Jesse

Jones looks at his phone while we’re all changing in the locker room and says, “fuck!”

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing,”

he shakes his head and puts his phone back in his pocket.

My stomach drops. Has something happened to Nate?

Jones doesn’t exactly run out of there like there’s an emergency, but he does look like he’s in a hurry, and worried.

I stuff my things into my bag as quickly as I can and follow him outside. I catch him just as he’s getting into his car.

“Hey, Jones, what’s wrong?”

He looks like he’s going to tell me to mind my business and jump in the car, but he pauses with his hand on the door.

“Just some family shit, don’t worry about it.”

“Do you need help?”

He pauses as if considering.

“If it’s private then…”

“Fuck it,”

he says, “jump in.”

I don’t ask him where we’re going until we’ve stopped seeing the little college logo on lampposts everywhere.

“The Hilton,”

he replies.

I keep quiet, letting him tell me what he wants to, but my mind can’t help racing. Why The Hilton? Is Nate there? Is he in trouble? Did he go to The Hilton with someone? Did they hurt him? My hands ball into fists at my side.

“My mom’s there.”

“Oh.”

My fists un-ball, but not completely. I like Jones’ mom, she always makes us pizza and lets us hang out in her pool, even though we must be annoying as shit.

“I guess she had a row with my dad.”

“Oh. Is she okay?”

“That’s what I’m going to find out.”

I wait for the idiot or dumbass, but it doesn’t come. I guess he’s too caught up in this stuff with his mom to call me names. “My dad can be kind of a dick sometimes.”

“I know the feeling.”

Jones sighs. “Fucking dads man.”

I never imagined Jones having a problem with his dad before. He’s the good-looking guy with a Rolex, who comes to all our important games in a Beemer with a beautiful wife on his arm. I can’t imagine him ever making his son feel guilty for having to re-mortgage the house so he could play hockey, though it was him who really wanted the son to play hockey in the first place.

Jones walks around like nothing’s ever touched him in his life. Like he’s always just got everything he wanted when he wanted it. But maybe I’m wrong about that. Maybe everyone has shit going on we can’t even see, no matter how perfect their lives seem.

“How did you know your mom was at The Hilton, did she text you?”

“No, Nate did. He heard them arguing last night.”

Poor Nate. I want to call him to make sure he’s okay, but he doesn’t need me doing that, he has his girlfriend/friend.

“Is Nate going to be there?”

“He said he’s staying with Katie.”

Katie, of course. “His girlfriend?”

Jones laughs, “Nate’s gay, she’s just his friend.”

“Oh.”

He side-eyes me. “Got a problem with that?”

“With what?”

He juts his chin and keeps driving, “my brother being gay.”

“No, obviously not.”

“Good.”

I imagine telling him about liking guys. It’s on the tip of my tongue. If his brother is gay, surely he can’t have a problem with his friend being… whatever I am? It’s right there, but when I open my mouth, it won’t come out.

It only takes five minutes to reach The Hilton. Jones parks outside and looks like he belongs everywhere, so when we walk up to the doors, the guard smiles at us and calls Jones “Sir.”

He goes up to the desk and beams at the woman standing behind it.

“Could you send a message to my mom please?”

he asks. His accent is super refined from all those private schools he went to and he screams money, so she doesn’t even hesitate before doing what he asks.

We take a seat in the lobby and wait to see if his mom will want to come down to see him. For the first time outside of hockey, I think I see Jones look nervous.

When she comes down, Jones’ mom looks as pretty and put-together as always, though a little tired maybe.

Jones hugs her and I think she’s going to cry, so I look away until she says my name.

I let her hug me, but I can see she wants to talk to Jones alone, so I ask her if there’s anything she needs.

“Could you find Nate for me please and check he’s okay? If he’s not at Katie’s place, he’ll be at the library.”

I agree, not just to be polite, but because it’s what I wanted to do anyway.

Jones throws his car keys at me.

“Take these,”

he says, “Mom, you’ve got your car right?”

She nods.

It’s not the first time I’ve drove Jones’ car. Occasionally I’ll be the designated driver at a party, though people don’t usually trust me to do things like that. I’d never drink and drive, so it pisses me off when people think that.

I have no idea where Katie lives, so I drive to the library and park next to a beaten-up Ford Escort and lock Jones’ car.

The main part of the library is mostly modern, with floating shelves and colourful swivel chairs, but there’s a reading room that looks like something from a Harry Potter movie. All dark wood and stained-glass windows. For some reason, I can’t imagine Nate studying by the floating shelves when he could have that dark academia shit.

I’m right, and I find him sitting at one of the long desks by a window with a book open.

