Page 50 of Delay of Game

Bee said,Sakari’s going to be there, but they wanted to know if you’d come and meet my parents too. And I could use all the moral support I can get.

Of course, he responded immediately,Anything for my liney.

He realized, slightly too late, that it would require beingon cameraagain, and sighed. Well, he was in for it now.

Merci, Cap. I owe you one.

No you don’t.

:-)Bee said, typing out the entire smiley.

Stop doing that. It’s creepy when you do it.

He could almost hear her laughing when she said,Got it.

Zach always had mixed feelings about going back to Montreal. It was weird, and bittersweet, and all of that other shit. It was like seeing an ex-friend-with-benefits and realizing that even though she was still super hot, you didn’t want to fuck her anymore.

The worst of the sting of the trade—thebetrayal—had faded, but it was a city that still held a lot of memories, good and bad. In a lot of ways, Zach had grown up there. One of his best bros in the entire world still lived there. But the further he was removed from it, and the more he thought about it, the less he liked the person he’d been there.

He remembered a conversation he’d had with Dad, when they’d gone home to Vancouver to play the Vanguard. Dad had looked at him sideways and said,whatever you were doing in Montreal—that wasn’t you. Zach had known then that itwashim, that part of who he was had been a fuckup. The rejection had felt a little like being slapped in the face. He’d insisted, weakly, that he’d been doing okay. Dad had looked at him, for a very long moment, almost sad.You were playing excellent fucking hockey, but I don’t think you were doing okay. You never sounded very happy when we talked to you. You always sounded exhausted.And since then, his parents had never stopped treating him like he was three steps away from a rehab facility.

He had weird, complicated feelings about Montreal, but he also felt things that weren’t complicated at all, like his need to show everyone on that fucking team exactly what they’d passed up on. Like his need to prove all of them wrong. That, at least, was understandable. That was, like, a pretty normal emotion to have, he felt. But it also made him fidgety as hell and nervous every time they played the Royal again.

Bro, Jammer texted him that morning, as the plane landed.U got an hour 2 get coffee?

always have time for u, homie

Meet me at Olympico? We can talk and walk.

yeah!

It was weird how he still remembered exactly how to get around the city, even though it had been over two years since he’d lived there. He still remembered where the house he’d planned to purchase was, but it didn’t hurt quite as badly knowing he would never live there. He was around the corner from Nate now, anyway, and that was way better than any white-painted reno in Westmount.

Jammer waited for him outside the café, wrapped up in a gray peacoat and a green-and-purple paisley scarf that Zach immediately tugged out of the coat’s neck.

“The fuck is this?”

“Diya bought it for me,” Jammer said. He rarely smiled, but the corner of his eyes crinkled a little. He knew it was hideous and didn’t care. Jammer looked good, in that sturdy Mack Truck way of his. Dead-eyed as always, but content.

“So you let your girlfriend dress you now, huh?” Zach demanded, as they went in to order. “What happened toI dress how I want and fuck the PR department?”

It was cold enough that a hot beverage would be welcome, and ordering coffee would at least distract him from thinking about the fact that Nate had also bought him a scarf as part of his Chanukah present last year and he was wearing it. Nate had better taste than Jammer’s girlfriend, though.

Jammer shrugged it off. “Makes her happy to see it, bro, it’s worth it.”

“I wanna hear about dating a poet,” Zach said, “in one sec.” He smiled brightly at the barista, and she smiled back, reflexively. “Un quatre espresso, s’il vous plaît.”

“Dude,”Jammer said disapprovingly, and sighed.

“It’s a game day!”

“You’re gonna be too wired to nap.”

Zach rolled his shoulders in a shrug and rolled his eyes to show Jammer just what he thought about that, paid for his and Jammer’s orders, and after the coffee was ready, took it outside. “So you look good, Jams. Shit going okay?”

“Yeah, man,” he said, blowing on the espresso to cool it. “We’ve been playing pretty good, and Diya’s... Man, I just really like her a whole fucking lot, you know?”

Zach, who knew that blowing on espresso was the coward’s way out, took a gulp and the top layer of skin on his tongue off. “Yeah? It’s not weird? She seems kinda...intense.”

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