Three Is The Luckiest Number
by Catherine Cloud
Copyright © 2020 Catherine Cloud
Cover design © 2020 Karolina Polasz / karoldraws.tumblr.com
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are reused in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is purely coincidental.
For Julie
Chapter One
The day before the Draft, they agree that this will be the last time.
It’s a decision that’s made for them, by life, by common sense, and by however many miles will be between them once the next few days are over.
They could spend the rest of the summer together, in a neatly-kept backyard in Connecticut, or in a basement with black marks on the wall in Ontario, but they’ll be training in different places for what comes next, for what will likely be the next twenty years of their lives.
God, Blake hopes it’ll be twenty years.
Twenty years of hockey. It seems impossible. He’s eighteen. He hasn’t even made it through twenty whole years. Elliot’s a few months younger than him, a gigantic pimple blooming on his forehead, hair hiding it badly. He’ll play twenty years of hockey, too. Hell, he’ll play twenty-five if they let him.
Elliot Cowell is a prodigy. He’ll be an All Star, a leader in the room, and maybe, one day, a captain.
Sometimes Blake can’t believe that Elliot is the same guy who’s been kissing him whenever he’s sure that no one is looking, who’s been stealing his shirts, who’s been slipping into his bed, quiet laughter in the air, lips always eager, and his hands even more so. They never talk about it, never say a word, it’s just dark corners wherever they can find them, shared rooms on the road, sleepovers that end with them on the same mattress, with hands under shirts, with them shushing each other, and there’s no room for conversations in between.
They don’t talk about it until the day before the Draft, when they’re in a dark stairwell in a hotel in Ottawa. First it’s Elliot’s lips on his, then it’s, “This is the last time we’re doing this.”
Blake says, “I know,” because he did know. He knew all along. He heard the way Elliot was talking about the NHL, about what he thought his life would be like, and Blake never had a place in the future he was imagining. Elliot wants to play until he drops dead on the ice, he wants five Cups and three gold medals, wants everything the hockey gods will grant him. There’s no room for Blake between all that. There’s no room for error. No room for rumors, for scandals, for PR disasters. So, yes, Blake knows. It doesn’t take him by surprise.
Elliot is going to go second or third, there’s no consensus, really, all they know is that he won’t be first, because Yuri Petrov will go first, to the Texas Wildcats. So for Elliot it’ll be New York, if he’s second, or Hartford, if he’s third.
“Where do you want to go?” Blake asked him this morning.
“It’s not my choice to make,” said Elliot and tugged his fingers through his hair, like that would tame it somehow. It’s starting to curl a little at the tips. Blake overheard Elliot’s mom say that he should have gotten a haircut and Elliot looked at her like she’d gone insane, because how could she possibly think of something as mundane as haircuts at a time like this. She muttered at him in Spanish and Blake had no idea what she was saying, but going by the look on Elliot’s face, she was telling him off.
“But if you could?” Blake asked.
“I can’t,” was Elliot’s reply and that was it for their conversation.
Blake would choose if he could. For him it would be the Cardinals, always the Cardinals. Somewhere in his grandma’s basement is a box full of old Cardinals gear that Blake would never let her throw away, even when he’d long outgrown it. But the Cardinals are picking third, a pick that wasn’t even theirs until last season’s trade deadline. The Cardinals don’t need a goalie. And Blake isn’t going third. Maybe he’ll go in the third round. That’s probably his most realistic outlook, even though Elliot is dead-sure that he’ll go in the second. He doesn’t mind speculating about where Blake might end up, but as soon as it’s about him, he starts shutdown procedures. He’s scared, but he won’t say it. Elliot remains cheerful, smiling at everyone, but there’s other stuff going on underneath that he won’t let anyone else see.
If Blake was getting the kind of attention from the media that Elliot is getting, he probably wouldn’t want to talk about anything anymore either. It’s all stats, the tiniest of flaws being compared, speed and puck movement, every little weakness laid bare for the world to see as they try to figure out which team should pick him.
The two of them in a dark stairwell in a hotel in Ottawa the night before the Draft? Another weakness, but not one that anybody knows about.
Nobody will know about it.
Because this is the last time.
Elliot kisses him the same way he always does, like they snuck away again, like there’s no significance to any of this. His touches are featherlight against Blake’s sides, skimming along the hem of Blake’s shirt, reluctant, like he knows he shouldn’t take this too far, not when they’re hiding in a stairwell, dark as it may be. In the beginning, Elliot always kissed him like he
