When he gets back to New York, Natalie’s stuff is gone from Elliot’s apartment, and her key is on the kitchen counter without a note.
Chapter Twelve
The first time Blake sees Elliot’s apartment is a week before training camp starts for both of them. Elliot just got back into town and asked him if he wanted to hang out. Blake has been in town all along, mostly hanging out at Mattie’s house.
He invited him over for dinner the other day. Told him he’d retire at the end of the season. Mattie’s wife said he’d probably change his mind another twenty times, but Blake knows that Mattie’s made his choice. He hasn’t forgotten about what Mattie told him all those years ago, about seeing it coming. Blake is going to miss Mattie like hell, but he understands why Mattie told him.
So Blake will see it coming.
The invitation to Elliot’s is a good distraction, because otherwise Blake would spend another day wondering how he’ll deal with being on a team that doesn’t have Jake Matthews on it.
Elliot’s apartment is uptown and Blake takes the train, because he isn’t insane enough to drive, takes a book and reads on the train. He’s never been a huge reader, only picked up a book here and there and mostly stuck to audio books, but Charlie asked for the closest bookstore when he first came into town and they went and Blake has gone back there twice over the summer, looking around, picking up a bunch of fantasy novels.
Some kids recognize him at Penn Station and he stops to take pictures with them, other people looking at him like they’re trying to figure out who the hell he is, eventually wandering off when they realize that he’s not a Hollywood star.
Elliot meets him at the Subway, about ten minutes after Blake texts him that he made it and Elliot drags him to a takeout joint that sells Chinese food. Elliot walks in there with the confidence of someone who comes here more often than would make the Ravens’ nutritionist happy. He orders thirty dumplings.
“Seriously?” Blake asks.
“Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.”
“Have you invited ten other people?” Blake says drily, then remembers that Elliot has a girlfriend. “Oh, wait, is your girlfriend gonna be there?”
“Oh, uh, no. She’s kinda… not my girlfriend anymore,” Elliot says quickly and then turns away to order even more food, like the thirty dumplings, which are apparently just for the two of them, aren’t more than enough.
“Sorry,” Blake says as they head back out into the street. “That was a bit… I didn’t know you’d broken up.”
“Yeah, I didn’t want to… I don’t know. I guess I could have mentioned it, but then time passed and… yeah.”
“Sorry, that sucks. I’m not gonna ask what happened, but if you wanna talk about it…” Blake trails off, because Elliot probably doesn’t want to talk about it, because if he did, he would have mentioned it way earlier.
Elliot shrugs. “She wanted to get married and I… didn’t.”
“No?” Blake tries not to sound surprised. They never talked about it, obviously, it wasn’t something that was on their minds when they were eighteen, but why wouldn’t Elliot want to get married?
“I don’t know,” Elliot says. “Maybe at some point, but maybe… not to her. Shit, that sounds terrible. I’m a terrible person.”
“You’re not,” Blake says. He means that. Elliot is one of the kindest people he’s ever met in his life.
“I don’t even know how this happened, I mean, I was in love with her, but then it also wasn’t enough somehow? I didn’t trust her with my secrets and I couldn’t see us together, I wasn’t sure about her.”
Blake doesn’t ask about the secrets. He already knows what Elliot is talking about. It’s them, what they were back then, the one thing Elliot never wanted anyone to know about him. So he says, “Yeah, you can’t just get married, because… I don’t know, because it’s what you’re supposed to do.”
“Exactly, but maybe I’d have been sure about her in two years, but I don’t know and I don’t know if I want kids either and it turned into this huge mess, and I guess it was good that we broke up, because now she can go find someone who loves her so much that he thinks about marrying her two months after he meets her and I can… I don’t know. Figure out what it’s like to love someone enough to want to marry them, I guess.”
Then Elliot falls silent and takes a sharp left into a building. Blake has some trouble keeping up. Elliot’s building has a doorman, and his apartment is on a totally different level than Blake’s, really bright and polished, but Elliot’s crap is lying around everywhere, shoes in a pile by the door, a jacket slung over a chair here, a tower of cookbooks on the counter there, and socks all over the place.
“Nice,” Blake says, despite the socks.
“Yeah, it’s, uh… I was gonna clean up, but then Adam invited me over and I didn’t have time. Sorry.” Elliot shrugs and leads him to the couch. “How’s your, I don’t know, your… significant other doing?”
Blake was really hoping that Elliot wouldn’t ask. “Not so significant anymore.”
“Shit, sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
Noah got traded before the Draft, first to the Seals, who almost instantly flipped him back to the East, to the Foxes, so Noah’s in Philadelphia now. He seems to like it well enough and told Blake that he might stay if he likes it and they still want him after the end of the season.
