Page 6 of Delay of Game

“Sure. I’ll...catch you then.” And she vaulted herself over the boards onto the ice.

Zach turned to Singer, who stared back at him, all serious business, no smiles. His head was very close to Zach’s, leaning in. Zach realized too late that he had folded his arms extremely defensively, like Singer was gonna start lecturing him. For all Zach knew, he was.

“Look,” Zach said, trying to head it off. “I know what you’re probably thinking, but I promise you, I’m not going to cause any trouble for the team. I learned my lesson. All business now. I’m gonna stay away from alcohol and drugs for like, months, at least, you know...you don’t have to keep an eye on me or anything.”

“That’s not why I wanted to talk to you,” Singer said, taken aback. For such a big guy, he almost seemed to unconsciously try to make himself smaller, his shoulders hunched over. “I just wanted to make sure you were settling into the city okay, see if you needed anything?”

“I’m good.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Also, if anyone gives you a hard time about, uh, everything that happened, I just wanted you to know that I’m, uh, in your corner, and I’ll put a stop to it. It’s one thing to chirp, but that should, uh, be off-limits. I think.”

Zach stared at him, trying to see if Singer was fucking with him, but his face was almost painfully earnest. Earnestness shone out of every all-American pore, shone out of his deep blue eyes and extremely white, even teeth. Zach couldn’t even bring himself to hate the guy, because he was just so. Fucking. Earnest. It was impossible to be a dick in the face of all of that, and something in Zach surrendered before he’d even really tried to enter the battle.

“Uh, yeah, bro. Thanks. I got it, but thanks.”

“Okay,” Singer said, and clapped him on the shoulder. “See you out on the ice, huh?”

“Yeah,” Zach said, and watched him skate away.

II. SUMMER

Chapter One

July

Zachary Reed had a lot of obsessive thoughts about the captain of his hockey team, but one of the few G-rated ones was:I need to win Nate a Cup.

It was probably his least fun obsessive thought, but also the one he had the most. Or almost the most. It had come to him in his second season with the Cons and hadn’t gone away.

If anything it had actually gotten worse the longer he knew Nate Singer.

He’d ended up thinking about it until it festered, and now here he was in Tulum, drunk off his ass at the pool of an all-inclusive resort with four of his tier one bros and a bunch of extremely hot strangers wearing next to nothing, and all he could think was:I need to win Nate a Cup, how am I gonna win Nate a Cup, what will Nate’s face look like when I win him a Cup?

He wondered how it would feel to know that Nate knew that Zach had done it forhim.

Like: Nate wanted to win, obviously. You didn’t wear a C for a major league hockey team by not caring about winning. But he was noble about it. He had all kinds of ideas about theteam’slegacy and what the city deserved. Zach just wanted to make his best bro cry tears of joy, no matter how many people he had to flatten against the boards on the way.

Zach just wanted to give Nate something no one had ever given him before.

He shouldn’t be thinking about this.

He was on vacation with the tier one bros, and vacation time with those dudes was all about drinking and dancing really badly and fucking their way through wherever they happened to be. Occasionally, in the past, hooking up with Jammer, who was at the very top tier of tier one bros. Blowing off steam andnotthinking about hockey for at least a week or two and then crawling, feeling like the living dead, back to the airport to return to real life and training. Refreshed, recharged, whatever happened there stayed there.

Jammer handed him a Modelo Negra. “Dude...you’ve got that look on your face.”

“I’mthinking.”

“Since when do you do that?”

Zach didn’t bother answering him. The pool was saltwater, painted so that the water looked like the crystal blue of the ocean when the light reflected through it. A deeply tanned girl in a barely-there string bikini jumped into the pool and emerged, glistening, to the surface. Jammer watched her intently. As she turned and flipped her hair, spraying droplets everywhere, she saw them looking and smiled; Jammer whistled. He still played for the Royal and was one of the few dudes from the team that Zach still saw on a regular basis. He was a connoisseur of women of all sorts, but he smiled a little ruefully now after looking from the woman to Zach and back.

“She’s intoyou, bro.”

Zach waved him away. It wasn’t like hot people being into him was anything unusual. Generally, he was usually pretty enthusiastic about that. But today, it was just a distraction. “I told you, dude, I’m thinking. I’ve gotta like... I’ve gotta win Nate a Cup, you know? I’ve gotta justdo it, man.”

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