2. Brady

Brady couldn't puthis finger on exactly why he wasn't a big fan of Matthew. Matthew had never been mean to Brady. He was kind and smart and made Blake happier than anything else. Even hockey.

But when Brady had to hear the thousandth story about something cute Matthew had done while Brady was trying to hang out with his friend on a road trip, it had made him see red. It was bad vibes. Which wasn't a reason.

Brady knew that if Blake was marrying someone else, they would get to spend this pre-wedding time hanging out with the boys and going actual golfing. But the only golf Matthew would play is mini golf. The wedding party found themselves at a mini golf course themed like a medieval castle. There were turrets—and a dragon.

Since there was a four-person limit to each group, the ten of them couldn't all putt through one hole at a time together. That would take forever. But it meant that Blake and Matthew got paired up with Marcus and Nina. Brady expected to be in Miles' group, but Miles was having some weird bonding session with Luca from the New Jersey Ruby Reds, Blake's old team, since Miles and Jill recently got a puppy. Apparently, Luca was a dog person before he was anything else. Amy and Winter got in on the dog conversation, and the four of them formed a group.

It left Brady and Cole to be a twosome. It made more sense for Brady to play with Luca and Miles, and Cole to play with Amy and Winter, but he'd feel like an asshole if he tried to rearrange things. He didn't want Cole to think he didn't want to play with him, but Cole would be right to think that. Brady wanted to play with Blake. And if he couldn't, then any other hockey player would be his next choice. Cole had been nice so far, but Brady wanted to hang out with his friends.

Minnesota Nice meant something to him, though, and he smiled at Cole as the first group got started. They had a while to twiddle their thumbs.

"Cooking," Brady said randomly. He wasn't used to small talk with folks outside of the hockey world.

"Yup," Cole said, a little sparkle in his eye. Cole looked like a chef. He had forearm tattoos, and even on the mini golf course, he was wearing a black button-up with the sleeves rolled up to show them off. The side of his head was buzzed, and the hair he did have flopped dramatically away from the short side. There was something commanding about him, like he knew he was in charge of the whole kitchen, and that confidence radiated from him outside of the kitchen too. "Hockey."

Brady smiled. Okay. So Cole was pretty much the last person in this group he would have chosen to play with (except Matthew), but maybe this wouldn't be too bad.

"How did you learn to cook?"

"I was raised by a single mom. She worked pretty much around the clock. I hated cleaning, but figured out that I could contribute by having a meal ready for her between her shifts, or baking her something sweet. She worked so hard for us. And I discovered how satisfying it is to make something that tastes amazing."

"Did you grow up in Vancouver?"

"Nah, I grew up close to Kelowna. My mom's still out there. I went to culinary school in Vancouver though, and I couldn't leave."

They transitioned into talking about what they both loved about Vancouver, and the conversation started to flow. And every time Brady's eyes strayed to watch Blake and Matthew flirt their way through the first hole, and then the second—as Brady and Cole were still waiting to hit a ball at all—Cole would touch his arm or tap his putter against his shoe. Clearly, Cole wanted to be the center of his attention, and it was a little nice having someone distract him from the way he was clearly currently sulking.

Brady's little sister, Syd, had given him a lecture before he'd left about how he'd better have a good fucking attitude, and if his sister thought he had a problem, he probably did. He took a deep breath, and he and Cole stepped up to the first hole.

"Gentlemen first," Cole said with a flourish of his arm.

"Are you not a gentleman?"

"Oh, honey. You don't want to know." His smile was sly and sexy, and something about it made Brady blush. The golf ball he'd chosen was green, and he dropped it on the Astroturf and lined his shot up. The flush of embarrassment disappeared when he focused on the first hole. It was L-shaped, and you had to hit a little cement wedge in the right spot to send your ball toward the hole. Competition, feats of strength, physical challenges—they all made his brain quiet. He could drop into his body and let his mind get far away from his thoughts.

He lined up and tapped his ball, sending it toward the exact spot he was aiming for. It ricocheted toward the hole, but the green was faster than he'd expected, and it slipped around the lip of the hole, ending up a foot and a half away instead of in it.

"Fuck." Brady was frustrated, but he kept it in.

