Page 46 of Gravity
But we are always together. In Montréal, we arrive at the arena and depart in his truck. When the team travels, we sit together on the plane and on the team's bus. We hang out in each other's rooms, at the hotel bar, and in the lobby. The only time we're apart is when we fall asleep.
We're not roommates. Bryce and Slava have been roommates for three years, and I was paired with Janne when I joined the team. It sucks to be apart from him, but right now, it's what we need to do. No other teammate is allowed to spend the night with their significant other on the road. There are ways a team keeps itself linked, and one way is shared and equal treatment. Would resentment build if Bryce and I have what no one else gets?
So we say goodnight, reluctantly, and spend far too much time dawdling with the actual goodbye. I'll walk him to his room only for him to decide to walk me back to mine, and then we'll detour to the stairwell for another kiss. When we finally hit our separate beds, we text nonstop, as if we haven't just spent twenty of the past twenty-four hours at each other's sides. Eventually, when one of us can't fight our drooping eyelids any longer, he'll typefais de beaux rêves, mon coeur.And every morning, when I open my eyes, the first thing I see is a text from him:Bonjour, mon coeur.
“And!” MacKenzie is not done with his toasts. He half rises out of his chair, glass high over his head. “To Honey!” More cheers. MacKenzie's got that look in his eyes as he keeps going. “Bunny's Honey gives him those sweet, sweet goods every game!” His eyebrows bounce up and down as the whole table catcalls.
Everyone laughs as the chants of“Bun-ny, Hon-ey”begin. Bryce buries his face in his hands, but he's laughing. I toast for us both and down my beer, then sit back and throw my arm around Bryce's chair.
It's Bryce turn to toast the team, and he raises his soda as he cries, “To thebleu, blanc, et rouge!” Our team colors, and what each of us bleed if you cut us. We are Montréal, and we are the Étoiles.
Of course, that gets everyone going even louder than before. Silverware leaps off the table. Plates clatter. Two water glasses tip and tumble.
MacKenzie and Bryce raise toasts to Etienne, Valery, and Slava, and everyone starts reminiscing. We are a great team, but we're not perfect. We still slide out, lose the puck, and get knocked down by a well-timed check. But our moments when we're human are more special than any of our great shots on goal or our amazing saves, because we love to laugh about our whiffs and the missed passes and the trips over our own feet more than we love to gloat. We glorify and tease each other at the same time, and the real measure of our victory may be how we choose to be together, night after night after night.
The team stays in the dining room until the hotel's restaurant closes around us. It's after one a.m., and we have a flight to Vancouver we have to catch in eight hours. Everyone reluctantly parts to head to the rooms like we're not all going to have breakfast together in a few short hours in this very restaurant.
Bryce, as captain, always pays for dinner. The pre-game meal is team-provided, but any post game time is player time. When I was in Carolina, the Kitty Hawks would scatter like roaches running from a turned-on light after our losses. I don't know another team that chooses to spend as much free time together as the Étoiles. Of course, there is no other team as successful as ours, and we bring the proof of our brotherhood to the ice every game.
I wait with Bryce at the bar while he closes out the tab. The rest of the team says goodnight, and Valery and Etienne linger to chat for a few minutes. Then they leave, and Bryce and I, finally, are alone.
We grab a fresh beer each and head for the hotel's stairwell. Some nights we go to the lounge while other times we stay in the bar. Tonight, we want the little privacy we can steal together, and that means the stairs. We've figured out there's usually a hidden space in most hotels, between the first and second floors in the stairwell. We head there and sit on the landing at the turn.
Our beers are quickly abandoned. He holds my hand in both of his. I sag against the concrete wall and pull him to me, and we lean against each other as we talk softly. Every few minutes, I kiss his temple and he kisses my palm.
“I want to take you on a date,” I whisper. My lips move over his hairline and his temple. I can still taste his sweat and the frost left on his skin from the rink. I want to kiss my way down his body and follow those lines of salt and ice beneath his shirt and down, all the way down, until he's panting and clinging to me and crying my name. But a stairwell is not a romantic bedchamber, and he deserves more than cold concrete and a furtive grope.
He turns his face into my neck, kissing my pulse and along the line of my jaw. His lips move over my stubble. “Mmm, sounds wonderful,mon coeur.Alors, I don't think we'll have a night off for some time.”
We can't say it, because it's bad luck, but the math is there: we're in the playoffs. When the regular season ends in a few weeks, we're going to be chasing the Stanley Cup. Of course, the Étoiles were destined for the Cup at the start of this year, but our mid-season stumble put a lot of doubt into everyone's minds. Especially Bryce's.
Never mine.
The Stanley Cup playoffs are backbreaking. A game every other night, from the end of the regular season until the Cup is awarded. Two divisional rounds, then the Conference Finals, and then the Stanley Cup, all played in a best-of-seven-games format. That's a game of hockey every other night for sixty days, until you're either eliminated or you hoist the Cup over your head.
If we weren't playing on the same team, we would hardly see each other for the next three months.
“Mark your calendar for the end of June, then,” I tell him. “I'm taking you out. Mexican food and a piano bar.”
He straddles my lap and slides his hands through my hair. I tip my face up to his and hold him around the waist, drawing him as close as I can, until I feel his heartbeat against my chest.
“What if I want something before that?” he teases.
“I might be able to sneak you a cookie in the dressing room.”
He laughs, and the sound goes right down my spine and all the way into my bones, like warm and liquid gold.
His voice is a whisper when he speaks. “Will you be my date when we win Cup?”
It's taboo to speak about. It's absolutely taboo to make plans for the Cup, or talk about how or when you're going to win. Teams have died on the pyre of their dreams when they got too far ahead of their own mortality.
“I want to hoist the Cup over my head with you at my side.” His words are fragile, like he knows he's tempting fate, but he's doing it anyway. For me, because he wants to be with me.
I nod and press my lips to his. “I'll be right beside you.” I smile. “Mon capitane.”
One kiss turns into two, then three. The cold stairwell, the late hour, the game we played tonight and the game we're playing tomorrow all fade away. All that matters is him.
It's after two a.m. when we finally drag ourselves out of the stairwell. The hotel is silent. We're alone. I take his hand and walk him to the room he's sharing with Slava. It's a risk, but all our teammates are tucked into their beds. Faint snores bleed through the walls.
