Chapter Four

RILEY WAS half-asleep when he heard someone trying to open his door.

Normally this would worry him. But the door wasn’t locked, and the person who was trying to get in was having so much trouble that they had to be drunk. Meaning it was just his roommate. Something had clearly been bothering Ethan all night.

Riley knew what it was too. Ethan had figured out about the checks.

Ethan had been so intent on paying rent, and Riley couldn’t avoid him forever. So after Ethan got a bank account set up, he started writing Riley a rent check every month. And Riley, who knew how much Ethan wanted his mom and sisters to be able to come for a game, made the impromptu decision to throw them away.

He didn’t need the money, but Ethan Kennedy was one of the proudest people Riley had ever met, and he’d never be okay with not paying his share. Riley already had to pretend he had a weird thing about eating leftovers so Ethan would eat when he made dinner, and he was sneakily replenishing the Pepsi—even though he drank Coke—so Ethan wouldn’t notice he was doing it.

It was so stupid. Riley should just tell him about the money, because now he was lying. And Ethan wasn’t an idiot. He was going to figure it out and then be even angrier than if Riley had just offered in the first place. Why was everything so hard?

Ethan finally got the door open, and then he was standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the hallway light. “Riley, I don’t want to be that guy.”

“Okay,” Riley said, heart racing and stomach twisting unpleasantly. “What guy?” He already knew the answer. The guy who takes handouts from his rich friends.

“The hypocrite guy.”

Wait. That didn’t make sense. “You’re not a hypocrite, Ethan.”

“I could be. I don’t want to, but I could be.” Ethan moved into his bedroom. “I have to make sure. Okay?”

Riley couldn’t say anything, because he had no idea what an appropriate response was to his roommate climbing on his bed. And then on top of him. “Ethan?”

“Yeah.” Ethan was all whiskey-soaked sincerity, staring down at him in the darkness. “Can I just make sure? It’s important.”

Riley nodded, because he had no idea what else to do. “Okay. Sure.”

Ethan leaned down and kissed him.

Oh. Riley’s brain shifted like it was a game and he was facing a shooter barreling down the ice on a breakaway. I guess it’s not about the checks.

Riley had gotten off thinking about Ethan plenty of times by then, but for some reason, it never included kissing. Which was definitely going to change, because Riley liked it. A lot. Especially when he moved and flipped them over so Ethan was beneath him and Riley could make him stop moving around so much. It was much easier to kiss him that way.

It wasn’t all that different from kissing a girl, except Ethan was tense and wiry, all muscles and angles, instead of softness and curves. And Riley was kissing him like he was trying to make him understand something, about what, he wasn’t sure.

Ethan kissed him back, and Riley could feel him slowly start to relax. It was a surreal moment, exactly what he’d been fantasizing about—making Ethan settle down. Except it was usually with a blow job instead of kissing, but Riley was nothing if not adaptable.

“Do you feel better now?” Riley asked, his voice rough.

“Yeah,” Ethan said, sounding unsteady. He seemed like he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t.

Neither did Riley. He just stayed there for a moment longer and then moved, letting Ethan up. Ethan stayed on his back for a few moments, then carefully got up, walked out of Riley’s bedroom, and pulled the door closed quietly behind him.

Riley had no idea why that had just happened, but Ethan seemed to feel better when he left. So there was that.

Riley got himself off, quietly and almost frantically, imagining Ethan in his room doing the same thing. When he came his eyes were closed, but his head was turned to the side, facing Ethan’s room.

When he opened his eyes, all he could see was the wall.

THEY DIDN’T talk about what happened.

The next morning Riley went running without waiting to see if Ethan was going to join him. When he got back, Ethan’s door was still closed. So he assumed his roommate was asleep.

Later that afternoon he finally came out of his room and asked if he could borrow Riley’s car.

Riley gave him the keys, and Ethan came back with some beer, a piping hot pizza, laundry detergent, and fabric softener—something Riley didn’t know about until he moved into his first apartment, because he’d had to look up how to do laundry on the Internet.

They ate pizza, did their laundry, played Grand Theft Auto, and watched hockey. Sometimes Riley looked over and caught Ethan watching him, and vice versa. They both pretended not to notice. It was clear, unspoken guy language that meant “If we don’t talk about it, it didn’t happen.”

And Riley assumed that meant it wouldn’t happen again. Which Riley had to admit bummed him out.

He thought about texting Lane, but it was hard to think of what to say. Does it make me gay if my roommate kissed me when he was drunk? Besides, it’s not like he really had to ask. It wasn’t the part where Ethan kissed him. It was the part where Riley liked it. A lot.

But he still liked girls too. Didn’t he? It didn’t work like that, where you went from one to the other. Right? In hockey, if you decided to go from being a right-handed goalie, you had to turn in your equipment and get a new stick before you could switch.

That was maybe not the best analogy. Still.

Riley wished he knew Lane’s boyfriend, Jared, a little better. He shot with both hands, or whatever the equivalent would be in Riley’s poorly thought-out hockey metaphor. He always assumed people were talking about baseball teams when they used the expression “played for both teams,” though he didn’t know why.

Riley didn’t have much time to think about it, though. He had a lot on his plate with practice and their first meeting with their rivals since last season’s game seven of the conference finals. And he liked helping out at the hockey camp, even if he wasn’t nearly as good with kids as Ethan was.

