Note to self: get Shiloh a pass from security for the next game. If he wants to come to another game, that is.
“What took you so long, anyway? I thought you’d be out a lot sooner,” he grumbles, like I was the one who decided he would stay and wait for me.
“Snack and hydration, mandatory after-game workout, stretching with the athletics team, showering, changing,” I list. “And sometimes I have media. Not tonight, though.”
“No interviews for your adoring fans?”
“Not after a loss.” Some goalies are open to media availability after any game regardless of whether the team wins or loses. I’m not one of them, and I’m infinitely lucky that Coach firmly believes goalies doing media after a loss is demoralizing. Thank fuck for that, because I saw Kyle Penton, the beat reporter for theBoston Daily, scurrying around the basement of the arena like the rat he is. All he ever wants to talk about is my friendship with Oakley anyway, and I don’t have the patience for his bullshit tonight.
Not when I have other, far more important people to focus on.
“And then you go home?”
“Sometimes. Mostly not. I tend to wander after a loss. Walk around and clear my head a bit. I usually find a place I can see the stars.” I pause for a moment, looking out the windshield of the Jeep at the streetlights that swallow the sky, gobbling up any starlight that would usually shine down. “Things feel a lot less shitty when I’m beneath the open sky. Reminds me of back home, I guess.”
“Odd.”
“Goalie,” I reply with a small laugh.
“So you’re gonna go stand out in the cold for some stars?” he asks, sounding very unimpressed at the thought.
“Not tonight,” I say. “We leave early tomorrow morning for a game in Springfield. Back-to-back home and away games.” I hate the idea of rolling into Springfield fresh off the loss tonight, but I know I won’t be playing tomorrow. Gilly will definitely get the nod over me.
“You’re leaving?”
“Just for the day, really. We’ll get back early Sunday morning. Like two a.m.”
Shiloh is silent, looking out of the windshield as I stare at the profile of his face in the streetlights streaming down from overhead. It catches on the curve of his nose, the dip of his lips, and the smooth skin of his cheekbones. He’s beautiful here in this moment, though I don’t say it out loud.
I learned early on to keep thoughts like that hidden. Being anything other than straight doesn’t exactly go with a pro-hockey career, and no amount of rainbow stick tape can break down those walls. At least not yet, anyway. Queer professional hockey players exist, Oakley and I are here after all, but we know better than to try and exist out loud in this league.
Not yet, anyway, which makes thoughts like how attractive Shiloh is here in the dim streetlight dangerous.
“Can I give you a ride home?” I ask, needing to break this silence somehow before I do something scary like tell him how pretty he is.
“I can walk.”
“It’s cold out. Let me drive you.” I put the Jeep into gear but keep my foot on the brake. If he really wants to walk, I’m not going to force him to accept a ride from me, but he doesn’t reach for the door. Eventually he nods once.
“To the edge of campus,” he concedes.
“Boston Art and Design?” I guess, knowing that he studies art. Or at least he said he did at one point. I think.
He shakes his head, though. “Mass U.”
Interesting. Not what I expected, but then again nothing about Shiloh is to be expected. “Mass U campus it is.”
He nods again, leaning back in his seat and doing up his seatbelt as I take my foot off the brake and head out of the parking lot. Massachusetts University is a fair distance from the arena, and as we drive through the night, I count the blocks he would have had to walk to get home. It’s too many, that’s for sure. He’d have frozen by the time he got there.
“Your hat is ugly,” he blurts out, as I turn off the main road and head down a side street that leads to the campus residences.
“My hat?”
“The thing you wear on the ice. Your helmet? I don’t know, but it’s fucking hideous.”
I snort a surprised laugh. “My mask.”
“Whatever you want to call it. That ugly green snake that looks like it was painted by a toddler.”
