Page 26 of Grief & Glitter

“Pooh, pooh, Ser Pickle is pouting. No doubt soaking up his salty brine. You are a good boy, little carotte.” I got a stout whack on the head, then, thankfully, was left alone to freeze to death.

Dad was sleeping already, soft snores to my right rolling over me. With quaking hands, I placed my buds into my ears. I should have brought a thicker coat. Ten minutes or so passed with winter’s wrath whipping in that open window when someone from behind me tapped my shoulder. I startled slightly. I was too deeply into the first stages of hypothermia to jump. If this were Arnaud hoping to talk pickles or frozen cod pieces, I was going to cry. No, no tears. They would freeze on my cheeks.

I looked up to see Gideon. He said nothing, just placed a hoodie with a panda eating ramen logo on my lap. Then he moved back to sit with the players. I craned around in my seat, checking out his bubble butt held lovingly in soft, worn denim. When he was seated, he gave me a tender smile before pulling on headphones to lose himself in a book or perhaps a movie. Chest buzzing with emotion, I rushed to pull the overly-large hoodie over my head, then, because I could and it wouldn’t look too weird, I bundled a handful up in front of my cold nose and breathed in Gideon. My dick began to get fat as I sat there, eyes closed, inhaling his scent. That hour ride was the warmest, most wonderful ride on a bus with boisterous hockey players that anyone would ever have.

I planned to never return this hoodie. I just might sleep in it. Yeah, I think I would do exactly that and pretend that the sleeves that hung far too long were Gideon’s arms cradling me as I drifted off…

Chapter 10

Gideon

We won in Buffalo.

Two-one. It wasn’t pretty, but road wins didn’t need to be pretty. Arnaud stood on his head for most of the third and Walker scored the winner with less than four minutes left. I’d picked up an assist, Bob picked up six penalty minutes, and Arnaud spent the whole walk back to the locker room complaining that Bob couldn’t stay out of the box. Bob told him to fuck off. Arnaud told him to fuck off in French. A successful night, all in all.

We were staying over before the next game, which meant breakfast in the hotel restaurant instead of everyone stumbling onto the bus half-awake with coffee and whatever they grabbed on the way out. On these trips, I always ended up with the same people—Walker, Bob, Arnaud, Chip, and Sable, of course, stretched under the table with her head on Chip’s shoe. Somewhere along the way we’d become a friend group outside hockey. The art therapy did that, except nobody called it therapy anymore. Finn still turned up with paint and canvases and brushes, and we still met when schedules allowed, but there was no more talk about expressing emotions through color. Mostly, it was Walker convincing everyone he was an undiscovered artistic genius, which he wasn’t, Arnaud painting everything like the cover of an obscure French-Canadian folk album, and Bob working through some deeply held rage against canvas. Chip wasn’t bad, actually. It worked for us. Breakfast did too, once you knew the one rule—Bob at one end, Arnaud at the other, so the rest of us could eat in peace.

This morning, Bob was at the end near me, working through enough scrambled eggs to feed a family of six, while Arnaud sat at the far end with yogurt, fruit, seeds, and something that looked suspiciously like lawn clippings.

“What the fuck is that?” Bob asked.

I ignored them as they bickered, concentrating on my oatmeal.

Across from me, Chip scratched Sable behind one ear while he drank coffee and scrolled his phone one-handed. Walker had been missing for ten minutes since announcing he needed more bacon, apparently lost somewhere between our table and the buffet.

I glanced toward the entrance. Not because I was looking for anyone. I’d already seen Ryan last night, just for a minute while the equipment staff packed up, still wearing my hoodie with the sleeves shoved up his forearms. I nearly asked for it back. Then I decided I liked seeing him in it, which probably meant I was never getting it back.

“You keep looking over there,” Chip said.

“I don’t.”

He lifted his eyes from his phone just long enough to make the point then went back to it. Observant asshole.

“Look who I found.” Walker came through the restaurant with one hand wrapped around Ryan’s arm, steering him between tables while Ryan carried a plate of toast and eggs in one hand and coffee in the other, looking thoroughly bewildered that the captain of the Rochester Copperheads had abducted him on his way to breakfast. He was still wearing my hoodie too, and it made me feel happy.

“Morning,” Walker announced.

“Help,” Ryan said.

Walker ignored him. Ryan’s gaze found mine. I smiled, and he smiled back, and the warm thing spread a little farther.

“I found him hiding,” Walker said.

“I wasn’t hiding,” Ryan protested.

“You were sitting behind a plant.”

“The table was behind the plant.”

“Come sit with us,” Walker said, then let him go. Ryan checked his arm as if he were expecting fingerprints. “Shuffle up, Bob.”

Bob was confused. “I’m eating.”

“You can eat six inches to the left.”

Bob stared him down for a solid five seconds, then grumbled and gathered his plate, coffee, silverware, phone, and orange juice, and then dragged his chair down the table, opening up the seat right beside me. I looked at Walker. Walker’s face gave nothing away.

“Sit,” he told Ryan.