Page 3 of Overtime Goal
“Did not.”
“You looked before you threw.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t lookduringthe throw. That’s what counts.”
He lifted a brow and glanced away. After a moment, he asked, “You planning to shower here?”
Before I could answer, he went back to his phone like he didn’t care what I was going to do.Shit.We were friends, and we were better than this.
Part of me wished he’d go ahead and get mad. He could yell, call me a selfish prick, or even tell me to fuck off. At least then I’d know where I stood. This quiet shit felt like we were both bleeding to death, and there was nothing I could do to staunch the flow.
We’d become the unlikeliest of friends over the four years since I got to Buffalo. On paper, it made no sense. Logan was twelve years older, quiet where I was loud, and calm where I was chaos. Yet somehow, it worked. Steady in a way I’d never been, he knew when to talk, when to listen, and when to do nothing and let me fall apart without making it weird. He was a rock, and that meant more than I’d ever admit.
When I first hit the league, I was a mess. I dealt with it horribly, all swagger and bad decisions, and it’s a wonder I didn’t get myself into trouble. There was still a lot of that in me, something I’d proved the night before at Mendoza’s. One of the best things about Logan was that I didn’t have to keep up an act. He accepted me for who I was, and I’d gotten used to having him in my corner.
I snuck a glance at him, and nothing had changed. He was still staring at his phone, with his lips pressed together like he was either holding something back or trying not to explode. Maybe both.
Hell, I couldn’t stop thinking about it either. If we didn’t talk soon, the silence would turn our friendship into dust. Since I wasthe one who’d made the subject untouchable, it was on me to find a way back.
I stared out the window at the hazy Dallas skyline. Reunion Tower blinked in the distance while I tried to figure out how to start a conversation with Logan. I’d promised myself to bring it up last night, but when we got back to the hotel, he said he was tired and went to bed. A few hours later, I appeared at his door after having a nightmare. It didn’t seem like the best time to dig into something that might blow up in my face.
I don’t know how long I stared out the window, but when I looked at Logan again, he’d put his phone down. He was watching me, drumming his fingers on his thigh.
“You ever think about that night in LA?” I asked before I could lose my nerve.
He froze, and the temperature dropped from comfortably warm to arctic chill. “You said we weren’t going to talk about that.”
“Yeah. I was being dramatic.”
He didn’t move as the silence between us grew taut. “Being dramatic?” he finally asked.
I shrugged. “We need to talk, Logan.”
His expression didn’t change, but I’d seen enough storms to know when lightning was about to strike.
He shifted in his chair. “Why are you asking about this now?”
Because I hadn’t stopped thinking about it. Because he was sitting there in his ratty gray sweatpants and Warriors T-shirt with worry lines covering his face. Because I’d helped put those lines there, along with the vacant stare I’d never seen before the team went to LA.
“I don’t know.” It wasn’t exactly true, but there was no simple answer.
“You don’t know,” he echoed, still watching me.
“Maybe I was hoping?—”
“The hell, you were being dramatic.” No heat, no judgment. It was only a clean, sharp sentence with no wiggle room. He stood and glared at me. “I’m hitting the shower. See you on the bus.”
The bathroom door clicked shut, leaving me with a clenched stomach and a plea stuck in my throat. I wished I’d stopped him and made him talk, but I was more afraid of losing him than staying quiet. Since I couldn’t force him to open up, I had to figure out a way to make him want to talk to me.
2/
logan
I hurriedoff the plane as soon as we landed in Buffalo. Normally, I would have waited for Riley at the bottom of the airstairs, but not this time. After five days on the road, which meant five days with him, I needed space. In a stroke of luck, my luggage was the first on the carousel. Riley and Brody walked in as I headed for the exit, and I lifted a hand and called, “See you later.”
Fortunately, we had the next day off, which meant I got a little breathing room before Thursday morning’s skate. After that, things would pick up with a home game against Montreal Thursday evening, and then back on the road Friday.
The downtime before then was a godsend. I needed to unravel where things stood with Riley and see if I could separate our friendship from everything else. We had to fix things between us because pretending nothing had changed was hurting us both.