My shoes make too much noise as I walk behind the people sitting at the green lamps, bent over their books and laptops. He looks up before I reach him and I can tell he’s surprised to see me.

I whisper so I don’t piss everyone off. “Your mom asked me to check on you.”

“My mom?”

“I was with Jones… Harrison when he went to The Hilton to see her.”

A dark cloud comes over Nate’s face. “Is she okay?”

“She looked okay. Harrison’s probably going to take her to lunch or something.”

Nate looks down at his book.

“Want me to leave you alone? I’ll tell her you’re okay.”

He shuts the book a little more loudly than I expected him too.

“No, let’s go hit something.”

Nate isn’t surprised to find me driving his brother’s car. He hooks his phone up to the Bluetooth and asks me what music I want to listen to.

“I don’t care, you choose.”

“You don’t like all that shit Harrison listens to do you?”

No, I don’t, but I also don’t want to shit talk my captain behind his back. Nate’s his brother, it’s allowed. A different kind of bro code. Talking of which… should I really be going anywhere with Nate right now when I’m supposed to just be checking on him? That’s what I’m doing right? Checking on him.

“Come on, tell me what you like.”

I pass him my phone and tell him the password. “1 2 3 4.”

“Please tell me that’s not your password.”

“What? I don’t have anything to steal, or hide.”

Well, that last one isn’t really true, but I don’t have gay hook-up apps just open on my phone for people to find either.

“Go on Spotify and open the most recent playlist.”

I can feel my face getting hot, but I tell myself to stop being stupid. So what if he thinks my taste in music is lame?

“Tina Turner?”

I smile.

“It’s my mom’s favourite, well, soul, Motown, stuff like that, it’s what I grew up with.”

“Is she your favourite?”

I shrug, “put it on, you’ll like it.”

Proud Mary starts playing and I sing along, even though I can’t sing for shit. Nate starts laughing and it doesn’t feel like he’s laughing at me.

“Are you surprised?”

“Yes, I didn’t have you pegged as an oldies guy.”

“People surprise you sometimes Jones.”

He cringes and smiles at the same time when I call him that. I sing along with the rest of the song and when it ends, I ask him if I’m right in thinking we’re going to the batting cages.

He gives me a sheepish look.

“Is someone starting to like sports?”

Nate smirks and looks out of the window. “Maybe,”

he mutters.

“Sorry, what was that?”

He laughs and shakes his head.

“Skip forward to Marvin Gaye.”

I watch him flip through the playlist in the rear-view while Nutbush City Limits plays. His eyes get wide and he blushes. “Sexual Healing?”

“Not that one,”

I look away and hope he can’t see me turning red, “I meant I Heard it on the Grapevine, you skipped ahead too far.”

“Oh yeah.”

He presses play, but all I can hear now in my head is Sexual Healing. And shit, should I really have told him to put a song about cheating on right now?

“You can skip this if you want.”

“It’s fine, I like it. You have good taste in music. Well, your mom does.”

“What music does your mom like?”

“Shania Twain.”

I laugh and Nate cracks up.

“Shania’s not bad,” I say.

“I guess. She used to put it on and dance around the house with us when we were little and she was cleaning.”

“Your mom cleaned?”

“Yeah, why?”

My face gets hot.

“We didn’t always live in a big house. Not that big anyway.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Nate flashes me a smile in the rear-view. “I know.”

I pull up outside the batting cages and ask Nate if he still wants to hit something.

“Absolutely.”

Nate’s a little better this time. He doesn’t drop the bat, so that’s an improvement. I can see him taking his anger out on the baseball. Maybe he’s imagining the ball is his dad. Or is it only me who does that?

Jones messages me just as we’re leaving.

‘Mom’s fine, I’m back at the house, we still going to this party tonight?’

“That was J… Harrison.”

Nate laughs as he pulls his seatbelt on, “you can call him Jones, I’ll know who you’re talking about.”

“He says your mom’s fine.”

He nods. His face is stony again and I can see how fucking angry he is and I assume it’s at his dad. I’d be livid if my dad cheated on my mom, so I get it.

“Do you want me to come back to your house with you? Or get Jones?”

“No,”

Nate shakes his head, “I don’t want to go home, not yet.”

“You wanna come back to the house with me?”

“Thanks but, I think I’ll just go back to the library, I have a class in an hour anyway.”

I hate the thought of him sitting in the library by himself, stewing in his anger.

The cages seemed to calm him down until I mentioned his mom again.

“Do you wanna come to a party tonight? You could bring your friend.”

“I don’t know…”

“You don’t have to, obviously, I’ll just message you the address and you can decide.”

He nods and my stomach flips at the thought of him being there.