Save of the Game by Avon Gale Read Free Book Online Page B

apartment, because he’d had to look up how to do laundry on the Internet.
    They ate pizza, did their laundry, played Grand Theft Auto , and watched hockey. Sometimes Riley looked over and caught Ethan watching him, and vice versa. They both pretended not to notice. It was clear, unspoken guy language that meant “If we don’t talk about it, it didn’t happen.”
    And Riley assumed that meant it wouldn’t happen again. Which Riley had to admit bummed him out.
    He thought about texting Lane, but it was hard to think of what to say. Does it make me gay if my roommate kissed me when he was drunk? Besides, it’s not like he really had to ask. It wasn’t the part where Ethan kissed him. It was the part where Riley liked it. A lot.
    But he still liked girls too. Didn’t he? It didn’t work like that, where you went from one to the other. Right? In hockey, if you decided to go from being a right-handed goalie, you had to turn in your equipment and get a new stick before you could switch.
    That was maybe not the best analogy. Still.
    Riley wished he knew Lane’s boyfriend, Jared, a little better. He shot with both hands, or whatever the equivalent would be in Riley’s poorly thought-out hockey metaphor. He always assumed people were talking about baseball teams when they used the expression “played for both teams,” though he didn’t know why.
    Riley didn’t have much time to think about it, though. He had a lot on his plate with practice and their first meeting with their rivals since last season’s game seven of the conference finals. And he liked helping out at the hockey camp, even if he wasn’t nearly as good with kids as Ethan was.
    The road trip was a long one, a Wednesday through Sunday, and the whole team was ready to beat the Savannah Renegades in both of their games. First they had to go and play the Spitfires in Spartanburg, South Carolina. They had a cool logo, an old World War I fighter plane. But they were the absolute worst team in the league, and their goalie, Isaac Drake, spent most of the game yelling. At his own team . The Spitfires only managed sixteen shots on goal during the entire game, and Riley was bored stiff by the time it was over.
    Their next game, against the Athens Ice Dogs, was a little harder. They were a surprise, coming out of nowhere and going on an impressive winning streak. The Storm pulled out a win in a shoot-out, and Riley was impressed as hell by their team. But he wasn’t impressed by the attendance, which was abysmal.
    “This is Athens, Georgia,” their goalie told Riley. “It’s college football season. There’s a reason we don’t play on Saturdays. There would literally be no one here.”
    While on the road, Riley was roommates with his new backup, Vazov. They would talk about the game, and Sasha would tell him things in his broken, halting English and teach him some Russian.
    Ethan got in a fight in every one of their games, but Riley saw him by the busses, laughing and comparing black eyes with his opponent from the Ice Dogs. Ethan told him later they were both Rangers fans, and it made Riley smile. Though Riley got off thinking about how hot Ethan looked when he fought.
    Riley watched Ethan a lot during games. He was always the first person to clap or cheer when someone scored a goal, and he never complained about his ice time or lack thereof. He never complained about anything. But Riley noticed that the longer the road trip went on, the more strained around the edges Ethan looked. His eyes were almost too bright, his laugh a little too loud. He also couldn’t sit still. His hands were always twitching, his leg constantly jostling on the bench or in his bus seat.
    The Saturday-night game against the Renegades was electric, the crowd filled to capacity, and the game fast, furious, and full of the best kind of emotion. The Renegades were good and kept Riley on his toes for the whole game. If he’d been just a little slower, his flashy, highlight-reel saves