Three Is The Luckiest Number by Catherine Cloud

Author:Catherine Cloud [Cloud, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-03-04T18:30:00+00:00

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.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.