Infected: Shift (40 page)

Zach looked almost prepubescent. He had a round face and wheat-colored hair so pale it was more of a suggestion of color than an actual hue. To confirm Roan’s suspicion, Richie put an arm around Zach’s shoulders and said, “He’s only nineteen. He can drink in Canada but he can’t drink here, so we’re gonna try and fake him in.”

“Might be hard,” Dylan said. Since he was a bartender, he had a great idea of who was at risk of being carded and who wasn’t.

“Let me get him through,” Sandy said, his Russian accent making his words sound more exotic than they actually were. “I’ll pretend I don’t speak the language and start getting belligerent. That usually works.”

“Only ’cause you’re a scary big Russian,” Jeff replied. “If you were from Moosejaw, no one would care.”

“What’s wrong with Moosejaw?” Zach asked, his brow furrowing. Oh, was that where he was from?

Because there were so many of them, they took two cars, but because he and Dylan were taking the GTO, they were able to fit Tank, Grey, and Scott in their car. All three of them praised the mix CD he’d put together for Grey and wanted Roan to make them each one. Grey had asked him to put together a mix CD they could listen to at practices, since Grey was so impressed by These Arms Are Snakes. Roan couldn’t imagine anything sillier, but was able to throw something together quickly and give it to him.

Roan actually thought Grey might trash it, because he'd thrown on songs that he knew might offend some people, such as the two Pansy Division songs (“Hockey Hair” and “Manada” the French language version) and ones with buttloads of obvious cursing (“Stoopid Ass” was probably the most egregious offender there). But astonishingly, most of the team enjoyed it, and thought the Pansy Division songs were funny. The coach claimed the Nirvana song gave him a headache (“Scentless Apprentice”) and made them turn it off, but the guys in general loved it. Dylan told them not to encourage him, since he loved perplexing people with his obscure and bizarre music choices, but Dylan flashed him an affectionate, exasperated look as he said it. Roan told them he’d see what he could do in his free time.

It was a pub crawl of great scope. They started off in a sports bar where almost all the Falcons guys were recognized (not Zach), and then they moved on to a trendy nightclub that was often difficult to get into, although not for local sports guys. It was slightly Eurotrash, filled with lots of neon and glass and metal, and everyone in it seemed coated in fake bake and wore clothes so tight they could have been sprayed on, even the guys. Although about half the (straight) crew chatted up some women, it was astonishingly dull. Even Tank made a face and said, “This reminds me of a club I went to in Montreal for my eighteenth birthday. That place sucked.”

Scott grunted an affirmative and swirled the dregs of his drink around in his glass. Most of the guys were pacing themselves, save for Jeff, who was knocking his drinks back like they were all ice water. But to his credit, it hadn’t had any effect on him yet.

So they moved on to a slightly dingier bar that was marginally more entertaining, although there was a baseball game playing on the TV over the bar. Sandy and Jeff watched it for a couple of minutes, and Jeff suddenly exclaimed, “Why does everyone love that fucking sport? My dad once took me to a Mets game, and I was bored out of my fucking skull. Nothin’ happened. For hours, nothin’ happened. At least in hockey, there’s always the potential of a fight.”

“I don’t get it either,” Sandy admitted. “But if I were getting paid as much as they are, I’d learn to put up with it.”

Jeff shrugged and grimaced. “Good point. So what does that tub o’ guts on the mound make? A couple million?”

“I bet he gets winded walking to the clubhouse,” Grey said, smirking at his own bitchiness. But, to be fair, all the Falcons at the table were lean and hard, toned to perfection. If you had need of a cement wall but no cement, they could easily stand in for it. They were in so much better shape than the star pitcher being featured on the screen it was sort of comical and grossly unfair.

Dylan wasn’t drinking any booze, as he really didn’t like alcohol (funny for a bartender), and Roan only had a drink if they had a decent microbrew available. So far, he’d only had one.

Next bar over, when Dylan disappeared to the bathroom, Sandy asked him, “So who’s the woman?”

Grey punched him in the shoulder, almost knocking the Russian out of his chair. “Dude, you don’t ask shit like that.”

He rubbed his shoulder and flashed him an indignant look. If Grey could hurt a guy as big as Sandy, that was impressive, especially since he obviously held back. “What, you’re not curious?”

“Neither of us are women, so neither of us are,” Roan told him. Wasn’t the first time he’d been asked such a thing, probably wouldn’t be the last.

Sandy scowled. “You know what I mean. Who—”

“Shut up,” Scott said in a low, deadly voice. Sandy glanced at his team captain, and Roan saw immediately that he was giving up. Obeying a direct order from his captain, or did he really not like the murderous look in his eyes? Both?

“Fine,” he said, sulking. “I just wondered.”

Another boring bar awaited them, and it was at this point that Dylan offered to take them all to Panic. Although Sandy, Jeff, and Barrett didn’t seem thrilled with the idea, the fact that Scott, Grey, and Tank wanted to go seemed to clinch the deal (Zach and Richie didn’t seem to care either way).

