Jesse

Practise kicks my ass. Coach must have woken up on the wrong side of the bed this morning and has us doing bag skates. Nine out of ten times, someone pukes. Usually me.

That Five Guys didn’t help, but not drinking at the last party probably did more for my stamina than switching my grilled cheese sandwiches for a salad ever could.

At least my aching body and the exhaustion of practise takes my mind off the conversation I had with Nate yesterday. That and our upcoming pre-season scrimmage against Denver on Friday.

I have two missed calls from my dad when I get out of practise and tell Jones I’m heading over to the library. He looks at me like he doesn’t believe me, and I don’t hang around for him to ask if I’m still getting tutored by Nate. What if he reads: no but Nate wants me to tutor him in something else, all over my face? No thanks. I might be bigger and stronger than Jones, but the rules against hitting your captain are kind of like the rules against hitting your sister – you don’t do it.

I call my dad back while I wait for the bus. Let’s just get this over with.

The conversation’s going okay until I dare to yawn.

“Were you out drinking last night?”

“No Dad, why is that the first thing you think if I’m tired?”

“Are you getting enough sleep?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not staying up playing on the PlayStation all night? An athlete needs plenty of rest.”

If I said Harrison Jones, college hockey superstar and first round draft pick, stays up some nights playing GTA until 3am, my life wouldn’t be worth living. I could probably recite the exact lecture from my dad’s practised hockey-dad verse book by heart. I’m not Harrison Jones. I can’t afford to slack off. I don’t have the natural talent Jones has. I didn’t grow up with the resources Jones did. Jones was handed everything on a golden hockey stick…

“No Dad, I’m not staying up playing PlayStation.”

“Don’t give me that sarcasm boy, I can hear it.”

I swallow and look down the street for my bus, where the fuck is it?

“You might be college-educated now, but that doesn’t make you smart.”

“I know dad. I wasn’t trying to be sarcastic. I was just tired because we had bag skates.”

“Have you been eating right?”

Nope. “Yeah.”

“Protein? Cutting back on the beer and pizza and all that shit?”

“Yeah.”

“So then, bag skates shouldn’t bother you.”

Bag skates bother NHL players, but I’m not about to argue with him when he’s in this mood.

If I say nothing, he’s going to ask why I’m ignoring him, but if I say yes sir he’s going to accuse me of sarcasm.

“I’ll work harder,” I try.

He sighs. “What are you doing now?”

“Going to the library to get some books.”

“You should be going to the gym to work out. Your size is what sets you apart.”

“If I don’t keep my C grade average, I won’t be playing hockey at all.”

Shit. The silence speaks volumes.

“Are you failing your classes?”

“No, I’m not failing, but I will be if I don’t keep up.”

“Alright.”

Phew. Bullet dodged.

“Go study, but don’t slack on the work-outs, and get plenty of sleep.”

“Okay Dad.”

“And eat plenty of protein.”

“Okay, gotta go Dad, here’s my bus.”

I hang up and sink into the bus stop. The bus still isn’t here, but I couldn’t take another second of that conversation.

An athlete needs rest. He talks like I’m playing in the NHL. I’ll never play in the NHL. I’m not delusional about that. He’s the only one who is. I’m a college athlete. This is the highlight of my life. The thing I’ll brag about to my kids when I’m older. But it won’t be the thing I’m bitter about. I’m not going to try and repeat it vicariously through them when my time’s done and I’m working a 9-5 or construction like my dad. No sir. When this is over, I’ll bow out gracefully and not spend the rest of my life looking back.

I get a message from Nate after I get on the bus, asking what I’m up to.

‘Going to the library. Yeah really.’

‘Want some company?’

My heart does an annoying little flutter. Fuck.

‘Yeah sure.’

I sit out in the main part with the floating shelves because the reading room is way too intimidating, and I feel like everyone looks at me like I’m being too loud the second I walk in.

I’ve still got my gear with me because I knew if I went home I wouldn’t want to come back out again. I’d take a nap and get roped into playing on the PS5 and waste the day away.

Jones can do that because he doesn’t need a back-up job, but I can’t.

When Nate walks in looking clean and fresh and like he smells good, I want to kick my bag with my sweaty jock shorts and socks to the other side of the library. The shorts are supposed to have anti-odour technology, but I don’t think they’ve tested them against Coach’s bag skates.

Nate gives me a shy smile when he spots me and walks over.

“Hey, we can go in the other room if you want?”

“Here’s fine,” he says.

He takes a seat next to me at the table.

