“What was your dad ribbing you about?” Crew asks as he turns on his shower and I step into the stall beside him.
“My mom wants me to go on dates instead of out with you goons after the games,” I tell him.
Crew groans. “Oh God, I’m sorry. I’m lucky because my mom was relieved when things ended with Anne-Marie and me. She never let me know it when we were together but she thought I was too young to settle down.”
“You were. You are.” Crew is one year older than me. He got married at nineteen for crying out loud. No wonder it didn’t last. “I don’t want to settle down until my late thirties, at the earliest, if at all.”
Mom might want me to settle down and fall in love and have something outside of hockey, but that sounds like a living nightmare to me. I just want to live, breathe, and be hockey. Inside and out. Sure, I have needs and urges and I meet them with very lovely, fun, willing bed buddies, which bugs Mom too. But it's archaic and misogynistic to think that women can't also want to have a primal, no-strings friend. I told her that last summer when she lectured me about Diana's potential feelings.
Diana Hutchens had no issue having a little naked fun with me. She had ambitions and priorities that were bigger than a relationship too. We got each other. We could also make each other come pretty easily. It was a great arrangement for a while. Diana never once hinted at making it more than it was. I was actually kind of bummed when her dream of moving to England panned out for her because the arrangement we had stopped. And because I never got the chance to smooth things over with Mallory Echolls, who also went to England.
Mal and Di and I were inseparable until they came to visit me in Los Angeles and Mal and I fucked around. It got awkward fast after that, even though Diana didn’t care. I never got to see them again because they haven’t been back to America since. Last I heard Diana was working in London for some social media marketing firm and was in an actual relationship with some guy. And Mallory was putting her early education degree to work as a nanny. I felt their absence last summer. I had emailed them both, but never heard back from either of them, so I made the best of it with a random hookup here and there.
“What are you thinking about. You look… weird,” Nash notes.
“Some old friends,” I mutter as I turn off the water and grab my towel. “You coming for wings or you gonna be your usual party-pooper self and go home and read a book or something ridiculous.”
“Reading is life, bro,” Nash says without a hint of mocking in his tone. Man, how is this guy a star forward like me? He’d be better suited to a job in a basement sorting files or, like, working at a library. If I was into setting up my relatives, I’d set him up with my cousin Mae, who we all call Mayhem. She reads all the time too and is as anti-social as him.
“Wings and beer and bonding with your teammates beats any book, bro,” I say and give him a friendly shove.
“Can we order teriyaki wings?”
“Yeah. Gross but yeah.”
Nash grins at me. “I’m in.”
* * *
Two hours later we've consumed our weight in various wing flavors. Crew is still sweating from the Inferno sauce on his. We're ordering our fourth draft beers and Collingwood, our goalie, is trying to beat Nash at pool. Two women at the bar have noticed us and aren't even being subtle about it. Crew and I are deciding which one of us will buy them a round first.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I've been getting a lot of group chat notifications with the family chat and the male cousins' WhatsApp group. Everyone is psyched about me inching up on my dad’s record. Also, the fact that if my team, the L.A. Quake, win just half the remaining games they clinch top spot in the division going into the playoffs. This is the shit that gets my family riled up and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I glance at the messages between pool rounds but never respond because it drives some of them nuts that I don’t and I love pushing familial buttons.
TENLEY: What are you too cool to talk to us now?
GRADY: You know my team is gonna make the playoffs too. You ain’t special.
THEO: He’s special. A special kind of egomaniac. FYI I’ll break your record next year kid.
I add a laughing face to Theo's comment. He's the second youngest cousin and he's been in the league for all of seven months. He's scored three goals, none of them shorties. I amsonot worried.
And as I'm waiting for his response, which will likely be a 'fuck you', which will send his mom, my Aunt Rose, into a rant about language, I get another message. This one is from some weird number I don't know. It's not even American. It doesn't have a three-digit area code. I figure it's some kind of spam or something but I open it anyway.
Tate? It’s Mallory.
I blink and re-read it three times. I was just thinking about her earlier tonight and she’s messaging me? My heart starts galloping because fuck, I’ve missed her. If she’s contacting me, then she’s no longer angry at me for that night in the hotel room, right?
Echolls.
Echolls? Does she think I wouldn’t remember her? That I have a long list of Mallorys in my life? I type back quickly.
‘I don’t need a last name, baby girl’ is what I type out but then I erase it. Too much, too soon. Mallory is like a skittish deer on a good day and this, after what we did, probably isn’t her feeling super comfortable or confident.
I don’t need your last name Mal. I’ve missed you! How are things? Is this a UK number?
Yeah. I’m in London.
