But when I open my eyes, it’s Blake sitting there, grinning at me. Clearly my new neighbor has made it his mission in life to bond with me, because he yanks the buds out of my ears.
“Dude,” he groans. “I’m bored. Talk to me.”
I stifle a groan of my own. We haven’t even begun our two-hour flight. That old Nirvana song suddenly comes to mind, and I try to remember the lyrics…Here we are now, entertain us. That’s pretty much Blake Riley.I’m here, and it’s your duty to entertain me.
And yet I can’t bring myself to dislike the guy. He’s hilarious.
Since he’s obviously not going anywhere, I click off my iPod and indulge him. “You hear anything more about Hankersen? Whether or not they’re putting him on IR?” Hankersen is Chicago’s star forward, and so far this season he’s scored at least one goal per game. He’s the biggest threat to us on the ice, so if he’s not playing tonight, that will definitely up our chances of beating the undefeated Hawks.
“No news yet,” Blake answers. He swipes a finger over his phone and pulls up a sports app, holding the screen toward me. “I’ve been checking religiously.”
“Well, if he’s playing, hopefully our defense can find a way to shut him down.” It’s unlikely, but a man can dream.
“How’d your roomie do this weekend?”
The question startles me. “What?”
“J-Bomb,” Blake clarifies. “His junior team had a tournament or something, eh?”
“Oh right.” It still makes me incredibly uneasy discussing Jamie with my teammates. But now that Blake has actually hung out with us, it would be even more suspicious if I clam up every time Jamie’s name comes up. “They won one, lost two. The team’s not doing great this season,” I admit. And I know that bothers Jamie. A lot. Just because he chose to coach instead of going pro doesn’t mean he’s not competitive. It kills him that his boys aren’t seeing any success this season.
“Sucks,” Blake says sympathetically. “Especially when you’re the coach. All you can do is stand there on the bench and watch. If it were me, I’d be all, ‘Put me in the game, Coach! Me! I can win this for us!’”
I snicker. “That’s ’cause you’re a glory hog.” Blake even has a trademark celebration move every time he scores. It’s a cross between riding his stick like it’s a pony and driving a locomotive. Stupid as hell, but the crowd goes nuts for it.
“Ha. Says the guy who’s got millions of puck bunnies following him wherever he goes. Like a row of baby ducks.” Blake grins. “I’ll bet you’re getting twice the pussy I did in my rookie year.”
You’d lose that bet, sucker. Time to change the subject. I point at the newspaper rolled up in his hand. “What’s happening in the world?”
“The usual bullshit. Politicians being assholes. People shooting at each other.”
“We shoot at each other,” I point out. “And get paid well for it.” It’s a weird job, really.
He rolls his eyes in a move that should look stupid on a dude but somehow doesn’t. “We aren’tkilling people, Wesley.”
About three minutes ago we were praying for another athlete’s injury, but I don’t bother to point that out.
“And there’s a new velociraptor they discovered in North Dakota. Get this—it was seventeen feet tall, with claws and feathers.” He’s nodding aggressively. “That’s abadassraptor. Fucking scary, really. But even scarier is that new flu. Did you hear about it?” He gives an exaggerated shudder. “It comes fromsheep. I hate sheep.”
A bark of laughter escapes me. “Who hates sheep? They’re, like, woolly and harmless.”
“Sheep arenotharmless, bro. The sheep down the road from my grandparents’ farm?” He shakes his giant head as if recalling a crack den in his neighborhood. “Those fuckers weremean. And loud. When I was a kid, my parents were like, ‘Oh, Blakey, look at the little lambs!’ And those fuckers would come over to the fence and bleat in my face.” Blake opens his mouth and makes aMEH-EH-EHsound so loud that heads turn all over the plane.
“That sounds like it, uh, made a deep impression on you,” I say, trying hard not to laugh. “Where did your grandparents live, anyway?”
Blake makes a dismissive motion with his hand. “The West Bumfuck farmland well outside of Ottawa—”
West Bumfuck?Sounds like my kind of place.
“—Lotsa agriculture. Lotsa sheep. And now those fuckers are gonna kill us with the flu. Cheezus. Iknewthey were evil.”
“Uh-huh.” I give my iPod a longing glance. I could be relaxing to some tunes right now, but instead we’re reliving Blake’s childhood terrors. “There’s always some new flu scare, and it turns out to be nothing.” Though it amuses me to see a big dude like Blake wigging out. “I heard these new strains spread especially fast on airplanes.”
He gives me an evil glare. “Not funny. They found a case on Prince Edward Island.”
“That’s not close to here, though?” My Canadian geography is a little shaky. But I’m pretty sure I can’t catch the flu from someone who lives a thousand miles from Toronto.
“That shit travels, man. I mean—we could be infecting Chicago right now.”
