

“An experience,” I answer dryly before pressing on with my most stressful subject of the day. “What is the Wordle? And what even is a Wordle?”

Hart pestered me about a hint again on the way to the dorms. I’m lucky he hasn’t figured it out either, so I kept on pretending I was holding all the cards close to my chest. In reality, I’m clueless.

“It’s a word puzzle,” Nate explains with a sigh. “You have six tries to figure out the five-letter word of the day.”

“And what’s your deal with it?” I’m trapping my cell between ear and shoulder while I try to ice my knee and get my rehab stretches in at the same time. Hart is currently waiting downstairs for the delivery guy, so that gives me an opportunity to care for it without drawing his unwanted attention.

“It’s a superstition thing. If you solve it, you score in the next game,” Nate continues reluctantly. “Sometimes we set stakes. You know, like who solves the Wordle first doesn’t have to do laundry that day.”

Okay, this gets my attention.

“So, what’s today’s Wordle?”

“It’s lymph. But seriously, it’s not that diff–”

“Lymph?!”

“Yeah. You know, those little nodes you have under your arms and shit.”

“I’m a biology major; I know what fucking lymph nodes are,” I interrupt my brother’s anatomy lecture. I was about ten light years away from figuring that out, but the prospect of having Hart sort through my sweaty practice gear has me grinning.

“So, how was training?”

I grimace when Nate circles back to this.

“Apparently, you improved your stick handling a lot,” I decide to tell him as I throw my cooling pad onto the bed. The cell almost drops to the floor in the process so I miss his answer. “Want to know how you did it? By training with your lame-ass brother.”

Nate is quiet on the other end, and I immediately feel guilty.

I know those were Hart’s words, not Nate’s. I also know that I have always been the better stick handler, so I didn’t need to rub that one in. But fuck, it felt good to get that pat on the back after training.

“Xan doesn’t mean it, Nicko,” my brother tells me seriously, like he is whole-heartedly convinced that “lame-ass” leaves room for misinterpretation. “If you had given him a chance over the past three years, you would know that he’s a good guy. And also pretty lame himself.”

He says that last part teasingly, but I can’t help the eye roll. I want to point out that Hart wasn’t exactly trying to become my friend, before or after our viral interview with campus radio, when the door opens. Speak of the devil…

“Gotta run. And cheer up, little bro!” I chirp.

Fuck, I always wanted to say that.

“Lymph!” I yell before Hart can say anything. He’s peering down at me from behind a small stack of takeout boxes while I currently reside in the cobra position to give my body a good stretch.

“Lymph?” he repeats, black brows raised. His gaze travels down my curved spine, and I suddenly feel exposed.

“The Wordle,” I tell him as I sit up, pulling down the hem of my shirt. It’s unnecessary since he has already turned away to arrange our food on his desk. I wander over to pick up my order and carry it back to Nate’s side.

Stepping into his space feels weird—like I’m doing something forbidden.

“Oh. Well, I still had a guess left, so thanks for spoiling it for me.” He frowns, but there’s no real heat behind his words.

Damn, looks like I have to do my own laundry later. But tomorrow I will return prepared. The thought of Hart unknowingly washing my socks and jockstrap gives me a ridiculous amount of schadenfreude. No matter how annoying he is, this silver lining will carry me through this week.

“Didn’t you give up junk food?”

“Huh?” I mumble around a mouth full of fries. I at least try to eat healthy during the season, but despite the lack of movement, I lost a few pounds over the span of my recovery. My appetite came back once I was allowed to skate again, but I still have a few pounds to catch up on.

“Junk food. I thought you were cutting out fries and burgers?”

I blink at that. I would definitely never cut out fries and burgers from my diet and neither would Nate. There’s something immensely satisfying about the fatty juice running over my fingers as I take a big bite from my extra-large burger. The cheese has the perfect consistency—warm and soft but not melted. I close my eyes when I swallow my first bite of real food, a moan escaping me.

Somewhere across the room Hart snorts. “That answers that then.”

I still think about it when I sort through my damp practice gear an hour later. Despite choosing different colleges, Nate and I see each other every weekend due to the closeness of our schools. During the week, my brother calls me daily to tell me about his routines, to gossip about his classmates or try and convince me to go along with another of his outlandish plans. Obviously, we can’t fit everything into those moments, but there are things I simply assumed would never change: like the combination of his lock or his love for junk food.

No matter how stupid, I can’t help but feel betrayed by this day. Switching was supposed to be a dumb idea but still easy to execute. I’m my brother’s twin for fuck’s sake; sometimes it feels like I have known him longer than myself. Yet I find Hart throwing me weird glances at every turn I take.

“I hope the guys give you hell,” I murmur as I think of my brother at the Nook. It can’t be easy for a stage hog like Nate to decline party invites just so he can have a quiet TV night with the rest of my roomies.

I sigh when I finally untangle the cup from my jockstrap to throw it into the washing machine, then freeze. My heart skips the next beat and my eyes widen in absolute horror when I stare down at the protective equipment in my hand. When we decided to go through with this, I only grabbed a week’s worth of underwear, since all my other clothes needed to stay at the Nook. Nate even complained about having to dress like an “athletic caveman” now. Not one moment did I think twice about using the gear in his duffel bag, including the cup and jockstrap—or mouthguard.

Suddenly the fries climb up my throat again and I gag. There’s a difference between sharing everything with your twin and sharing every thing!

Just three more days until Saturday.