"Fuck me," Cole said appreciatively. The thing that upset Brady impressed Cole. It tempered his upset a little. Brady turned back toward him, and Cole's gaze slid down his body and then back up. Brady preened a little. He wasn't interested in men, but he'd gone to gay bars with Syd, Quinn, and Hunter before, and he'd never minded getting hit on by men. It was flattering.

"Okay, Sporty Spice. My talents lie away from the green. You're going to have to have some patience with me here."

"No one could possibly be worse at mini golf than my brother," Brady reassured. "Quinn hit a ball onto the freeway once, and I still love him."

"Well, I hope you still love me after you watch this disaster." Cole had his eyes on his black golf ball as he tried to line his shot up, which spared Brady from having to hide whatever his face was doing. Obviously, Cole was joking. Was Brady truly this starved for attention that a man was making him feel a little fluttery and lightheaded?

Cole took a swing at his ball after hardly looking at where he was hitting it to. They were lucky the course had a wooden fence around it because Cole's ball shot off the green, bounced off the fence, and landed in the rocks.

"Is that a penalty?" Cole asked, sucking air through his teeth in regret.

"'Fraid so," Brady said.

Cole grumbled and went to pick his ball out of the rocks.

"You have to put it on the green here," Brady said, pointing to the spot closest to where Cole's ball had landed in the rocks. Cole dropped it. "You know, when I said I still loved Quinn after he hit a ball onto the freeway, it wasn't a suggestion."

Cole took another swing, more gently this time, and it bounced off the corner of the L, right back to him.

"Fine," Brady said when Cole looked at him with big sad eyes. "You don't have to count that one."

While Cole worked on getting his ball over to the end of the hole, Brady easily tapped his ball in and pulled the scorecard from his shorts pocket.

"You're not actually keeping score," Cole said, watching Brady write with the tiny pencil.

"Of course I am. I got a birdie."

"Well then, I got…" Cole turned to look at the hole he putted all over, tracing a fingertip in the air to each spot his ball landed. "Um, three."

"You are a liar, Fawn," Brady said, falling easily into using someone's last name instead of their first.

"That's Chef Fawn," Cole said, getting a glimpse of the scorecard over Brady's shoulder as he added a seven to Cole's column and letting out a huff. Even the seven was generous, and Cole must have known that because he didn't argue.

"Yes, Chef."

By the time they were done with the first hole, the group in front of them was finishing up with the third, and they had twice as many people. Miles and Luca had bonded over brewing beer during the bachelor party, and Brady was a little resentful that it felt like he was in a Ruby Reds bubble at the moment, despite the fact that Luca Bischel was the only current New Jersey player.

But as soon as Brady started pitying himself, he felt Cole's hand on his arm again. "Are you waiting for me to go first?"

"Sorry, no, but you can," Brady said. It took everything in him to not correct the way Cole held his putter. "Remember: putting is gentle."

"You're gentle," Cole quipped. It wasn't a comeback that had any thought behind it, but it made him shiver.

Cole's first swing was only better insofar as the ball remained on the green. They were aiming to hit the ball through a small path under a miniature castle, and Cole's hit the front of the castle and bounced back.

"Fuck."

"You got this," Brady coached. "You want to follow through with your swing. Where your putter goes is where your ball will go."

Cole tried again. And then again. Brady was beginning to regret letting him go first because he surely would have been done with the hole himself by this time. But on Cole's fifth stroke, the ball went through the castle and caught a tiny path that skipped him through most of the rest of the hole, down to where the little red flag waited for them.

"Sick," Cole said, watching his ball roll to a stop only inches from the hole.

Brady lined his shot up and gently sent his ball down the same path. His green ball knocked against the side of Cole's, sending it straight into the hole, landing with a hollow thunk.

"So that's, like, a hole in one for me?"

"Do you count differently in a kitchen?" Brady asked. He tapped his ball home for another two strokes and wrote a five for Cole.

The third hole had a bridge over a little moat, and when Cole noticed that Brady's attention was once again straying to Blake and Matthew, he cleared his throat and wiggled his ass a little while he lined up his shot. His ball went straight into the water, and he had to use his putter to fish it out of the little cement stream that smelled about as clean as it looked. He made a face, and Brady rolled his eyes.

