Lizzie cracked a smile. “Aren’t you too old to be bossed around by your mom?”
His mind immediately thought of Gretchen. “Definitely not,” Taylor scoffed. “It never ends.”
“What do you even do?” She asked out of curiosity a little later. The kids were given free time to just skate. “Like, what are defensemen supposed to do?”
“I kind of just slam people up against the wall if they get too close to my teammates,” Taylor told her casually. A sandy blondforward to be exact. “But officially, we defend the goal, so the other team doesn’t get close enough to hit the puck in.”
“Oh, so you don’t really score then?”
Taylor laughed smugly. “You’re looking at one of the world’s best scorers.”
During their lunch break, Fletcher brought some kids over with him and sat at Taylor’s table with his group.
“Fletch Armstrong!” One of Taylor’s kids beamed. “I can’t believe you got traded!”
Fletcher let out a chuckle. “I know, kid. It was pretty rough when I had to leave.”
“Are you gonna try to come back?” Another kid asked.
Fletcher shrugged. “I don’t know. I really like my new team. Seattle’s a fun place to live.”
“Doesn’t it rain all the time?” Lizzie asked him.
He scoffed. “Like it doesn’t rain here every day in the summer.” He pointed to Taylor. “This is my favorite teammate. Taylor Piers,” Fletcher told his kids.
“The rookie of the year!” A little boy shouted. “I saw you on TV.”
“He’s on TikTok too,” another girl, Hailey, said. She and Lizzie were kind of friends.
Lizzie looked at Hailey and gave her a knowing look before both giggling.
“What’s so funny?” Taylor asked. He pulled his phone out from his back pocket and quickly downloaded TikTok. While Fletcher kept on talking to the other kids, Taylor made an account and searched “Taylor Piers hockey.”
He expected to see the normal clips of himself that he would see on Instagram, but the first video that popped up was some edited video of him shirtless during one of his post-gameinterviews. It ran through different clips of him where he looked sweaty or would be extra defensive on the ice, and the song “Killshot” by Magdalena Bay played in the background.
He nudged Fletcher and handed him the phone, but Fletcher let out a little laugh. “Douglas sent that one to me like three weeks ago.”
“What the heck is this?” Taylor asked no one in particular.
“It’s an edit,” Lizzie told him. Taylor kept on scrolling through different ones.
“I’m not even playing hockey in most of these,” he said, sounding concerned. Lizzie and Hailey kept on giggling.
“Search my name,” Fletcher leaned over and told him.
Taylor quickly searched “Fletcher Armstrong hockey.” Fletcher laughed as Taylor played the first video.
“That one is one of my favorites,” he snorted.
“I need to ask Marina about these,” Taylor said, sounding horrified. Well, he did kind of like the ones of Fletcher. Especially the ones of Fletcher’s shirtless interviews. He just liked shirtless Fletcher in general.
* * *
The camp ended at three, which gave Taylor and Fletcher the rest of the day to themselves. They went to the locker room to take off their skates and clean them when Sean walked in. “How’d it go, son?” he asked Fletcher. Fletcher didn’t look up from his skate as he dried the blade off.
“It was fun. Like always,” he said plainly.
“How about you, Piers,” Sean looked over to Taylor. “How was it working with Clemson and Grainge?”
