Season's Change, page 20
OMG did u just sexile me Oliver.
He rolled his eyes and stuck his phone back in his pocket. “Want to head back?”
Benji scrubbed at his eyes. His hair fluffed all over the place; he hadn’t put anything in it when he showered. His eyes were red-rimmed and the bruise was purpling on his cheekbone. “Are you saying I’m too much of a mess to be out in public?”
“Maybe. Or just that, you know.” He didn’t know what he knew. “You’re scaring the children.”
“This is Philadelphia, Ols. The kids don’t scare easy.” A sad little smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. It hurt something in Olly’s stomach. He didn’t know what he wanted to do more: drive to Pittsburgh and shake his sister until she saw sense, or wrap Benji up and keep him somewhere it wouldn’t hurt him. (Olly also wanted to kiss that exact corner of his mouth, until it wasn’t sad anymore.)
“You don’t have to do all of this, you know?” Benji continued, after Olly had refocused his eyes on the smudged bar top. Apparently he wasn’t ready to leave yet, after all.
“All of what?”
“Being, like, nice to me when I’m being such a bummer.”
“Don’t say that. You know I don’t mind.”
Benji shrugged, still hunched over the bar. “I just always feel like... I guess I just always have to keep it together, you know? Like, I’ve worked way too hard to let shit affect me like this. With hockey, or, you know.” He waved a hand.
“That’s not how it works.”
“I mean, kinda, though.” He turned his beer glass in a circle, long-lashed eyes tracking the movement of the logo. “I wouldn’t be where I am if I let shit...linger. Let it affect things with my team. I never would have gotten to where I am if I’d made everything a giant pity party, you know?”
Olly did know, actually. He was just more used to being on the other side of the conversation. “You get to feel things, though. People care about more than your numbers.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Benji was still looking down, though. Abruptly, Olly wasn’t sure that this shithole bar was helping anything. He nudged Benji with his elbow. “Come on, buddy. Let’s go.”
Olly tossed a few bills down on the bar top, and they walked back. Dewey tried to call them over to the hotel bar, but Olly waved him off. He didn’t know where this protective streak had come from, but he didn’t want Benji to feel like he had to be on. That he had to keep up his act like everything was okay, when it wasn’t. When he wasn’t.
Olly had never felt like this before. He felt like he was drowning; he didn’t know what to do, other than stand where he was. Next to Benji.
The hallway was empty, their footsteps silent on the pile of the carpet. Olly tapped his key card against his door. He stepped through, realized that Benji wasn’t following him, and turned around.
“Aren’t you coming in?”
“I’m tired.” He looked like it: shoulders slumped, wrinkles in his shirt. But more than that he looked uncertain, picking up his hands to scrub at his face. Olly didn’t know what to do with that. With any of it: he wanted to fix it, make Benji better like Benji helped make him better. But some things were unfixable, and Olly didn’t want to make it worse: with his feelings, with his stupid fucking crush.
So he hovered at the threshold of his hotel room, the quiet dragging out between them.
“Come on,” he finally said, and held out his hand for God only knew what reason.
Benji looked at it; looked up at him, eyes wide and green. It was easy to forget how young he was, but for once Olly could see it: Benji Bryzinski, all of twenty-one years old, stripped of his swagger and hard-won self-assurance. The scared kid in hand-me-down pads, clinging with every bit of his strength to the only thing he thought might save him.
Benji stepped forward and slid his hand into Olly’s. Their fingers knit together, and the door was closing behind them and they were crashing into each other, Benji hanging on to him so tightly that Olly couldn’t breathe. He shut his eyes against the crumpled fabric of Benji’s shirt and just—held on.
It wasn’t chill; it wasn’t bros; it wasn’t anything Olly would have ever let happen with anyone he’d ever known, even while he was rubbing slow circles on Benji’s back and murmuring nonsense into the side of his neck.
After a while Olly could feel Benji straightening himself out, tightening the muscles in his back and getting ready to pull away.
