Season's Change Page 11

  * * *

  Benji followed Olly and Poiro back to their room, saying he was too wired after the game to go to bed. So, whatever, they were going to watch a movie. It was late, but Olly wasn’t going to be dropping off anytime soon.

  Olly had seen what Benji had done with his dad, the way he’d deftly shouldered him out of the conversation. How he’d magicked Poiro up out of nowhere. And maybe he should be uncomfortable that Benji saw him as someone to maneuver, like he was a Border collie and Olly was a particularly needy sheep; but mostly he felt grateful.

  Maybe he could stick with that. He couldn’t lie to himself about his reflexive dread the second he’d seen Dad’s eyebrows narrow, the way they always did when he was about to start picking Olly’s game apart. Or in other words, offer him useful feedback, since didn’t he care about playing better?

  Olly squished himself down in bed, trying to resist pulling the covers over his face.

  “What are you worrying about?” Benji asked, flopping down next to him before Olly could start hoping he’d throw himself at Poiro instead.

  “Nothing.”

  “You are, bud. You always get a little line right...there.” Benji pressed a fingertip into the skin between his eyebrows.

  “You do,” Poiro yelled from the bathroom. “I can’t even see you and I know exactly what he’s talking about.”

  “Screw you both.”

  “Shut up, you love us.” Benji dragged Olly into his chest and gave his rib cage a squeeze. It hurt like shit and he couldn’t choke down a little hiss, which he followed with a thump to the side of Benji’s idiot head. “Sorry, sorry!”

  Poiro reappeared from the bathroom to chuck a jar of something at the two of them. Only the professional-athlete reflexes saved Olly from taking it to the face. “Put this on, Oliver. Your husband can get your back.”

  “I don’t need whatever the fuck that is.”

  Benji claimed the jar and made a pleased noise at what he was reading on the ingredients list. Which probably meant it was like, sage smudge and the sweat of the Buddha. With no dairy, because Tom Brady. “Ols, take your shirt off.”

  “I can get a massage tomorrow.” Olly didn’t like getting manhandled by the massage therapists and trainers, but it was a fact of life for an athlete.

  “Do you want to fuck up against Winnipeg because you’re too stiff to move?”

  “I’ll probably fuck up anywhmmmph.” Olly trailed off, eyebrows shooting up in offense: Benji had plastered a big, warm palm over his mouth. While they were in his bed, also, in case anyone had managed to forget that. Olly most certainly had not.

  “Shut up, bud.” Benji dragged down the blankets and grabbed for the hem of Olly’s shirt. And they were not wrestling while Benji tried to undress him: they just. Were not. “I’ll get Poiro to hold you down,” he threatened.

  The fucker would, too. He had his determined little serious face on, like he was confronting a recalcitrant salad dressing recipe or the league points leader Ryan Stewart.

  “Fine,” Olly grumbled. He wriggled back on top of the blankets. “Put the fucking movie on first.”

  Benji and Poiro agreed on something with fast cars, lots of explosions, and no discernable plot. While they were fucking with the remote, Olly tugged his shirt off and rested his head on his crossed forearms. Benji was not getting access to the front of his body, that was for damned sure.

  His eyes were closed, so he jumped a little when Benji dropped a dot of the cream between his shoulder blades. It felt like Icy Hot on steroids: a shivery, tingling burn. It smelled spicy in the neutral hotel air.

  Olly twitched again when Benji’s hand settled on his back. His touch was clinical, though; no different than what Olly would have gotten from one of the trainers.

  Except that it was. Olly couldn’t forget that it was Benji’s hand smoothing down the back of his ribs, Benji avoiding the obvious bruises, Benji making a displeased noise when he hit a spot on Olly’s hip that made him flinch.

  “You’re so tense,” Benji murmured from behind him. “Relax.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut tighter, then tensed his shoulders and core before mindfully releasing them. Benji dug his thumbs into Olly’s traps, and Olly felt something give way in his neck. He was aware from a distance that he was going all boneless and sleepy, even with the freezing burn tracking the wake of Benji’s fingers. The dialogue from the movie was hypnotically bad, and for once Poiro was keeping his mouth shut; even the punctuation of all the gunfire wasn’t enough to wake him back up, as long as Benji’s big, warm hands kept smoothing up and down his skin.

