Page 12 of Blind Side
6
Jamie
One bed.
The hotel was a Marriott in Columbus. The team had taken over the fifth floor, doubling up rooms because the front office had been tightening the travel budget since the new CBA kicked in. Volkov and Bishop were next door. The muffled sound of Bishop threatening Volkov's life over a pillow dispute filtered through the wall.
One king bed. Not two queens. Not a suite with a pullout. One king bed, centered against the wall, white sheets, four pillows, and a nightstand on each side with identical lamps.
"Booking error," Abbott said, reading the confirmation on his phone. He stood in the doorway with his bag over one shoulder, looking at the bed.
I glanced at the confirmation over his shoulder. Standard Marriott king. I'd seen the team's block reservation form, it definitely said double queen. Whether this was a genuine hotelmistake or the universe's idea of irony, I couldn't tell. I wasn't going to examine it, either.
"It's fine," I said. "We're adults."
"We are adults."
"I'll take the left side."
"You always take the left side."
That was true. In every hotel room we'd shared over the years—there had been several, because travel budgets and easy companionship made us the default pairing—I took the left side. I didn't realize he noticed that. But of course he did.
Abbott tracked everything.
We unpacked in silence. We'd done this more times that I could count. Bags went on the luggage rack, toiletries in the bathroom, phone chargers claimed the nightstand outlets. Abbott hung his jacket in the closet, which I found unreasonably endearing. The man was staying three nights and he hung his jacket up like this was a permanent residence.
The road trip had started that morning. We took the bus to O'Hare, a flight to Columbus, and a shuttle to the hotel. Twelve hours of transit shoved twenty-four men into a shared timeline of bad airport food, cramped plane seats, and the exhaustion of travel that made everyone quieter and more honest than they normally were.
On the plane, Theo had fallen asleep on Luca's shoulder. Morrison sat alone with earbuds in. Mikkola stared out the window with the wide-eyed wonder of a rookie who'd never flown charter. Abbott had been in the row behind me. I'd felt him there the entire flight. I didn't need to look for him, I was just always aware of his presence. It was a constant low-level signal I'd stopped trying to tune out.
Now we were here sharing a room with a single bed. For ten days.
I showered first. I came out in shorts and a t-shirt with my hair still damp, and found Abbott sitting on the edge of the bed looking at his phone. He'd changed into sweats and a grey shirt that was soft. It hugged his body just right.
"Volkov just sent sixteen texts to the group chat about Bishop's snoring," I said, climbing onto my side of the bed. The mattress dipped under my weight. I felt every shift when Abbott climbed onto the other side a minute later. "Apparently it sounds like—and I'm quoting—'a bear trying to eat a motorcycle.'"
"Accurate." Abbott settled against the headboard, legs stretched out and his ankles crossed. He was reading something on his phone, the blue light catching the line of his jaw. I looked at the ceiling instead. "I've heard it on the plane."
"Everyone's heard it on the plane."
I pulled up the group chat. Theo had responded to Volkov's complaints with a string of bear emojis. Bishop had responded with a single thumbs-up. Luca hadn't responded, which was the norm whenever possible.
"Theo wants to know if we want to get breakfast before the skate tomorrow," I said. "There's a diner three blocks east that has 'extremely mediocre pancakes,' which he apparently considers a selling point."
"Theo would consider mediocre pancakes a selling point."
"He's from a family that treats breakfast as a competitive sport. His standards are different."
Abbott almost smiled. I caught it in the phone light, the smallest shift in his expression—he was actually amused.
"Sure," he said. "Pancakes."
He turned off his phone. The room went dark.
The blackout curtains did their job. The only light was the thin glow from Abbott's phone screen fading to sleep mode. The mattress was good. I lay on my back with my hands behind my head, listening to the building's nighttime sounds—the elevatordown the hall and the hum of the HVAC, the muffled bass of someone's TV through the wall.
Abbott was still. He lay on his back, an arm's length away, breathing evenly. I couldn't see his face in the dark. I could feel the heat of him, though, his body warmth permeating the space between us. It was the simple fact of another person in my bed that no amount of hotel-sharing made ordinary.
