Page 111 of Two for Charging

Once again, Chris realized he’d been incredibly blind. Platonic roommates did not follow the motion of their friends’ tongues with such interest.

Mooney’s brow furrowed. “And…after?”

“He took me to the botanical gardens,” Chris said. “It was great. I’d never been, and they had these massive light sculptures.”

“Right,” Mooney said, drawing out the vowel. “You two have been hanging out a lot on the road.”

“Sorry.” Chris tried to mean it, but he didn’t feel bad at all. He liked having Luca all to himself. “I keep stealing your road roomie. But he was my roomie first! Anyway, we made a pact.”

“A pact.”

“To do something together in all the cities we travel to.”

“Okay.” Mooney looked down at his plate. “Botanical gardens, huh? So y’all went out for dinner, looked at some plants, and then…”

Chris hid his flush in a big bite of pasta.

“Went back to the hotel.” Luca’s eyes remained fixed on his macaroni. Had he gotten them specifically to be annoyed about them? “Or we would have missed curfew.”

“Oh.” Mooney looked between them, his eyes narrowing. “Oh.”

Luca turned to Chris. “I cannot understand why you think the tagliatelle taste different than any other noodle here. It’s all the same ingredients.”

“The shape makes them taste more authentic.”

“Authentic Italian food is a lie.” Luca speared another forkful with enough force to demonstrate how personally he took its lack of authenticity. Something about the food here had made him really grumpy. Chris had no clue what, but Luca wasn’t angry at him, so he would let Luca rant. “Tomatoes are from America, and every culture in the world invented flatbread with things on it.”

“Huh.” Mooney’s mouth was full of portobello mushroom, chicken, and farfalle, but he talked anyway. “I never thought of the tomato thing. Does that make Italian food technically Mexican?”

“Colombo landed in the Bahamas.”

“Columbo? The dude with the mustache?”

Luca rolled his eyes. “No, Colombo—Cristoforo Colombo. He was an Italian, he has an Italian name, you are all idiots.”

Chris returned to his tagliatelle with a satisfied sigh. He’d missed grumpy Luca. Much as he loved romantic, soft, kind Luca, who showed up when they were alone, he’d fallen for the feral alley cat.

They napped together before the game, which ended up less of a nap and more of an extended make-out session. Chris owed Mooney an apology for judging him about getting lost in a new relationship, as well as for stealing his roommate. He’d had no idea how exciting it would feel to be alone with Luca. They were the same people, and they did mostly the same things, so it was silly to look forward to alone time so much. Then again, he’d spent all season being excited to hang out with Luca alone, so maybe he was just an idiot. Either way, having Luca in his bed, even if they didn’t sleep, beat a solo nap before a game by a mile.

But they had hockey to play, so they forced themselves out of bed and onto the bus.

It was Ottawa’s Pride Night, which Chris had forgotten. An equipment manager stopped by to offer the Sea Lions rainbow tape for warm-ups, since the NHL had come around on the concept again. So many members of the team used it, too, including Hayes and, after Hayes had elbowed him into accepting it, Vanderbilt. Chris let himself consider for the first time that he was part of this. They were doing this special performance because of pride—pride in who Chris was. He sat up a little straighter.

Howie glared at the whole room in mutinous silence as he wrapped his entire stick in the stuff from top to bottom. Chris wished he could talk to Howie more than ever, to share his perspective on it, to tell Howie he got it now. He understood why Howie needed community so badly and wanted to let him know how sorry he was for his part in Howie not having it.

But Howie shouldered past him onto the ice without so much as their customary handshake.

He played well, at least. Maybe it was because of the rainbow tape job for warm-ups, maybe because of sheer determination not to repeat the benching in Montreal. But Howie’s passes connected better, and after a slick assist from Mooney, he even got a goal in the second period.

They squeaked out a narrow 3–2 win thanks to Ottawa getting a delay-of-game penalty, letting Tom score off Luca’s pass on the power play to equalize. The last one of the night was Chris’s.

Since it was the game-winner, Kayleigh put him on media. Normally, Chris hated media. He’d seen enough memes of himself taking reporters too literally or not understanding their questions on hockey fan pages to last a lifetime. Tonight, he carried the buoyant feeling of realizing Pride Night was for him as much as for Howie, for Jax, for Tom, and for Luca. He managed all the usual statements, the “played the full sixty minutes” and the “got pucks in deep.” He told the reporters Nilsson had a tough job and big shoes to fill, and he had done great tonight, so they were looking forward to good things from him.

The last question went to Olivia Starling. “Chris, a lot of the Sea Lions participated in tonight’s Pride Night here in Ottawa. Is that a message you support?”

She’d given him an easy one. “Yeah, for sure. LGBTQIA-plus rights are human rights, you know?”

“Wow. Do you think it’s appropriate for athletes to make such political statements?”