  * * *

  He halfway woke up while the closing credits were rolling. The room was dark, other than the glow of the TV. Benji was leaning up against the headboard, one of his palms still resting on Olly’s shoulder. Poiro had rolled himself up in his blankets on the other bed. The pain was further away than it had been before.

  Olly heard himself make an interrogative noise in the back of his throat.

  “Go back to sleep,” Benji told him, fingers tightening slightly.

  To his distant surprise, Olly did.

  * * *

  He woke up confused again: the alarm was unfamiliar, and there was something weighing down his shoulders.

  It moved, trailing fingers across the naked skin of his back, and the alarm cut off. Olly recognized the disgruntled growl that was Poiro’s first step toward the land of the living. He turned his head, and there was Benji. He had a terrible case of bedhead, uneven dark stubble lined his jaw, and he was swallowing a yawn as he dropped his phone back onto Olly’s nightstand. He smelled like his ridiculous organic laundry detergent—clean cotton and a hint of pine—and sleep.

  “Morning, sunshines,” he said, because he was exactly the kind of fucker who said things like that. He smiled down at Olly with an uncomplicated, green-eyed sweetness that made him want to hide under the sheets forever. “Sorry I fell asleep.”

  Olly felt foggy; his brain couldn’t catch on the right edges of things. He wasn’t great at mornings to begin with, and today all he wanted to do was bury himself under the blankets and let the drag of exhaustion pull him back under. He’d been dreaming something nice, he thought.

  “You’re such a mess in the morning.” Olly responded with a displeased noise, but he was too comfortable to retaliate.

  He’d slept. The whole night, he realized.

  He tried to push himself up—breakfast with his family, and his dad was on team “if you’re not five minutes early, you’re late”—but froze halfway there, swallowing down what might have been a moan of pain if he’d let it out.

  He’d been playing hockey since he was four years old. Olly was no stranger to pain. He’d had a concussion, bad enough that he couldn’t hide it from the D-League trainers; he’d played that whole season with cracked ribs back in high school; he’d broken his collarbone crashing his mountain bike in middle school; he’d had his MCL saga in Colorado. But he’d never had an entire NAHA team try to wipe the ice with his ass before.

  “Yeah, imagine how much worse this would have been without a massage last night.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “’Course you’re fine, you bullheaded idiot.” Benji grabbed his arm and towed him up, which made every part of his body howl in protest. But he was vertical.

  “Shut the fuck up, you fucking lovebirds,” Poiro complained. “I don’t want to hear your fucking pillow talk.”

  Benji launched himself onto Poiro’s bed for an extremely full-contact hug/snuggle. Which turned out to be one of the more eventful ways to start a morning.

  All the yelling and crashing resulted in Dewitt hammering on their door five minutes later. Olly was dressed by then—he didn’t want to keep looking at the amount of his torso that was a nice bruise-purple—with a toothbrush hanging out of his mouth when he opened the door. Growing
up with three balls-to-the-wall brothers, he had advanced skills in ignoring chaos he didn’t want to get involved in.

  “I knew it wasn’t you,” Dewitt told him, before shoving into the room and grabbing Poiro by the scruff of his neck. Benji sprawled out on the bed, grinning up at them. “You’re worse than my damned nine-year-olds. Cut it the fuck out, you chuckleheads. I don’t even want to know why Bowie’s in here.”

  “Sorry, Dewey,” Benji singsonged, totally unrepentant. “We were watching a movie and I fell asleep.”

  “I’m not fucking sorry,” Poiro spat. “Why isn’t he in trouble for missing curfew?”

  Dewey scraped his fingers over his salt-and-pepper stubble, looking exhausted. “Well, it looks like Benji was peacefully sleeping in a team-assigned room, instead of falling out of a club on his ass. So maybe start there.”

  Poiro had some thoughts about that. Loud thoughts. Louder thoughts than anyone should have at this time of the morning. Olly shook his head, left them to it, and retreated into the bathroom.