“I should go,” he mumbled, lips moving against Olly’s hair.
“You don’t have to.”
“Okay,” Benji said, immediately, like he hadn’t wanted to go at all.
They undressed quietly, Benji pulling Poiro’s extra pair of sweatpants out of his suitcase. Olly climbed into bed, and Benji followed him under the blankets, tucking himself into Olly’s side in a way that felt as familiar as a homecoming and as charged as a lightning bolt. “Is this okay,” he whispered, as if Olly wasn’t going to take any excuse to pull him closer, because he had that reckless, damn-the-consequences feeling again—even if the only place it went was to run his thumb over the warm skin on the back of his neck, let Benji fall asleep on his chest to the Discovery Channel.
* * *
Olly didn’t want to know what Poiro thought when he found them in the morning, all tangled up.
All he did was raise a Gallic eyebrow and stalk into the bathroom, mouthing You owe me over his shoulder. As if Olly hadn’t covered for him when he’d missed curfew to go hook up.
They hadn’t even done anything.
Other than, well, cuddle.
And there it was—the anxiety rushing out from his stomach. Poiro was going to say something at the wrong time, because he couldn’t resist the easy joke. And what if Benji woke up and got weirded out—this wasn’t the kind of thing buddies did, a world away from happening to pass out in the same place, and what if Benji thought Olly was trying to take advantage of something because...
Benji stirred against his shoulder. “Why’d you get all tense?” he mumbled. Olly felt lips moving against his neck, an arm tightening over his chest.
“No reason.”
“Breathe, bud.” Benji was not freaking out.
“Okay.”
Benji made a pleased noise. Olly remembered it from the threesome.
“Where’s Poiro?”
“Shower.”
“Mmm.” Benji was sleepy and warm, pressing Olly’s left side into the bed like a weighted blanket. He was usually up and at ’em, unless he was hungover. Not today: he was acting like he had no immediate plans to get out of bed, even though they’d be leaving for Pittsburgh in an hour.
Olly knew he should get up himself, but he couldn’t make it happen. The surge of anxiety had faded, even though it would be back later like it fucking always was. And Olly was comfortable, he realized, breathing in Benji’s smell and feeling the rise and fall of his chest.
They must have dozed back off, because the next thing he was aware of was Poiro blasting some godawful Euro techno out of his phone.
“Rise and shine, mes enfants. Bus in twenty,” he singsonged, throwing granola bars and bananas at their heads. “Say thank you for bringing you breakfast in bed.”
“Merci,” Benji grumbled, heaving himself vertical.
Poiro zipped his suitcase and swanned back out, techno fading down the hallway behind him.
“Guess I’d better get dressed,” Benji said. He had his back to Olly now, feet on the floor. It felt immediately colder without his body heat under the blankets.
Olly kicked back the covers and swung himself up. Or he tried to, before Benji grabbed on to him again and tugged him into his lap.
“Thanks,” Benji mumbled into his hair. “For, you know. Being there.”
Olly could feel the vibrations in his chest while he was talking. “Of course.”
Benji shook him. “Seriously, Ols. I mean it.”
“Shut up,” Olly said. “It’s not like I haven’t lost it all over you a hundred times this year.”
“Still. I don’t know how I got so lucky,” which was absolutely the kind of thing Benji said, and absolutely the kind of thing that was going to make Olly lose his goddamned mind and also, something was melting in his chest, and he didn’t know what to do about any of it.
Other than shove him away, bully both of them into travel suits, and make sure they made it onto the bus with ninety seconds to spare.
* * *
Pittsburgh was anticlimactic. He already knew he wasn’t meeting Krista for dinner. He already knew Robbo was going to try to start shit. So he let himself tune out the noise.
It helped that they won with a definitive 4-1, Olly’s line accounting for two of their four goals. They were clicking when they needed to—Luke and Olly were both on silly points streaks.
If they didn’t have an epic meltdown, Benji was going to the playoffs. Which, holy shit: the fucking Cup playoffs.
