Page 39 of From A to Us

He tried to smile, he really did, but the thought of a camera crew in his space appealed about as much as being impaled by one of his own skates. “Hey, Carlo. How’s it going?”

“Great.” Carlo did smile, wide and toothy. “How’s Sunday? Two o’clock?”

“Well, see, the thing is . . .” Eli transferred the apple to the crook of his elbow so he could open the next smoothie. “I just moved in, you know?” Two months ago, but who was counting? “And my place isn’t quite furnished yet.” He was missing barstools for the island, and he couldn’t possibly film a house tour without those, right?

He’d received eight gift cards to local home decorating stores from his teammates for his birthday, so he had no excuse for not having those barstools.

Except time. There definitely wasn’t enough of that lately.

“No sweat,” Carlo said, still with that toothy we’re-all-friends-here smile. “Let me know when it’s furnished, and we’ll get it set up.”

“Sure,” Eli said. “Fantastic. I’ll do that.”

Precisely never, but Carlo would forget about this eventually.

Eli finished off smoothies two and three on his way to Jen’s office. There, he got a thirty-second rundown on his duties for the day, which essentially amounted to taking the students to predesignated areas of the arena and introducing them to key staff—Jen gave him a list—before finishing in the team kitchen where snacks would be waiting. Pickup was at two.

Honestly, this meeting could’ve been an email.

But because it wasn’t an email, he got asked to headline a charity event for educational programs—that was an obvious yes; sit on a panel at a promotional event for Trailblazing the Way Forward, the Trailblazers docuseries that had premiered three weeks ago—sure, fine, he’d do it as a favor to Bennett Jackson, the documentary filmmaker who’d spearheaded the project and who was also Sandro Zanetti’s life partner; and appear as a guest judge on a reality TV show on the Flavour Network.

That last one gave him pause and he nearly choked on his bite of sandwich. “I’m sorry, run that by me again?”

Jen grimaced. “It is a bit of an . . . unusual . . . request. Not sure why it came my way instead of through your agent, but . . . anyway. Doesn’t matter. I can connect with Tom later. This baking show is the kind that has a different celebrity judge join the two regular judges every week. They want you for . . .” She consulted her notes. “A Christmas episode. It’ll air closer to Christmas, but filming is at the end of this month. Their previous celebrity judge had to back out.”

“Okay, but . . . I’m no celebrity,” Eli said. “And I’m a hockey player—I don’t exactly have a refined palate.”

Jen waved his concerns away. “From their point of view, you are a celebrity, and as for your palate—I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m guessing you want a day or two to think about this?”

“Uh, yes?”

He got sent on his way after that, and he escaped with thirteen minutes until the students arrived. He tossed his sandwich wrapper away before getting on the elevator and tucked his apple into one of the pockets of his cargo pants, then patted the other pockets for his phone so he could enter the new events into his calendar.

Empty.

Back on ground level, he detoured to the locker room to grab his phone out of his stall before he headed to the entrance to meet the bus of students—if he didn’t put the events in his calendar now, he’d forget all about them.

Deeley did a comical double take when Eli walked into the locker room. “I thought you left already,” he said, pulling up underwear.

“No, I’m taking the high school students on a tour in a few minutes.” Eli pointed at the note with his name on it taped to the shelf in his stall. “Where’d this come from?”

Deeley shrugged. “It was there when I got back from my workout.”

Eli unpeeled the tape from the shelf. Was this information he needed for the students? He’d just met with Jen, though. Had Friedle left him a timetable of possible after-hours practice times next week?

Dear Eli,

First of all, twenty-five is not old, and since you’re twenty-six now, I figure you probably know that.

Eli barely turned a squeak into a cough. He did dance in place, but luckily, Deeley was too busy getting dressed to notice.

Oh shit, oh fuck, oh damn. Nolan had gotten his letter. After he’d snuck the letter into Nolan’s coat pocket on the flight back from Jersey yesterday, Eli had purposefully put it out of his mind, tucking it away into a corner of his brain labeled Things to Panic About Later.

It was officially later.

And Nolan had written back.

Eli was tempted to set it aside to read once he got home. He liked to think he’d been subtle but not too subtle about his feelings for Nolan in his own letter—telling the man that he was so comfortable around him that he forgot to be “on” was a giant, bedazzled, and glitter-bombed I-like-you sign in his book.