Page 40 of Two for Charging

“Hey, Luca,” Howie said. “You live with Breezy. You must have seen the D. Is it —”

“What other silly things are there about hockey according to Ben?” Luca asked loudly as though he hadn’t heard Howie speak.

Again, gratefulness made Chris’s stomach flutter happily.

As Phil explained something about a running list Ben had taped to the fridge, Chris wondered what it might be like if he took Luca up on his coaching offer. Luca would definitely see his dick then. The thought didn’t bother Chris. It wasn’t that the dick itself embarrassed him. It was more the way people talked about it. He kept it covered in the locker room to spare himself the ribbing happening right now. Guys could get weirdly obsessed with dick size. On his team in Juniors, he’d had a teammate who wouldn’t stop making jokes about it, asking questions, staring at Chris’s lap even when he was fully clothed. It made him uncomfortable enough that he got into the habit of staying out of any locker room cock talk, but it had never been much of an issue otherwise. Sure, a few of the girls he’d gone out with hadn’t been into it because having sex would hurt, but taking fucking out of rotation left plenty of other things to do. Actually, Chris enjoyed it more when he didn’t have to pretend that sticking his dick in something was a life-changing experience.

He sounded so mean.

Maybe he should get coaching from Luca. Guys were supposed to enjoy sex, and he knew Luca did. So what if Chris had never been attracted to another guy? He’d also never looked at a girl and thought, I want to fuck her, so why not try the coaching thing? Luca liked both guys and girls, so he must have some good insights about what Chris was doing wrong and how he could fix it. But did “coaching” mean doing things with each other or just talking about them? Chris assumed the former when they’d first talked about it because he was a hands-on learner. Did that really mean Luca wanted to touch him? Why would he? He could have anyone.

Maybe he would bring a girl home and demonstrate with her.

The thought of being sidelined in his own apartment made Chris feel the way he imagined being picked last in gym class would feel, though he’d never experienced that himself. He’d never enjoyed watching porn after the opening scenes, where two people got closer and started kissing. The sex part always ended up being a letdown after the excitement of potential romance, with bodies slapping together over and over to a soundtrack of overdone moans. Watching Luca and some girl have sex couldn’t be too different, but it would involve the added reminder of Luca wanting people who weren’t Chris.

He would tell Luca he’d be up for any kind of coaching except getting other people involved.

Mind made up, Chris tuned back into the conversation to realize the guys had moved on to a dramatic reading of Ben’s most recent articles about the end of baseball season, a sport Chris couldn’t care less about if he tried.

He twisted in his seat and focused on the fast-paced Russian going on behind him as Dmitriyev and Fedorov kicked Hayes’s and Vanderbilt’s asses at Mario Kart.

By the time they landed in Chicago, he’d had his own ass handed to him and had learned how to say a number of very rude things in Russian about people’s mothers, which he would not be repeating.

Lindy announced another 10:00 p.m. curfew. During the preseason, she’d done thorough room checks, using spare keys from reception if no one answered when she knocked. Vanderbilt’s Tinder hookup had to do the walk of shame out of the hotel half naked, and the backup goalie, Nilsson, hadn’t started in a game all preseason after he skipped out on curfew entirely to go home with some girl he’d met at a bar.

Since their arrival was at ten after five, Chris doubted he’d see anything but the inside of his hotel room and the private section of the restaurant Jax had reserved for team dinner.

But he hadn’t counted on Luca’s sneakiness.

He snagged Chris by the elbow as they left the airport and directed him over to the taxi stands instead of the team bus. “Diego will get our things to our rooms.”

Chris watched the team retreating. “And dinner—”

“We’ll be at the restaurant in time. I would not make you miss the first team dinner on the road.”

Knowing Luca could take or leave team bonding, and would probably prefer to leave it, Chris was touched by the gesture. “Awesome. Where are we headed?”

“You will see,” Luca said.

Their destination turned out to be a boat scheduled to leave from a downtown pier a scant half hour after their plane landed. Tourists crowded the dock and lined up at the inside bar before the motor even started. Luca led Chris up to the top deck instead, and they settled in the only free pair of chairs they could find.

Within moments, the boat took off, first down the river and then up. All the while, the captain narrated each passing building with facts about its architects and history. The wind blew over them, fresh and cool, and Chris became one person among many, watching the city pass him by.

“This is so cool,” he enthused, snapping a picture of the sign on the bottom of the bridge that read “Lake Shore Drive” and then, moments later, another of the graffiti along the shoreline which read, “You are on Potawatomi land” in all capital letters. Chris would never remember any of the names of the people who had built or lived in all of the skyscrapers around them, but if he had the pictures, he would remember not only what it had looked like but maybe, if he was lucky, how it had felt.

Luca leaned on the railing, staring out over the water. In mid-October, the sky darkened at 6:00 p.m., and the lights of the city reflected off the gentle waves surrounding the boat. Pictures taken, Chris put his phone away and went to stand beside him.

“How did you even find this?”

Luca turned to him. The wry quirk of his mouth emphasized his full lips and high cheekbones. “It is the top tourist attraction in Chicago on TripAdvisor. It was not hard.”

The thought that Luca had spent time online—researching things they could do together and booking a slot into their tight schedule—made Chris choke up with emotion for a moment.

“I think you’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”

Luca blinked in surprise. His long eyelashes swept over his perfect cheeks. “Oh. I—thank you. And likewise.”

Chris beamed. Luca probably said it to be polite. There was no way he felt as keenly as Chris did about how much better his life had become now Luca was in it. And how much he dreaded the thought of Luca ever leaving. But hearing it made him feel special all the same. “And also, as for the coaching thing…” Chris said. “Yeah. I trust you, and if you do want to help me—”