Pinch him.
Poiro did, that fucker. “Of course we’re going to the playoffs. This isn’t some shithole team.”
“You still have to win the games, rookie,” Olly shot back, and then they were sniping at each other in French and everything felt—good. Weirdly good.
It made no fucking sense and maybe he was going to regret thinking it later, but fuck it. Krista was going to be however Krista was going to be and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it, other than be there for her when she came around. He and Olly were solid again, some way, somehow. He’d drifted awake in the morning, warm and comfortable with his mouth full of Olly’s hair, and he’d thought, Thank god.
For whatever reason.
He didn’t like not getting along with people. Especially his teammates. Especially his, whatever, best friends.
(He’d never wanted to wake up with Davo’s hair in his mouth. Or anybody from the Q.)
(Whatever. It wasn’t a thing.)
Chapter Thirty-One
They were hosting Tampa Bay, and then Minnesota. They could have locked in a playoff spot if they beat Tampa, but they couldn’t manage it.
But Olly would be damned if he let them lose to the Wolves.
He had his headphones on, blasting AC/DC—“Back in Black” again; fuck it, it was maybe his song of the year—and drilling his tennis ball off the wall.
Olly knew what he had to do. He’d watched the video. He’d practiced. He’d worked his fucking ass off, in the weight room and on the ice and on fucking FaceTime with Dr. Martinez.
It was time to do it.
The first period started off chippy, one of the Wolves forwards getting into it with Dewey around the Eagles goal. Dewey was hard to piss off on the ice, so he must have been acting like a real asshole.
And then Olly was skating out for his first shift. It was smooth as silk: Dewey tapped a pass from behind the Wolves goal out to Bevvo; Bevvo slung it over to where Olly was charging in from the right, and Olly scored with his first touch of the game.
The goal horn sounded, and Benji slammed into him, bumping their helmets together, screaming. Olly vanished under a pile of bodies in navy blue sweaters, and they were off.
It was a righteous fucking hammering, ending 7-1 to the Eagles. Their D was relentless: every time Olly turned around, one of the Wolves was getting checked or slammed into the boards. Benji played a blinder, with two assists and a cannon of a slapshot.
Also, Olly got his second hat trick of the season.
Listening to the arena chant his name—Ol-ly, Ol-ly, Ol-ly—Olly couldn’t actually believe it. He’d been such a wreck when he got to DC; and maybe he still had work to do, maybe he still had shit to figure out, but for real, for tonight: fuck it all.
He would work it out. And if some asshole finally went and yapped to the media, he’d retire to Lake Vermilion on a high note.
To make the night even better, Carolina lost, so they officially punched their ticket to the playoffs. The Eagles weren’t going to finish at the top of their division, but they were solidly in second, with God only knew who behind them. Half the conference was within three points of each other, but that wasn’t Olly’s problem.
No, Olly’s problem was that he was out of beer, and he was stuck on the inside of the booth.
He elbowed Benji. Their ankles were tangled together under the table. Benji had done it while Olly coached him through Instagramming about making the playoffs, and Olly felt too good to move.
“What, bud?”
Olly wagged his empty pint glass.
“I think Yelich went to get another pitcher,” Hotdog called from across the table. He was back up from Hershey; he’d be a real Eagle next season.
“Jesus, don’t trust Yelich with the pitcher.” Bevvo sounded alarmed—nobody had forgotten about the 10% beer incident. Benji was drinking a Miller like a seventeen-year-old, as usual.
“I’ll go check on him.” Luke heaved himself up to head toward the bar, but angled off immediately toward Poiro and a cluster of girls.
“Lukesy has the attention span of a goddamned gnat,” Bevvo complained. “Hotdog, go make sure Yello’s not ordering stupid shit. If you talk to a girl before you get back, I’ll skate blade your fucking neck.”
Olly snorted into his empty. Now that Bevvo had a girlfriend, he liked to act all responsible, but he couldn’t quite manage it. Sandrine had the patience of a saint.