"Drop it at the end of the bridge," he said, sparing them both from the pain of watching Cole hit it into the water several times in a row.

"Rethinking who the worst mini golfer is yet?"

"You really haven't met my brother," Brady reassured him. Cole was probably on par with Quinn's abilities, but Brady felt a pull to make Cole feel better. Obviously, he couldn't lie and tell Cole he was doing a great job, but he could at least cushion the blow a little.

By the fifth hole, Brady couldn't take it anymore. "I can't watch you do this in good conscience."

"What?"

"Your grip. Your swing. Whatever feeling you had yesterday that made you correct the way I was holding that knife is what I'm feeling right now. It's like this." He slowly showed Cole what his hands should look like, and Cole copied him.

"It feels weird," he said, scrunching his nose.

"You have the best control this way."

"And then whack it."

"No," Brady said quickly, and before he knew it, he had dropped his own club in order to wrap himself around Cole in an absolute cliché of a golf-swing lesson. He'd be embarrassed, but the day was getting a little chilly, actually, and Cole was warm and fit against him like a glove. He smelled spicy, unmistakably male, and Brady tucked himself in a little closer. "Like this," he whispered, his hands guiding Cole's as they rocked at the hip, gently tapping the ball toward the mouth of the dragon that covered the fifth hole.

The ball disappeared into the dragon's mouth easily, and Brady reluctantly let go, taking a step back.

"Oh, I like golf lessons," Cole said. He had that wicked grin again, and Brady suspected he would flirt with the dragon as easily as he flirted with Brady. Cole wasn't a stranger at this point in the long list of wedding events, and he'd watched Cole flirt with waitstaff, grandparents, and a selection of the straightest-looking men Canada could present him with. Brady wasn't special.

Cole hopped over the dragon's tail and watched his ball come out the other side and roll straight into the hole.

"Holy shit!" he yelled, club over his head. "Hole in one!" He yelled loud enough for the rest of their party to hear and received congratulations shouted back at him. He was content to take full credit, despite the fact that it really had been Brady's swing. Brady kept his lips zipped, though. He enjoyed seeing Cole smile like that. Plus, now he knew how to get a hole in one himself.

His own ball went into the dragon's mouth in the exact same way, but it hit a different path inside. It came rolling out a tube five feet away from the hole. Brady groaned.

"If you ever need pointers, I'm kind of an expert now," Cole told him. Sassy.

"Yeah, what should I work on?"

"You should probably find a big hot hockey player to come swing your club for you."

Fuck. Cole knew what he was doing, and the clarity that competition had brought Brady at the beginning of their game had vaporized. When Brady took his swing, his hands were a little shaky, and his putt left his ball nearly as far away from the hole as it started.

Embarrassing.

He put some effort into his third shot, and the ball zipped around the lip the same way it had on the first hole. He grumbled as he tapped his ball a short two inches home and recorded their scores again. He hated the unwelcome shame-adjacent grumpy feeling he got when he was athletically bested. Lots of his teammates over the years had the same streak, so they understood. His brother Jonathan never got quite as upset about losing as Brady did, and it was probably why Brady was in the NHL and Jonathan was currently mowing lawns and following Hunter around with a hammer and a paintbrush, looking for the next task he could be assigned.

Those were traits Brady liked about Jonathan. He was nice, solid, reliable, emotionally stable. He didn't have to worry about making a fool out of himself on a mini golf course.

"You'll kill the next hole, sweetheart," Cole said, taking his hand and leading him to the beginning of the sixth hole. Both of the other groups were far beyond them now, making their way efficiently through the course. Their whoops and cheers and groans were as loud as what was happening in Brady's head, but of course, they were having fun. Brady was at the top of a spiral he was trying desperately to stay out of.

"You can show me how to putt again if it will put a smile back on your face," Cole said, hand still in Brady's. His expression went from coy to concerned. "You can mark the hole in one for yourself. You were the one who made that putt."

"No, it's fine. I'm an idiot. I'm sorry. It's just mini golf. I know that."

"Hey, I didn't come here today to diminish your feelings. But I am having fun with you, even though I know who you'd rather be hanging out with." Brady's eyes betrayed him, looking past Cole to where Blake was watching Matthew putt, perpetual heart eyes as present as ever. Cole squeezed his hand. "I bet this week is hard for you."