So they all went to Panic, where it was trance night, meaning they were greeted by high-energy dance music and an amused Luis behind the bar. No one seemed to recognize the guys as hockey players, although they all recognized Dylan, and some recognized Roan. They got lots of free drinks, inspiring the guys (not him and Dylan, though) to dare each other to drink the “girliest” drinks possible. Tank won the contest with a “pink confetti daiquiri,” which he actually said wasn’t bad and ordered a second one to prove it. Dylan told him it had pomegranate juice in it, but he had no idea what the “confetti” part of it was or even meant.

A cute guy who looked like a James Franco stand-in came to the table and asked Scott to dance. Sandy and Jeff burst into howls of laughter, but Scott’s guard was obviously down from the several drinks he'd already had, and Dylan and Roan watched as he smirked and visually sized the guy up. “Sure,” Scott said, getting up and following him to the dance floor.

This made his teammates laugh even harder. Apparently they thought this was Scott playing along and being silly, confirming that none of them knew he was bisexual. Except perhaps Grey—Roan wasn’t convinced he didn’t know. Not only because he was Scott’s roommate, but also because Grey wasn’t as dumb as he liked people to think he was.

After watching Scott dance for a bit (he wasn’t bad), a rather drunk Zach proclaimed, “I wanna dance!”

“No you don’t, jailbait,” Jeff said, and it sounded funny and vaguely threatening in his thick New York accent.

A twink at the bar overheard Zach’s proclamation, and came up to the table. “I’ll dance with you, sweetie.” He was probably barely legal himself.

“Awesome,” Zach said, scraping his chair back. As he stood up unsteadily, he added, “Don’t get grabby. I’m straight.”

“You know what the difference between a straight guy and a gay guy is?” the twink replied. “A six pack.”

Zach looked at him blankly, confirming how drunk he was. “Huh?” But the twink just headed to the dance floor, and Zach followed.

They watched for a moment, and then burst into laughter, as Zach was no Scott—his idea of dancing looked a lot like a seizure, with some kind of abortive robot moves thrown in. Now everybody knew for certain he was straight. “I thought you Canadian dudes could hold your liquor better,” Jeff said, wiping tears from his eyes.

“Depends on the Canadian dude,” Barrett said.

“If he was Quebecois, he could,” Tank, the only Quebecois at the table, insisted.

“If he was Quebecois, he’d secede from the team,” Richie replied.

Grey slapped a twenty dollar bill in the center of the table and said, “I betcha before we head outta here, he dances on a table.” So they started throwing money in a pool, betting on whether he would dance on a table (or the bar) or pass out first. Jeff bet he’d vomit first; Barrett thought he might actually make out with a dude.

Roan skirted the dance floor on his way to the bathroom, as his couple of beers had finally caught up with his bladder, and he chuckled to himself, mainly because he never thought he’d have such a good time with a bunch of straight jocks. He still had no idea why they wanted to hang around with him, but there was some fun to be had in male bonding. And these guys were friends as much as teammates, which made them easy to be around, even though they taunted and razzed each other as only macho male guys could. (Although nobody really razzed Scott or Grey—probably because Scott was their captain, and probably because Grey was essentially a sentient pile of muscle.)

He’d just entered the bathroom when he heard behind him, “Holy fuck. This is a men’s room?” Grey had come with him. Why he didn’t know.

Panic’s men’s room was impressive. It was pressed blue glass tile and strips of ice blue neon lighting supplementing the white lighting overhead. The sinks and stalls were stainless steel, the urinals a snow-white porcelain. It was kept so clean you could probably eat off the floor. The management actively discouraged hooking up in the bathroom, although Roan knew it must have happened from time to time. Even so, there was a small laminated sign on the wall next to the automatic hand dryer that said explicitly, “No fucking around.” “Depending on the gay club, you get a really nice bathroom or a really disgusting one,” Roan told him.

“I’ve never been in a bathroom this nice,” Grey admitted, still looking around. “Wow. Think I could rent it?”

“Doubt it.” Although he wasn’t great about having people watch him pee, he really had to take a piss before his back teeth started floating.

He thought Grey needed to take a piss too, but basically all he did was study the condom machine, which did have an impressive laundry list of sizes, colors, and attributes, and then said, “I just wanted to let you know, yeah, I know.”

“Know what?”

“About Scott. Tank does too, I think. No one else does.”

Yep—smarter than he admitted. Tank too. “You don’t let on to the others?”

Grey shook his head. “It’s Scott’s business. If he wanted to tell anyone, he would.”

“Does Scott know you know?”

That made him snort a laugh. “Doubt it.”

So he’d never talked about it with him. No surprise there, really. But did that mean that Roan was the only person he’d ever admitted his bisexuality to? That would be weird.

Roan knew someone else had come in, but as he was zipping up he paid them no mind. But then he got the oddest sense that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Was the guy staring at him? Why did his mental alarm bells go off?

It happened so fast that by the time Roan turned away from the urinal, it was all over.

The man pulled something out of his jacket but either hadn’t noticed Grey or hadn’t cared. He’d moved for Roan, but Grey was on him before he could advance more than an inch or two. Grey slammed him viciously face first into the blue glass wall over the urinals, pinning his hand to the wall along with it. Whoever the assailant was, Grey had a solid half foot and roughly a hundred pounds on him. “Not tonight, fucko,” Grey told him, in the most deceptively calm voice ever. Blood was dripping down the wall from the man’s shattered nose.