“I came straight from practise, so, I have all my stuff with me,”

I gesture to the bag beside my chair, “sorry if it’s all gross and stuff.”

Nate glances at the bag and I think he’s wondering where all the rest of it is.

“We keep the skates and sticks at the rink.”

He laughs, “I know, my brother’s a hockey player remember?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Imagine if they made you cart all that stuff around.”

“I did, when I was a kid. In the back of my dad’s car when I played in juniors. And then before that, when my dad was trying to get me onto a team.”

“You must have been really dedicated.”

I snort, “yeah he was. We were one step away from moving to Toronto.”

“Why Toronto?”

I give him a look, “I thought you knew hockey?”

He laughs, dropping his eyes with those thick eyelashes. Fuck.

“I guess Toronto is like the home of hockey or something?”

“They just have really good junior training programmes.”

Nate fixes me with his eyes now in a way that tells me I’m not supposed to look away.

“You didn’t do too bad here though. You got a scholarship to an Ivy League school because of how good you are.”

I don’t know whether to be proud or tell him to shut up. I can’t be that good.

“Out of high school, they don’t know what your potential is because you haven’t stopped developing yet, so they take a chance and watch to see how you’ll turn out.”

See if you’ll get injured, which I did.

“You seem to know a lot about the process.”

I shrug. “I lived it.”

“But a lot of players don’t really care. They leave that up to the coach and just do as they’re told. Or at least, that’s what Harrison did.”

“Oh, I do as I’m told,”

I laugh, trying not to sound bitter, “but I am interested in the development stuff.”

“Maybe you’d make a good hockey scout.”

“Maybe.”

I shrug. I don’t want this attention. I turn it on him. “What are you gonna be when you grow up?” I flash him my best grin, showing my chipped tooth.

Nate blushes. “Honestly, I don’t know yet. There’s a lot of jobs I can do with my degree. I need to get a graduates degree for most, if not all of them, and I need at least a 3.3 – 3.7 to get onto an MA programme, but I learn about mathematics, analytics, computer science, chemical engineering…”

Nate stops talking, his cheeks pink. He tucks his hair behind his ear and looks down at the table, “sorry, this must be really boring.”

“No, not at all.”

It’s the opposite actually. Listening to Nate talk about all that stuff is nice. It’s good to remind myself there’s more to life than becoming a professional hockey player. There are loads of different versions of success, and most of them don’t involve the NHL or the AHL or even the ECHL.

“I think I wanna be a coach or a trainer or something,”

I say. As soon as I say it out loud, it feels good. Right.

Nate smiles. “You’d be really good at that.”

“And by the way, I know you’re getting a 4.0 in all your classes.”

He blushes and fuck me if that isn’t the cutest sight I’ve ever seen.

Nate takes his books out and we study for a couple of hours. The time passing nicely, though I get distracted a lot, especially when the sun starts coming in on Nate’s face and he doesn’t even notice because he’s so engrossed in his book.

When I look at what he’s reading, it doesn’t even look like English. It’s mostly equations and pages and pages of tiny footnotes. Fuck I hate footnotes!

When he finally puts his pen down and looks up, I find an opening and ask if he wants to grab something to eat. When he invites me back to his house, I have to work hard to look casual about it.

I think I might catch a hint of regret or guilt at leaving the library before it’s dark from Nate, but I can’t see any.

I wait until we get outside to ask how his mom is.

“They’re working it out,” he says.

“Oh, that’s good.”

“I don’t know.”

We take our time walking to the bus stop. I want to make sure he’s alright, but I don’t want to push it.

“I don’t want my parents to split up, but I don’t want my mom to forgive my dad for cheating either. Is that weird?”

“No, it’s not weird. I’d feel exactly the same way.”

“What would you do?”

“I’d kick my dad’s ass.”

Nate laughs. “Yeah that’s not really an option for me.”

“It’s not for me either, but I’d want to.”

We stop at the bus shelter, the sun just starting to set.

“I hate cheating,” I say.

Nate looks at me.

“How many girlfriends have you had?”

“A few, not many and not for long.”

“Why not?”

he looks at his shoes, “you don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to.”

“No, it’s okay. I don’t know why. I’ve tried, but I guess girls just see the hockey player. And then they realise I’m not gonna be a pro, or they like my teammates better. I don’t have a lot else to offer.”

“That’s not true.”

I don’t know what to say.

“… about what I said, at the house, about not wanting to be a 21-year old virgin.”

My throat gets dry and I can’t look at him.

