Page 47 of Offensive Edge
“I don’t know if I ever thanked you sufficiently enough for letting me stay here,” he told Vic, as they sat together on the back patio around the fire table as the sun set. Julia was over, which was a little unusual. Rowan assumed she didn’t like the boy-house vibe, which was understandable. Theo was on a beer run. They weren’t going to drink too much—they hadn’t won anything yet, as they were reminded about fifty times that morning—but they still wanted to mark the occasion.
They had come home from Seattle earlier that day, and it hit Rowan that it really felt like home to him. He didn’t want to live anywhere else. He knew it was Vic’s house, but it was the house Theo had nursed him back to health after being sick in. It was the house that he had made Theo the worst meal of his life when the stakes felt so high. He had enough on his mind that he couldn’t spare a thought to worry yet, but he got the vibe already that he would need to find a new place to live before next season.
“You made this house a home, blah blah,” Vic said. His body relaxed against the back of the patio couch he was sitting on, Julia tucked under his arm.
“Someone had to,” Julia said. There was disdain in her voice, and Rowan really hoped it wasn’t directed at him, but he couldn’t tell.
“Jules hates this place.”
“I do not.”
“You do. You’re just too nice to say anything.”
“It just has a certain…”
“It is not your vibe,” Vic laughed. “You should see her place, man. Lots of color, still classy.”
“Not an Ikea showroom,” she added.
“Barely any of my furniture is from Ikea.”
“It just feels stale,” she settled on.
“I guess I have shitty taste, but I love it here.” Rowan said. He was fine with having shitty taste. The way things looked to him mattered way less than the way things felt.
“I’m sure it’s nice that Laney isn’t giving you a daily death glare too, huh? I gotta admit, whatever you and T are doing now, that’s how I thought it would be from the beginning, when I invited you to stay.”
“Whatever we’re doing?” Rowan asked. He and Theo weren’t officially doing anything. Did Vic know something? Had he heard something? Had Theo said something?
“You just look like those adorable photos from your juniors team they showed on every broadcast after you signed here. Where you have googly eyes for each other and shit. Interviews where you can’t shut up about each other. It’s kind of sweet.”
“Wish someone would look at me that way,” Julia joked, setting her empty White Claw down on the patio table and cracking open the backup.
“Baby, no one can ever have what Foley and Laney have. That’s true romance right there.” Rowan knew Vic was kidding. Hockey was full of shit that looked and sounded gay but was astonishingly heterosexual. At least half his relationship with Felix had been a lot of touching and pet names that, unfortunately for Rowan at the time, were very platonic.
“High school sweeties,” Julia added. Rowan didn’t know Julia well, but whenever they had passing conversations, she knew what was going on with hockey, whether she had really boned up when she and Vic had started boning down, or she was a fan to begin with. Plus, Rowan knew that if someone had a passing knowledge of hockey, they probably knew who he was.
Rowan was using his entire willpower trying not to blush.
“There’s your lover,” Vic said, as Theo came out the back sliding door with a twelve-pack of Corona in his hand. It wasn’t Rowan’s favorite, but it was Vic’s, and he was the captain and the homeowner.
“Huh?” Theo asked, taking a seat next to Rowan and cracking open the box of beer.
“Nothing,” Rowan muttered.
“Just reliving your love story with your man here,” Vic said.
“With this baby boy?” Theo said, easily melting into the joke and not turning into a scared bunny like Rowan had. He handed out fresh beers, and when he settled into his seat, he wrapped an arm around Rowan’s shoulders and pressed a kiss to his temple.
“Hockey stories rarely end happy,” Vic said. “It’s a lot of saying goodbye, and not a lot of reunion.”
“Don’t I know it,” Theo said. He’d kept his arm around Rowan’s shoulders, and Rowan didn’t know what to do with himself. He didn’t know how to convey the homoerotic, just-bros thing without being…well, not just bros.
“Why do we do this to ourselves?” Vic asked. He’d had a league-famous bromance not too long ago himself, before his best friend was traded to Toronto. It was a couple years before Rowan got there, but he knew that Theo was sleeping in Jesper’s old bedroom now. Vic loved having a full house even when he was still married.
“No choice,” Theo said. “Hockey’s in our blood. Hockey makes up who we are. The good and the bad.”
“The good and the bad,” Rowan agreed.
