Rich Man

Waking up felt like four hangovers overlapping and magnified about a thousand times. The thundering of my heart beat pulsated through my ears at a deafening rate, breathy visions of skin on skin nearly busting my eyes out of my head. A thin coat of sweat dampened my unclothed chest as I stared wide-eyed at the ceiling. Thankfully darkness and snoring greeted me.

My subconscious had chosen to betray my desire for either unprofaned thoughts or nothing at all. I was, instead, attacked by vivid visions of her fingers digging into my back, hips moving under my own. Even when I fought myself to get everything out of my head, all that remained was her and all that she embodied to me.

I shook my head frantically until I got my mind wrapped around a completely new concept. The day was beginning and with it, a whole new façade to be played.

-

Boarding the plane to Toronto was an unusually tedious process. For one, we had to stand around for like two hours before getting our carry-on stuff checked. By the time we got to our terminal, we had less than an hour until takeoff, which meant that we were shoveled onto the plane as soon as we set foot within earshot of the gate. Coffee at hand, I found my seat near the middle of the pack and threw my backpack into the overhead compartment.

Blake bumped me and loudly coughed, that kind of fake, blatantly obvious noise that signaled I was either missing something or was about to. “What the hell, man?” I questioned with more snap than I had intended and eyes him. We both looked like, hell, I knew that much. Even after a couple cups of coffee, we were still on edge.

He shot me a cocky grin and handed me his boarding pass. After a simple nod over my shoulder, I finally took the hint. Ray stood, brow furrowed, a couple of rows behind me. She was shoveling her little Nike duffel bag into the overhead bin when I realized exactly what Blakey was tucking into my pants pocket as he pushed past me to get into my seat.

“Oh, this is good,” she smirked up at me from her position in the window seat.

I did the usual cool play-off and simply moved my backpack to its new spot beside her duffel. “The ticket doesn’t lie,” I stated with a smile and collapsed into the seat beside her.

Her brow furrowed. Not a second later she had leaned over and slipped her hands in both of my pockets, one of which returned with Blake’s folded up ticket. “Yeah, because your name is really Wheeler…” It was then that she shoved the boarding pass into the pocket of the seat in front of her and added, “Something tells me you’ve got a story or two in mind for the ride?”

It was funny how quickly she already had me choked up. I mean, she had asked her question with closed eyes, head back against her chair with a calm serenity about her that almost forced me at ease. Almost. “My half,” I replied slowly, “is for the ride.” At this, she opened one eye to stare at me out of. With a confident little grin, I grabbed my little in-flight pillow to make myself comfortable. As soon I was in a position mirroring hers, I finished, “You can do whatever you’d like later.”

-

[The other side.]

“You can do whatever you’d like later.”

Well that didn’t leave a lot to the imagination.

To be honest, I wasn’t all too psyched to get physical. Maybe that was my like two hours of sleep speaking, but still. My dreams were graphic enough. I didn’t need to get carried away like he tend to make me do and wind up naked, sweaty, with his sock on my hotel room door handle.

Well that was a bit much.

The jet was practically dead silent. For a plane stuffed full of people, it was astounding. A pin-drop could be heard from opposing sides of the damn thing, if that clarifies it. After the usual drink orders were taken and the quick cabin walkthrough speech thingy was complete, I was back to drifting in and out of consciousness.

That was, until Patrice opened up his mouth. “For my first couple of months of hockey, I didn’t actually skate.”

This caught my attention, but only in a very mild sense. With the slight raise of my brow, I cracked an eye open at him to let him know I was, in fact, listening.

“I learn by watching. Always have… It’s like… I got to the ice and saw these guys skating hard and shooting fast. And yeah, back then they really weren’t all that great because I was having a chance to play with them, but still. I sat in the net and did nothing but watch until one day I grabbed some gear, laced up, and decided to play.”

“You were an odd child, but cute,” I replied groggily and softly smiled. “I know that the sport is in your blood, but have you ever wondered what would happen if you were just a regular kid? I mean, if you lived the life of a guy who isn’t a professional hockey player, what do you think you’d be doing right now?”

Patrice silenced for a brief moment before exhaling in the form of a minuscule laugh. “I have no idea. I’d probably be a teacher or an engineer or something. Why does it matter?”

Such a simple question, loaded with more amo that I could have readily packed in a single paragraph, shook me. Both of my eyes opened at the same time to the sight of a confident grin, suggestive as it was tempting. “It matters because I’m curious.”

“Well fire away. It’s not like this is going to hurt me later.”

I could only grin as the elderly flight attendant brought the two of us our drinks. “Maybe I will go out with Lex tonight.”

-

To say that my methods of madness were having an effect on Patrice was the understatement of the year.

