Page 21 of Caught Offside

“I know about the hockey player because you’ve mentioned hockey four times in two weeks and you’ve never mentioned hockey in your life. And because your father told me you asked him what the expansion draft was, which is not a question a person asks for fun.”

“You’re not going to let the hockey player thing go, are you?”

“I’ve been letting it go. I’m extremely good at letting things go. I’m letting it go right now, while also asking about it because I’m a multitasker.”

Asher pulled off his sunglasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I met a guy at the gala. A hockey player. We’ve been talking.”

“Talking.” Pops let the word sit there, loaded and patient.

“Texting, calling, FaceTiming. Talking.”

“And you’re not going to tell me who he is.”

“Not yet.” He wasn’t sure how to explain it without it sounding like more than it was. He hadn’t asked Patrick if this was something he told people about. He wasn’t going to be the one to decide that. “It’s new, Pops. I don’t even know what it is yet.”

“Okay.” No push. Just the word, and then a beat. “So tell me what he’s like without telling me who he is.”

Asher closed his eyes against the sun. “He’s different.”

“Different how?”

“Different in the way where I’m not putting on a show when I talk to him. Different in the way where he doesn’t laugh at my jokes to be polite. He just doesn’t laugh, and when he nearly does, it’s better than when anyone else actually laughs. Different in the way where…” He pressed the heel of his hand against his eye. “He’s just different, Pops.”

Pops was quiet for a long moment. Waiting, the way he always waited, without filling the space.

“Your dad and I didn’t plan on falling in love either,” Pops said. “For what that’s worth.”

“It’s not,” Asher started.

“I know. It’s not that. It’s fun. It’s flirting. It doesn’t have to mean anything.” Easy, unbothered, utterly without pressure. “I’m just saying. Nobody plans it.”

Asher leaned back on the lounger. The sky above was empty, uninterrupted blue from one edge of his vision to the other. A different sky than Patrick was under. And still the first thing Asher had done this morning was check whether Patrick had sent a message overnight. The message had been there—Early skate. Kubara took a puck to the chin. Blood everywhere. He’s fine. How do you sleep this late?—and Asher had read it three times.

“He sounds like your father,” Pops said. “From the way you’re not describing him.”

“Don’t ruin this for me.”

Pops laughed, long and unhurried, the same one Asher had spent his whole life trying to get. “I’m not ruining anything. I’m observing. You’ve got a type. The type is ‘quiet, intense, fundamentally decent people who don’t know how to have fun.’ It tracks.”

“He has fun.” Asher wasn’t sure why he was defending this so hard, except that he was sure it was true.

“Does he though?”

“He does with me.”

Pops went quiet. When he spoke, the humor was still there, but softer.

“Then don’t waste it, kid.”

They talked for a few more minutes. Pops updated him on a home repair project Dad had insisted on managing himself, which was going as well as anyone who knew him would expect. Asher listened and laughed in the right places and felt the call settle him the way Pops’s calls always did.

He hung up and picked up his phone to open the camera. He took a photo from the lounger: his bare feet in the foreground, the pool beyond them, the desert mountains in the background, the whole frame washed in gold light.

He sent it to Patrick without a caption.

Patrick

Show-off. It’s still snowing here.