“What? Mad I’m out-momming you?” Bevvo grinned.
“I dunno, Mama Ols has loosened up a lot,” Benji said. He slid his arm around Olly’s shoulder and squeezed. Left it there.
“Fuck the Wolves,” was Olly’s contribution.
“Fucking for real. Don’t know how you stay so professional in interviews.” Bevvo leaned forward like he was talking into a mic and erased all traces of personality from his face. “I’d like to thank Minnesota’s coach for throwing me under a bus, and I want to commend the fans for being the biggest assholes on Twitter. I’ll always be grateful they were dumb enough to trade me.”
“Boston’s fans are the biggest fuckheads on Twitter,” Hotdog announced, back with pitchers.
Olly drank another beer and laughed at everybody’s jokes. His phone was blowing up with texts from his family. Even his dad hadn’t been able to find anything in his game to constructively criticize, for maybe the first time since he’d picked up a hockey stick. And Benji was warm and solid against him, from his shoulder all the way down his body.
“Ready to go?” Benji asked him after a while. Luke and Poiro had disappeared with the girls; Hotdog and Yelich were swapping stories about Canadian farm country, accents getting more ridiculous by the minute. Bevvo’s face cycled through fascinated and disgusted.
They slid out of the booth and met an Uber. Benji made polite conversation with the driver and Olly watched the city rush by: the intricate bronze tiers of the African American History and Culture museum; the angular white facade of the Kennedy Center, reflecting off the dark water of the Potomac. He’d never been to half the shit on the National Mall. The grind of the season had caught him, narrowed his life to hockey and airplanes and exhaustion the way it always did.
Maybe not only those things.
He tipped his head back against the headrest and found Benji looking back at him. He was smiling, like he couldn’t help himself, and he mouthed playoffs! with his eyes crinkling at the corners. It was dark enough that Olly couldn’t see their color. He didn’t need to: could picture them with perfect clarity, green with flecks of whisky-brown around the pupil.
Olly was probably in love with him, which was a complete fucking disaster.
It didn’t feel like it, though, halfway across the river with the trees of Roosevelt Island rising beneath them, and Benji smiling as he pressed their ankles back together.
* * *
The kitchen lights spilled pools of brightness onto the counter and left the rest of the 505 in darkness. Olly grabbed two Gatorades out of the fridge. He was still buzzed, a little. Enough to feel loose, disconnected from the heaviness of reality.
He tossed Benji one of the Gatorades and let himself spill backward over the couch, ending up with his legs hanging over the back and his head on the cushions, everything upside down.
“Take off your suit, drunkie,” Benji told him, voice all warm and affectionate.
Olly shut his eyes. “You can’t make me move.”
“At least take off your shoes.”
Olly kicked them off, letting them clatter to the floor. “Happy now?”
The couch dipped when Benji sat down, close enough to touch. “Maybe.”
And then there was a hand in his hair, gathering it up where it was falling over the edge of the couch. Olly didn’t shiver.
“It’s so long.”
“Playoff mullet.” He could say it now that they’d qualified.
Benji’s hand stilled. “You’re joking.”
Olly opened his eyes. Horror and amusement fought it out across Benji’s face. “I’m from Minnesota. It’s required.”
“Jesus Christ.” Benji hadn’t let go of his hair. He gave it a tug. “You’re going to look like such an asshole.”
Olly shut his eyes again and wrinkled his nose. “I look worse if I try to grow a beard.”
There was a long pause. Benji’s hand started moving again. Olly felt fingertips on his scalp, sliding over the contours of his skull. With his eyes closed and the last of the alcohol curling through his bloodstream, everything in the world upside down, it was easy to press up under Benji’s hand. It was big, and warm, and he could feel something hot uncoiling in his stomach.
He opened his eyes.
Benji was looking down at him with a puzzled arch in his eyebrows, like he wasn’t sure what he was seeing, like he wasn’t sure about his next move. Olly was used to Benji being a force of fucking nature.