My anti-venom was beginning to sink nicely into this boy’s thinking and I was therefore totally psyched. By “anti-venom”, I meant my simple use of hypocrisy to begin regulating how the group acts. My goal was to eliminate secrets and lies while I was forcing him to lie for the sake of this tedious process. Obviously I had some control over Patrice now, which was more than enough to keep a steady eye on him from here on out. And while I invoked my idea of hypocrisy so that he should lie and keep he and I a secret from the group in which I was trying to eliminate secrets, he was doing all of my dirty work for me.

The plane ride was mostly my way of toning him up for the questions I would ask him the next time I had a private chance. There was one in particular that had been eating at me for quite some time I had a mind to request. However, with a silver tongue like his, I didn’t know what to expect. The last thing I wanted to do was ask him a question that goes deeper than he’s expecting. He might suddenly think that the strength of our agreement then lies with him.

We all know I can’t have that.

I flopped down onto the musty hotel bed and rolled onto my back, Avery loudly running into the room. Matt and Blake followed screaming obscenities at Looch, who had apparently stolen a pair of Matt’s bowers and was partnering up with the girls for a game of keep-away. Ever since I talked the guy at the front desk into giving us all a round of room upgrades for pocket-money cheap, the whole team had been going crazy.

Mark had jumped over to give me a thank-you kiss on the cheek while most everyone else was busy grabbing their luggage and hauling it to the nearest elevator. While we were staying in a Hilton because of complications and the rooms were semi-nice already, I was still deemed some kind of saint.

“Just because you guys get half decent linked-up rooms doesn’t make me a miracle worker,” I laughed as Savvy practically jumped on me. He picked me up off of my resting place and gave me a tight squeeze, saying something about how now he didn’t have to room with another guy.

“Don’t forget that we’re staying here for two nights, not one,” the small man reminded in a nearly sing-song voice. Somehow watching Savvy so giddy made me picture him in dinosaur footy pajamas. Either I was going insane or he was just an adorable human being worthy of my mental idiocies.

I simply shrugged and grabbed my things to move to our suite down the hall.

A hand shot out of nowhere and took hold of my suitcase, lightening my already pretty small load significantly. It was a big enough change to make me care enough to look back at my helper. All I could do was grin.

“Nobody likes a kiss-ass,” I stated plainly as Patrice shot me a cheesy grin.

It completely fell from his lips. “Apparently you don’t like me doing much of anything.”

“Can’t help loving the view from on top.”

“Can’t say I’m complaining, but it’s always nice to let the number two do some work. You might be surprised by how good it’ll feel.”

The clear snarky grin in his tone had me swallowing hard, especially considering that we were migrating down the hall with people in front of and behind us. My stomach tightened when we loaded into an elevator and he was pressed against my back, using the closeness to his advantage. His fingers brushed my back pocket and slid up to my belt loops. I was then pulled back just slightly so that I had to lean against him or lose my balance and fall. Needless to say, it was the longest elevator ride of my life.

-

“I need you to do me a favor,” I leaned over to Lex, who was already sitting beside me on the small couch in our suite.

With an expression of piked interest, she replied, “Sure thing. What’s up?”

“I need you to be my eyes tonight.”

Her brow immediately furrowed. “Why? Aren’t you doing dinner and the movies with all of us?” It was then that her slight show of concern twisted into something a little more on the suggestive side. “Or… Do you have other plans? Should I be talking to Bergs? Maybe Looch wants a tu-Ouch!”

With the quick pinch of her arm, I was out of my seat and had my wallet in hand. “I’m actually planning on finding a nice quiet place I can think, thanks.”

“But really,” Lex’s voice dramatically toned down, hushing almost all together, “What have you been doing to Bergy? He’s so… Weird now, but in a good way. Like all today he’s been really quiet.”

“I thought you said quiet was bad,” I replied simply and dug through my suitcase to find my emptied gunmetal studded Guess purse.

Lex had found her feet, eyes fixated on the clock as she spoke. “Well it used to be, but now he’s different. What are you saying to him, Ray? I don’t get what you can say to him that could change him so dramatically in the course of a day.” Before I could reply, she jumped into action and, as planned, ran over to her bed to grab her room key and her hoodie. “I need to get to Zee’s room for room service and movie. I’ve got my phone and everything. Oh, and what am I supposed to be looking for tonight?”

“In one note on your phone I want you to tell me everything you possibly can about the interactions between Milan and generally everyone around him and between Matt and Avery.”

“Sounds easy enough.”

“That includes how they look at each other, tone of voice, body language, specific words in their speech that differ depending on who they’re talking to, all the way down to their breathing patterns around certain people.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, welcome to my mind.”

I was readily armed for the night when she finally left. My fingers continuously slid over the smooth, cold token I my back pocket, slipped there ever so stealthily by the object of my plans. It was a blatant that I was in his head; a task I never imagined would be so easy. And as I zipped down the front of my jacket to reveal my lack of anything besides a bra underneath, I mentally asked myself a simple question.

How far are you going to take this?