The road trip was a long one, a Wednesday through Sunday, and the whole team was ready to beat the Savannah Renegades in both of their games. First they had to go and play the Spitfires in Spartanburg, South Carolina. They had a cool logo, an old World War I fighter plane. But they were the absolute worst team in the league, and their goalie, Isaac Drake, spent most of the game yelling. At his own team. The Spitfires only managed sixteen shots on goal during the entire game, and Riley was bored stiff by the time it was over.

Their next game, against the Athens Ice Dogs, was a little harder. They were a surprise, coming out of nowhere and going on an impressive winning streak. The Storm pulled out a win in a shoot-out, and Riley was impressed as hell by their team. But he wasn’t impressed by the attendance, which was abysmal.

“This is Athens, Georgia,” their goalie told Riley. “It’s college football season. There’s a reason we don’t play on Saturdays. There would literally be no one here.”

While on the road, Riley was roommates with his new backup, Vazov. They would talk about the game, and Sasha would tell him things in his broken, halting English and teach him some Russian.

Ethan got in a fight in every one of their games, but Riley saw him by the busses, laughing and comparing black eyes with his opponent from the Ice Dogs. Ethan told him later they were both Rangers fans, and it made Riley smile. Though Riley got off thinking about how hot Ethan looked when he fought.

Riley watched Ethan a lot during games. He was always the first person to clap or cheer when someone scored a goal, and he never complained about his ice time or lack thereof. He never complained about anything. But Riley noticed that the longer the road trip went on, the more strained around the edges Ethan looked. His eyes were almost too bright, his laugh a little too loud. He also couldn’t sit still. His hands were always twitching, his leg constantly jostling on the bench or in his bus seat.

The Saturday-night game against the Renegades was electric, the crowd filled to capacity, and the game fast, furious, and full of the best kind of emotion. The Renegades were good and kept Riley on his toes for the whole game. If he’d been just a little slower, his flashy, highlight-reel saves would have been flashy, highlight-reel goals.

Even Riley got into the trash talk in that game, and he yelled cheerfully at the defensemen from the Renegades who were trying to screen him. The Storm won the game 4-2. Riley got booed by the home crowd and it was great.

Right when the road trip seemed to be on the way to a four-game winning streak, Sunday’s matinee game happened.

Ethan skated up to Riley during warm-ups while Riley was getting settled in goal. “Who are you talking to?” he asked, rocking on his skates. “You’re saying stuff. To the posts?”

“Lane asked me that once,” Riley said, calmly. He squirted his water bottle three times, then took two drinks, and scratched his left skate on the ice to make a triangle. There. “I’m not talking to anyone. And I’m centering myself. You know. Going from Riley Hunter to the goalie. Make sense?”

Ethan blinked at him. “Maybe? No. I’m pretty much the same person all the time. On the ice. Off. Always Ethan.” He rocked on his skates again. “I wonder if I should try that too.” Before Riley could say anything, Ethan kicked with his skate and made a mark next to Riley’s on the ice. The buzzer sounded to send the teams to their bench for the anthems, so there wasn’t time for Riley to start his pregame ritual again. Riley grabbed his water bottle from the top of the net, and when he dropped it, he knew it was going to be a bad game.

Thirty seconds into the first period, Riley let in a goal.

One minute and thirty-five seconds after that, he let in another one.

By the time Spence finally pulled him in the second, Riley had let in five goals and was serenaded off the ice to the chant “Lose-er, lose-er, lose-er.”

The coach came to talk to him during intermission. “Happens to everyone, Hunter. Shake it off. It’s going to be fine. You played three games before this, and this schedule is insane. What the hell do they think we are? Robots? Are you a robot, Hunter?”

“No, Coach.”

“Me neither, Hunter. Me neither. Now you’re gonna put on one of those ugly-ass teal hats with that stupid, angry water thing, and show your support to Vazov, since this is his first professional game. And our team is gonna go play like tired motherfuckers who are not—who are not what, Hunter?”

“Robots, Coach.”

“Right. Robots. If we were, we’d be killer robots, and they’d all be in trouble, ’cause we’d have badass space guns. With lasers.” Spence gave him an encouraging slap on the back. “Let’s go.”

Ethan moved down to sit next to him the second the teams were back on the benches to start the third period. “That was my fault, huh,” Ethan said, eyes wide. “I messed up something. Didn’t I? Oh man, Hunter. I’m sorry.”

He looked so sincere that Riley wanted to tell him it was okay. But he couldn’t, because it wasn’t. Not yet, anyway. It would be. That’s how the game went, and that’s how Riley was. He’d get over it. He’d be back on the ice, and it’d be a learning experience. Just not yet.

It wasn’t Ethan’s fault. But Riley was superstitious for a reason, and clearly it was a sign he needed to change up his pregame ritual. That was last year’s, and they were playing last year’s champions. He should have known better.

The Storm lost, 6-2. It was a rousing defeat, and the bus was quiet for the three-hour trip back to Jacksonville.

Vazov handed Riley his headphones. “In Russia one time. The goals, of nine I gave up. This is part of game. I know.”

Riley took the proffered headphones gratefully, giving his backup a tired smile of gratitude. “Sorry I left you with that hole, though.” He was too. No one wanted to make their professional debut down by five. It sucked.

“Is okay. I see before game. The one who has fists, the loud one. He kicks at your marks. This is not good.” Vazov nodded, his icy eyes determined. “I will tell him. You are goalie. The crease. This is yours.”

Riley watched as Vazov made his way up the aisle toward Ethan’s seat. He leaned his head against the glass, closed his eyes, and let the music wash over him.

Except it was Russian techno music, so it pelted over him instead.