Page 25 of Between the Pipes

“Shit.” I reach for him, confused. “Sorry.”

He opens his mouth, closes it, and then repeats the process. His eyelids shut, and his jaw clenches tight. When he speaks, his voice is as taut as a stretched rubber band.

“My mistake. I didn’t see it.” This only confuses me further.How the hell could he not see it? It’s a fucking wall.Nico’s eyes open, and my confusion turns immediately to worry. His green eyes are clouded with pain and humiliation. When he speaks, the words come out sounding choked. “I didn’t see it because I’m almost fully blind in my right eye, and partially blind in my left eye.”

I freeze.Blind?This strikes me as wholly unlikely for many reasons, not least of which because he has a job that requires him to be on ice skates and watch a tiny rubber disc. He’s watching me, silently, waiting for me to say something. It dawns on me that he’s not in pain because the wall caught him bad in the stomach, but because he just admitted to a handicap he probably had no intention of telling me about. I have the wild and insane urge to hug him.

“Nico.” His name is the best response I can formulate at the moment.No wonder he skates like he’s new to the sport.I feel like a fucking asshole for thinking up random theories.

“I can tell you more about it over dinner, if you want. Or, we can forget this ever happened and we can just talk hockey.” His mouth twists into a wry smile. “I bet you can guess which would be my preference.”

Biting back a thousand questions, I smile. “I’ve got a few questions about Carter Morgan, lets talk about him instead.”

Nico

Anthony just threw me a bone, and I’m pathetically grateful. More carefully this time, I tail him into the kitchen and lean against one of the counters as he begins pulling stuff together for dinner. While his back is to me, I rub a hand over my low stomach. I’m going to have a bruise there, though it’ll be nothing to the one on my ego. Christ, how mortifying. He’s not bringing it up, which is kind, but I can also tell it’s killing him to not ask questions.

After he loads a pan of things to throw on the grill, I follow him into the backyard. He hasn’t grabbed my arm and tried to steer me around, which means Anthony ranks very highly among the short list of people who know about my eyesight. Squinting, I look around the yard, vigilantly trying to spot any possible obstacles. Fortunately, there doesn’t seem to be many, and I try to relax my shoulders away from where they’ve crept up toward my jaw.

“How do you like your steak?” Anthony asks, turning to look at me over his shoulder.

“Medium is fine, thank you.”

“You can have a seat, if you want.” He points a pair of tongs toward a patio table, littered with leaves from a nearby tree. “I’ve also got this noodle salad thing that Cor gave me, so we can have that too. Oh, and a pie. At least, I think it’s a pie.”

Stepping over a deflated soccer ball—while mentally patting myself on the back for not tripping on said soccer ball—I start brushing the detritus off of the tabletop. “Corwin Sanhover? He cooks for you?”

“Yeah. Helovesto cook. Wait until you try his food. He should be a chef, it’s that good.”

“Huh. I didn’t know that about him.”

“To be honest, he keeps me alive. I’d probably only eat take-out if it wasn’t for him.” Anthony pauses, closing the cover on the grill and coming over to join me in dusting off the table. “He’s the best.”

“Sounds like it,” I murmur. There is no mistaking the affection in his tone, as he speaks about his friend. It’s the same tone I might have used once, when speaking about Martin Tremblay. I quickly discard that line of thinking, before any of my thoughts show on my face. I don’t want to contend with memories about my old friend.

“Have a seat,” Anthony tells me, again, and even goes so far as to pull out one of the chairs. “I’ll grab you a drink. What’ll you have? I’ve got it all, from orange juice to beer.”

“Well, orange juice might not pair well with steak. I’ll just have water, thanks.”

Shamelessly, I stare at the back of him as he heads inside. It’s a beautiful day, and the sun feels nice after a morning spent indoors at the rink. I don’t spend nearly the amount of time outside that I should, and certainly not as much time as Anthony apparently does—his skin is a rich brown, sun-kissed and freckled. Paired with the rest of him, he could easily have just stepped off of the cover of aSport Illustratedmagazine. Or, more likely, given the wild hair and tendency toward plaid, a periodical for lumberjacks.

He’s humming when he returns, a habit of his I’ve noticed several times. I wish I found it more annoying that I do. He sets a glass of water in front of me and chooses the seat directly to my left, the legs screeching across the deck as he drags the chair closer. He’s now sitting so close I could lean over and kiss him, if the desire took me. Taking a drink of water, I spin the glass around on the still-dusty tabletop. The proverbial elephant in the room feels enormous.

“You can ask, if you want. It’s okay.” I look over at Anthony, and find him already watching me, eyes fixed on my mouth. When I stop talking, he meets my eyes.

“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” he says, earnestly. I feel a stab of pain at these words, even though they were delivered with compassion. Every damn thing in my life makes me uncomfortable.

“It’s okay,” I repeat. He doesn’t speak again for a few minutes, and I let him have his silence. God knows I’d rather sit here in the quiet than answer questions about my disability.

“I never was much of a science guy, so forgive me if this is a stupid question. But if the visor injuries were what damaged your eyes…why can you still partially see?”

“Ah. That’s a good question, actually. I did get a corneal abrasion from the visor, but actually the most damage from that occurred to my face.” I gesture at my slim scars. His eyes barely flick toward them before settling back on my eyes. “When they first brought me back to the locker room, there was so much blood and nobody could tell what was going on. It probably looked like a scene from a horror film, and I think the immediate worry was that I’d lose an eye. Luckily, that didn’t happen. And actually, the corneal abrasions would have healed and my eyes would have been fine.”

“But,” he prompts, correctly hearing the rest of that sentence.

“But I got an infection, and by the time that was brought under control…I was legally blind.” Anthony flinches, and I see his fingers clench around his water glass. “I was in and out of the hospital for two years. Mostly in.”

I try to shrug, like it was no big deal, but not even I can lie that well. To this day, the antiseptic smell of medical centers, and the squeak of shoes on linoleum are enough to break me out in a cold sweat. I have the sudden urge to tell him about it;to tell him about the sick feeling of dread I woke up with every morning, in that sterile room. To tell him about the doctors and nurses with their plastic smiles and sad eyes. To tell him about the two broken wrists I got from tripping over a sidewalk on my first solo trip to the grocery store after being released from the hospital the first time.

---