That was too close to what Brady was feeling. Cole was implying something, and Brady didn't want to examine it. He eased his hand away from Cole's.

"I'm fine. I'm sorry for being stupid about that hole. Come on. You don't need me to help you, you got this." He stopped himself from spiraling. Just because Blake was ignoring him didn't mean that they weren't still friends. They were still close. Cole had a smile on his face again, a little pursed like the jury was still out.

No, Brady wasn't hanging out with his goalie partner, the person who was the most significant to him, at least during the season. The person who Brady was man enough to admit he had a little hero worship for. But he was hanging out with someone who was genuinely trying to make sure Brady had a good time, and he wasn't sure exactly how he deserved that.

"You will never believe what is happening in this godforsaken town," Syd said when Brady picked up her call that evening. He was puttering around his apartment, trying to settle back in a little after being gone most of the summer. After the wedding, he would go back to Minnesota, but not for long. It was time to shift gears back to hockey.

"Well, I know you're ready to go back to school if you're insulting Minneapolis." In a few months, Minneapolis would be her beloved homeland, and Madison would be on her shitlist. The grass is always greener.

"Yeah, yeah. Guess."

"Um, Quinn isn't depressed anymore and everything is normal now."

"Not even close."

"Okay. Quinn adopted an ostrich."

"Sadly, that's closer. Quinner punched Jon."

"What? With his fist?" The glow of his refrigerator light made Brady realize how dark out it had gotten. He flipped his kitchen light on and kept taking inventory. He'd picked up a few staples at the gas station, but he had little more than eggs in his refrigerator.

"Yeah. Jon's gonna have a black eye."

"What happened?"

"Quinner sucker punched him."

"I'm asking about motivation."

"Oh. Well, here is the more surprising part: Jon and Hunter are dating."

"I understood all of the individual words in that sentence, but I don't understand them together."

Syd's bright laughter made him wish he had forced her to be his wedding date. But bringing your little sister was more pathetic than going alone.

"Yeah, they're—ugh I hate talking on the phone when you can't see my obscene hand gestures. I should have FaceTimed you. They're fucking."

"Each other."

"Yes."

"Since when is Jon gay? Did he come out, and I didn't notice because there is already so much gay around me?"

"Watch out or you'll be next," she teased, and her words rattled around inside of him. "Jon hasn't ironed out a label but mumbled something about a spectrum. Whatever, labels don't matter."

"How did they get together?"

"Well, you know that our middle brother has been living on planet Quinn lately, and Jon can't help himself from, well, helping people. I guess…proximity? H said that he and Jon had never gotten to know each other very well until now. And apparently, Hunter is delectable. Something that I, as a femme-attracted person, know very little about."

"Yeah, Hunter is cute," Brady said absently, chewing on the idea of later-in-life same-gender attraction. A sweet, blond goalie floated through his mind. It was uncomfortably close for Blake to make his way to this part of Brady's brain. He had been pushing those ideas away for a year and a half, and he still couldn't look at them head-on. He kept it in his periphery.

"Alright, loverboy, the gay train is coming for you faster than I anticipated. I'm hiding from Quinner in the basement, and I've seen Hunter cry multiple times this week. It's weird here without you."

"You could have come to the wedding." Brady could never get a girlfriend to stick around for long, and nothing made him feel more pathetic about it than his sister being his most viable wedding plus-one.

"Gross," she dismissed. Syd was not the kind of person who grew up dreaming about her nuptials.

"I'm glad I got to see so much of you in the summer this year."

"Same. The duplex is pretty messy right now—interpersonally—but I'm glad we got to stick together even though Mom and Dad sold the house."

"Don't tell Quinn that. It might make him smile."

Syd laughed. "I'll let you go, and I'll keep you updated on the home front. Tomorrow is the rehearsal dinner?"

"Mmhm."

"Okay. Be good," she said, and Brady didn't argue against her warning. He wanted to be purely happy for his friend, but he could feel a storm cloud brewing, and he couldn't put his finger on exactly why. The whole week felt…uncomfortable.

"Keep in touch."