Page 3 of Delay of Game

“Watch me.”

“Sure, dude. I’m gonna order us some pizza, see you downstairs.”

Just to spite him, Zach stayed in the shower for another hour, until the water was freezing cold andhewas freezing cold. His fingers were all pruny. So was his ass, probably. He tried to crane around to look at it, because when else would you see what you’d look like as an old man, but his head hurt too much, so he gave up and lay back down on the tiles.

Life was so unfair.

Hey,Nate had texted,this is Nate Singer, from the Cons. Just wanted to welcome you to the team and let you know that whatever happened in Montreal, it doesn’t matter here.

It had been an olive branch of sorts, but Reed hadn’t responded. Nate knew he shouldn’t worry about it, but the sick feeling anchored firmly in the pit of his stomach. Had he phrased it badly? Offended Reed?

It wasn’t every day that guys got traded in that kind of a situation, and the first thing he’d felt was sympathy. It probably wasn’t easy to go from a Cup championship team to the worst team in the league, and under those circumstances. He tried not to think about it, but he was already worrying about training camp, so it was just one more thing to add to the list.

His fiancée, Rachel, was looking at her phone as she ate the dinner he’d made them. Probably scrolling through work emails; she had the kind of job where you were always on call even when you weren’t, supply chain management for one of the big pharmaceutical companies down at the Navy Yard. He was proud of her, because she was brilliant, and if he sometimes wished she had a little more time for him during the summer, he couldn’t judge because he was never around during the rest of the year.

She looked up midbite and saw him watching her. “What’s wrong?”

“Just thinking about training camp. We don’t have a captain and there are so many rookies, and now Reed...”

“You’re going to be the captain,” Rach said, looking back down at her phone.

“Rach, we’ve been through this, and I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. You’re the backbone of this team. You’ve been here the longest, through all the personnel changes. You’re still young, so you can be a franchise face if Cote somehow manages to pull this team the fuck around. You’re going to be it, Nate.”

He looked down at his plate. He didn’t want to be it. He really hoped she wasn’t right, even though she usually was. Captain was a lot of responsibility, and he didn’t think he was ready for that. Didn’t think he’d ever be ready for it. You thought of the captains as the stars, the talent, and he had never been that. Sure, he worked hard, and he played his heart out every night, no one could deny that. But there was a reason the Cons had taken him in the fifth round, and it wasn’t because he was captain material.

“Ugh,stopit.”

“Stop what?”

“You’re thinking about how you don’t deserve it. Well, you know what, Nate? You do, and if they don’tmakeyou captain, you should talk to your agent and see what your options are looking like for next year. I know you have a few seasons left on your contract, but you could always demand a trade.”

“Rach! I couldn’t—even if I wanted to be captain, I could never leave Philly.”

Rach’s unreadable face was doing things. A twitch of her mouth and a tightening of her jaw. “I know. But maybe you should.” She got up from the table abruptly and stalked over to the sink.

No one could do angry dishes like Rach, Nate thought, sad and fond.

Nate went out onto the roof deck after Rach went to bed, lay on his back on one of the reclining chairs, and stared up at the sky. You could barely see the Summer Triangle with all of the lights, but locating it made him feel better, somehow.

His phone buzzed.

Reed had responded,Thanks.

That wasn’t much better than no response, and Nate sighed. He really, really hoped he wasn’t given the captaincy.

Altair, Deneb, Vega, he repeated to himself, eyes tracking the stars in the sky as he did, until he felt less upset, if not necessarily less anxious.

“All I have to do is prove them wrong, right? That’s the best revenge, right?”

“I’m not really sure if you should be looking at it asrevenge, bro,” Jammer said, because he was annoyingly reasonable these days.

“I absolutely should!”

“You’re only gonna sabotage yourself if you’re doing it to make these assholes sorry,” Jammer said, and exhaled a cloud of smoke. He passed the bong to Zach. “You gotta do it for therightreasons, man. You gotta do it foryou.”

Zach inhaled, let it sit in his lungs, savoring the taste. He exhaled again, coughing a little. Jammer always had the best stuff. “When did you turn into a fucking philosopher, man?”

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