“Would you… be interested, in sleeping with me?”

There’s a huge part of me, mostly from the waist down, that would happily take him into the woods behind the library and fuck his brains out if that’s what he wanted. But the one lonely brain cell acting as a free agent in my head tells me that he doesn’t really want that.

I take too long to answer and he says, “never mind, it was just an idea…”

“Yes.”

I feel Nate’s eyes on the side of my face and I know I’ve turned red, but I don’t care.

“I’ll… make out with you and we can fool around, and if you change your mind, we’ll just be friends.”

“Make out and fool around?”

“I meant what I said about not wanting to be any part of a regret.”

“So you do want to sleep with me or you don’t?”

“Yes. I do.”

When I look at him, he’s smiling. Blushing like crazy, but smiling.

No one’s home when we get back to Nate’s house. I follow him upstairs and I don’t have time to wonder if I’m doing the right thing or not when he leads me up to his room and pulls me over to the bed. Other parts of my body aren’t exactly sharing the blood flow enough for my brain to have a chance to think properly.

What I know beyond a doubt is that it feels good to kiss Nate. I love the way he fits inside my arms and the way his hair tickles my nose when I nuzzle his neck.

When he pulls away, he looks up at me with those gorgeous brown eyes the way he looked at me that day at the party, and in the den in his pyjamas. That expression tells me he wants this without him having to say anything, and he’s serious.

When he pulls me down onto the bed, I let him, climbing between his legs and pressing myself against him while holding most of my weight up on my arms. I can’t feel him through his jeans the way I could through the thin fabric of his pyjamas, but I can still feel him getting hard and rutting his hips up against mine.

“Wait,”

his hands are struggling with my fly and I stop him. “Let me.”

He drops his hands, but when I come up onto my knees and start unzipping him, he flinches.

“What’s wrong?”

“You don’t want me to touch you?”

“I do,”

I come back down and kiss him, slow and deep, my cock straining against my jeans as he starts grinding his hips against me again. I talk with my lips close to his, “but I wanna make you feel good first so you relax.”

He lets out a hot sigh and I have to release myself from my fly so my cock can finally escape it’s cage.

Jeans open, underwear still restraining me, I focus on Nate. Unzipping him, pulling his underwear down enough so his cock can free itself. Seeing how hard he is for me makes me want to go down on him and suck him fast until he comes, but I need to take things slow, work up to that. I don’t want to scare him off, or worse, push something too far so it ends up being exactly what I’m trying to avoid.

I give his cock a preliminary stroke and his hips shoot up from the bed and he makes a strangled noise. If I needed a reminder that this is the first time anyone’s ever touched him, that’s it.

I keep stroking, just slow, gentle strokes, as I come back down to kiss him while my hand works between us.

“Have you got any lube or lotion or anything?”

He nods towards the bedside cabinet and I open the top drawer and find some hand lotion – the kind of thing you can jerk off with and lie about if your mom goes snooping around. I’m definitely going to have to buy him some real lube if I’m going to teach him everything and make it as comfortable as I can for him.

I squeeze some lotion into my hand before putting it on him again. This time he moans and closes his eyes and arches his back. I press my lips against his neck and listen to the way he’s breathing, speeding up as his breath hitches.

His cock starts leaking pre-cum when I rub my thumb over the head and he makes a strangled sound as he pumps his hips, fucking into my hand. I have to rub my cock against the bed to get some friction. The noises Nate’s making and the way he’s fucking my hand like that is so fucking hot. I have to remind myself that this is the first time he’s done anything like this. I don’t need to get off right now. This is about him. I can get off later, thinking about him losing it because of the way I’m making him feel.

I tighten my grip and speed up, but Nate grabs my wrist and tells me to stop, so I do.

“What’s wrong?”

When I look down, his face is flushed and his hair messier than usual. Holy shit he looks good.

“I’m going to…”

I try not to laugh, “I know, that’s what I was trying to make you do.”

“But it’s so fast.”

“So what? This is the first time you got a hand-job from someone else, you already score points for getting your pants off first.”

My hand is still wrapped around his cock. He laughs and I bend down to kiss him, giving him a testing stroke before pulling away and asking if he wants me to go on.

He nods.

“Say it,”

I whisper.

“Yes.”

Fuck.

I pump his cock like it’s my own, watching him until he grabs my head and pulls it against his neck. Okay, so he’s too shy to let me watch him yet, we’ll work up to that.

I whisper against his ear, “come for me,”

and he unloads onto my hand, moaning my name.