  * * *

  They made it to the diner five minutes early. Olly tried not to notice how tidily Benji herded him into the chair the farthest away from his father. Dad looked...displeased. Olly tried to summon some annoyance at Benji sheep-dogging him again, but couldn’t find it. Sami looked amused, anyway, eyes flicking from Benji to Dad and back.

  The building stare-down was interrupted by Joey and his wife Liz’s arrival. “Sorry we’re late,” Liz said, like she didn’t give a fuck at all. She wasn’t intimidated by Dad, or anything that Olly had ever seen her encounter.

  Dad started grilling Benji about his career, in a very Midwestern politeness-as-a-tactical-weapon way. Which was total bullshit, because he would have memorized it all the second he found out they were living together. Benji smiled back and acted like the NHTC, a U18 silver medal, winning the Frozen Four, and being voted D-League Defenseman of the Year were absolutely meaningless, while working every single one of them into the conversation. His résumé was a hell of a lot more impressive than Olly’s had been at twenty-one, that was for sure.

  Olly’s phone buzzed. He checked it under the table.

  Your boy is driving Johann BONKERS, said a text from Liz. The other sisters-in-law called him Dad. She refused.

  If we got them drunk we could sell tickets at Dad’s local, answered Joey.

  Can we invite him to Christmas? Sami asked. Levi will be so sad he missed this.

  Olly blinked at his brothers. Joey gave him a “what?” expression, but Olly had no idea that they did shit like talk smack about Dad in group texts. It wasn’t happening in the main one for their family, so that might mean they had another one, didn’t it? MN-only, or not-Olly-only.

  Benji, meanwhile, had gone all wide-eyed and innocent-looking—a fucking lie—and started expounding on how yoga, meditation, and therapy were crucial to his route to the NAHA. It looked like a vein was about to pop out on Dad’s forehead.

  Sami buried a snort into his cup of coffee. Mom was still smiling at Benji like he was the second coming, before turning to Olly to ask him about life in DC.

  After breakfast, Olly’s mom gave him a hug; Sami and Joey slapped him on the back and told him to tear it up in Colorado.

  “Stay tough out there,” his dad said, squeezing Olly around the shoulders. He smelled the same as he always did: machine oil, wood shavings. Olly’s breakfast lurched in his stomach.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Eagles started going in the right direction as November rolled into December. Their offense was...okay, it was not the best. Dewitt and Lukesy were never going to play nicely on a line. Benji didn’t want to jinx it by saying it out loud, but Olly seemed to be putting more minutes on the second line with Lukesy and Bevvo by the game.

  Olly had a scar on his lip, though, from the elbow he’d gotten in Minnesota. It made Benji want to go get himself another game misconduct for beating Crowder’s face in. They didn’t host the Wolves until March, and Benji sincerely hoped that Crowder would leave him a space on his fucking dance card.

  They had a long stretch in DC after the road trip, though, and Benji was ready to chill for a minute. These dudes were big as hell, and they hit hard, so Benji had to hit them harder. He wasn’t injured, but his body needed to not slam into 200-pound guys flying full tilt down the ice for a few days.

  “Are we decorating for Christmas?” Olly asked. He was on the couch, glaring at ESPN anchors while Benji cleaned up the kitchen after lunch. Benji knew enough about football to fumble through locker-room conversations; Olly really gave a shit, and had gotten into more than one argument with Bevvo about it. Too bad the Vikings were dead last in whatever conference they played in.

  “You want to?”

  Olly mumbled something about needing a distraction from the Vikings offensive line, which was probably a yes.

  Benji bounced over to the couch and threw himself down. His head ended up in the vicinity of Olly’s lap. “I’ve never had my own Christmas tree.”

  “I thought you’d be, I don’t know, Elf. Spirit of the holidays.”

  Benji shrugged against the couch cushion, shoulders pressing into the side of Olly’s leg. Olly squirmed a little bit but didn’t shove him off. Was that progress? Toward what, Benji couldn’t say. “Dunno, bud. It was never really a thing for us, growing up. No money.”

