“Oh,” Mattie says, lips twitching. “You have a girlfriend?”
Blake doesn’t know what the fuck is wrong with him, maybe he’s tired, or maybe he just had the worst few days of the season, maybe not on the ice, but definitely in his head, but he hesitates. And not in an oh, no, it’s nothing serious kind of way. More in an I’m trying to hide something from you kind of way. So he can’t just give Mattie an extremely delayed and extremely untrue yes.
Maybe Mattie will think that Blake lied about having plans, but Blake’s face is probably several shades of red right now and he’s being cagey and there’s no way Mattie doesn’t at least figure out that there’s something going on here.
Mattie’s lips stop twitching and he grows serious. He wraps an arm around Blake and gives him a hug. “Dinner tomorrow?”
“Okay,” Blake says.
“Okay,” Mattie echoes.
Dinner the next day is comfortable and the girls pull Blake into their playroom downstairs and put him in their tiny goal and start shooting balls at him with their tiny sticks. Mattie doesn’t talk about the day before, but he insists on walking Blake out to his car later, so Blake already knows what’s coming.
“You know,” Mattie says, “I know when something’s none of my business, so I’m not going to ask. I’ll say, though… that it seemed like there was something you might want to talk about. And… I have ears.”
“Mattie…”
“That’s literally all I wanted to tell you. I’m not gonna ask any questions. All I’m saying is… well, you know what I’m saying.”
“Thank you,” Blake says.
Mattie sends him on his way with a mumbled, “Drive safe,” and then wanders back to the door, giving him a wave before he heads back inside.
Blake drives back to his apartment, parks in his spot, sits in his car for a good ten minutes, staring into space, his thoughts all over the place, until a car door slams shut somewhere and he snaps out of it.
#
Elliot sort of bullies his team into making it to the second round of playoffs. He doesn’t know how else to describe it. The Ravens haven’t made it past the first round in actual years, often didn’t make the playoffs at all, and during a team meeting before the playoffs start, he tells his guys that it’s not going to happen this year.
They’re going to make it past the first round.
No one expects it. Again, they only barely managed to hold on to their wildcard spot. The media is talking about them like they’ve already lost, think they can’t make it past Montreal in a hundred years.
It’s not like Elliot doesn’t have doubts, he just doesn’t allow himself to acknowledge them, because he has to walk into that playoff series like he believes that they can make it to the other end of it with four wins.
They lose the first game, because of course they do.
The guys are a lot quieter than they should be after one loss. Because that’s it. One loss.
“Stop acting like we lost the entire fucking series,” Elliot says.
He’s so mad, he’s pretty sure he scores all the goals that follow out of spite. Two in the next game, another two in the third one, and after they win those two, the rest of the team catches on. They win the fourth, too.
They drop the fifth, but this time the locker room isn’t as quiet as it was after the other loss. They’re taking it back to New York. They’re going to win in New York.
Elliot scores the game winner, and just like that, they’re going to Round 2.
They don’t make it past the Grizzlies, but this time nobody dares to even insinuate that they’re not good enough. They made it past Montreal, knocked out a serious contender, and when they do their exit interviews this year, Elliot doesn’t waste any time on talking about how they weren’t good enough.
He talks about how hard his guys fought. He talks about how proud he is of them. How he can’t wait to do this all over again, hopefully minus losing the second round.
Elliot takes his entire team out for dinner before they all leave town for the summer. He doesn’t like the thought that some of them won’t be back in the fall, despite their performance in the playoffs. It’s a good group.
“Thanks, Moo,” Andreas says when he hugs him goodbye. “You know, for… everything.”
“Thanks, Andi,” Elliot echoes.
He watches Andreas and Evan walk away, nearly shoving each other into traffic as they leave.
“They grow up so fast,” Adam says and throws an arm around Elliot. “Okay, listen, now that all the children are headed home, I need your help.”
“Yeah? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, really,” Adam says. “I need your not-so-professional opinion. Are we too young to get married?”
“I, uh…” Elliot hadn’t really thought about it. “I don’t know?”
Adam is a year older than him, and even if he wasn’t, Elliot knows plenty of players his age who are engaged, even some who are married already. Most of those guys have been with their girlfriends since they were teenagers, though. Like Magnus. He met his wife when he was fifteen, but they didn’t get married until they were together for over ten years.
“You’re not helping,” Adam says. “Have you never thought about it?”
“Getting married?”
“Yeah.”
“I… No?”
“I mean, you and Natalie have been dating for nearly two years, don’t you… I don’t know. Maybe I’m weird, but I started thinking about marrying Lou, like, two months after I first met her.”
Elliot only blinks at him.
“No, don’t look at me like that, oh no, Adam is being ridiculous again,” Adam says
