Never being able to read the situation, Brendan laughs and then throws me under the bus even more.
“Oh, he still wears those socks. It’s gotten to the point where he refuses to wash them. It’s fucking disgusting.”
I turn and shove my teammate, causing him to trip over the snow bank next to the sidewalk, falling onto his ass.
He jumps up and dusts the snow off his pants. “Dick,” he mutters under his breath.
Liv laughs and then bumps her shoulder against Charlie’s. “We should probably get going. The bus will be here soon to transport us to the arena. If we’re late, Coach will have our necks.”
Charlie nods and then looks back to me and my team. “It was good seeing you guys. Maybe we’ll see you at the rink after our game?”
I may be imagining it, but I swear Charlie’s words are laced in hope.
“Yeah, maybe,” I respond nonchalantly. But the thought of watching her play and waiting for her after the game is exactly what I plan on doing tonight.
“You’ll have to let us know how your living quarters are,” Liv remarks. “There’s no way they can be worse than ours.”
We wish the girls good luck at their game and then continue our walk through the Village.
Wyatt and Zack walk ahead, while Brendan hangs back to walk next to me. After a few minutes of walking, simply taking in the incredible scene around us, Brendan breaks the silence.
“Something you wanna tell me about your best friend’s little sister?”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
After dodging all of Brendan’s questions about Charlie, we finally made it to where we’ll be staying during our time in Sweden. The girls weren’t exaggerating when they told us how bad the living quarters were. They were, however, wrong when they said our space couldn’t be worse than theirs.
The beds are a complete joke. My bed is the size of a five-year-old’s and there aren’t any sheets or blankets on it. I have yet to find any, actually. I’m assuming they had to make the beds small so they could shove four of us in the same room. That’s right. Four grown ass men sharing a room the size of a closet.
The good news is, we’re sharing our quarters with other US Olympians instead of our competitors. But that’s about all I got as far as positives.
And then there’s the stench hanging in the air.
“What the fuck is that smell?” Wyatt asks, shoving his shirt over his nose.
“There is no way I’m getting any sleep in here.” Brendan plops down on his ‘bed’ and it breaks apart, causing him to fall into a crack in the middle.
I run my hand through my hair and do a slow spin, tripping over Zack’s feet in the process. There is no room to even breathe in here.
“We’re not staying here.”
That’s all I say. My three teammates don’t even question it. They all nod in agreement.
We’ve barely unpacked, but we spend the next few minutes throwing everything we took out, back into our suitcases.
All of a sudden, there’s a loud “bang” against the wall followed by a high pitched scream.
“What the hell?”
A girl starts moaning the name Sebastian over and over. The look of horror on Zack’s face is priceless. He’s the youngest guy on the team, and although I’d never ask him because it’s none of my fucking business, I’m pretty sure he’s still a virgin.
In a panic, Zack puts his headphones on and closes his eyes in an attempt to block out the sextra-curricular activities happening in the room next to us.
Wyatt, on the other hand, finds this whole situation amusing. He laughs and throws a thumb over his shoulder toward the wall where the banging has continued. “You think that’s the same Sebastian the girls heard?”
The thought of Charlie in these living conditions has me white-knuckling the handle of my suitcase.
“Brendan, can you call Jimmy and tell him we’re going to try and find somewhere else to stay? Maybe he has some ideas. Hotel, bed and breakfast, I don’t really care at this point. Anywhere but this shithole. I’ll start calling around to places, too.”