  “We don’t have to go crazy or anything.”

  “I like crazy.” Benji smiled up at him. Olly smiled back, like he hadn’t been able to tell his face to stop in time. He had a nice smile, and he’d been letting it out more recently. He still needed to go to therapy, but some of the weight had lifted off his shoulders after Minnesota: he hadn’t cried in any of their hotel-gym yoga sessions, and as far as Benji could tell, he’d only thrown up before a couple of games. Benji had crashed in his and Poiro’s room a few more times, and Olly had slept, too. The dark circles under his eyes were looking less acute.

  Olly pulled out his phone to look up tree farms. Benji’s suggestion that they get a plastic one was met with blue-eyed disgust. Benji had a lot of ground to make up on the Christmas front: his billet fam in Michigan was Jewish, and the Deveraux always went to LA to visit Andre. And they had a fake tree, so apparently it didn’t count.

  He shut his eyes and got more comfortable, Olly muttering to himself about trees. It was soothing, at least until Olly shoved him off his lap. “Let’s get a Christmas tree, bud.”

  They took Benji’s truck, which he had not been giving enough love recently. Olly directed him out of the clusterfuck of Northern Virginia suburbs, and after a minimal number of backups—it was like 2 pm on a Monday, to be clear, why was anyone else on the damned road—they were cruising down a highway out past Dulles, radio tuned to Christmas music. The roads narrowed and farms replaced subdivisions. The vertebral ridge of the Blue Ridge Mountains drifted closer, until they were far enough into the foothills that he couldn’t see the mountains themselves at all.

  “Pretty,” Benji said, after the companionable silence had been dragging on a little too long. It reminded him of Central Pennsylvania, only less desperate-looking. Lots of white fences and horses wearing fancy plaid coats. Every driveway had a sign with an estate name.

  Olly made a quiet noise of agreement. He was looking out the window, at one of the first really cold days they’d gotten in Virginia. That Minnesota fucker was still only wearing a jacket, though, even if his hair was spilling out of a gray beanie. Benji was in an Eagles puffer coat. He did not fuck with freezing his ass off.

  There were only a couple of other trucks in the field, behind a cheerful Snickersville Turnpike Tree Farm sign painted with a cartoon Christmas tree.

  “We should put this on Instagram,” Olly told him. As promised, he’d been working on Benji’s social media game. So far they’d made his account public and tripled his number of posts, mostly with game photos and
a few funny pictures from team dinners. A lot of them were of Olly looking some variation on exasperated with him. But as promised, he’d helped with the captions.

  They snapped a selfie, then headed for a red-painted shack. A fat chocolate lab sprawled on the ground, thumping her tail on the winter grass. Benji squooshed her face and rubbed her tummy, while Olly and a guy wearing camo took a deep dive into the pros and cons of firs versus spruces.

  Olly was such a nerd. If there was one fucker in the world who’d have an opinion about whatever the fuck a noble fir was, it was him.

  “Can I have the dog?” Benji asked, peeling himself up off the ground. The lab followed, panting happily as he propped his arm on Olly’s shoulder.

  “Make sure she doesn’t jump in your truck,” camo dude said. “One family got fifteen minutes down the road before they noticed her.”

  “I would be super-sad about that.” He winked. “Maybe someone would let me get a dog. If it was an accident.”

  “We talked about that like two times,” Olly said, pushing him off. “Also we can’t get a dog.”

  Camo was flicking his eyes between them. “Well,” he said eventually, “whatever works for you folks.”

  He handed Olly an orange-handled saw and Benji a map with the types of trees, and off they went.

  Olly had gone all strange and tense again, though. This was his little adventure, but he’d clammed up as soon as they’d left the shack, the lab still waddling along behind them. Benji was totally stealing her if she could manage to get her chub up into the back of the truck.

  The map told him they were in a field with Leyland Cypresses. Benji didn’t bother asking the OG Christmas tree connoisseur if any of them were coming home with them. Even Benji could see that these fucks were inferior. His first Christmas tree was not going to look like landscaping from a cheap subdivision.