Risking the Shot (Stick Side #4) - Amy Aislin Page 0,1
despite his success.
Just that his sisters—a lawyer and a doctor—were poised and sophisticated and smart, and he . . . was not. He didn’t always think before speaking, he liked loud bars with too many people, had always struggled with school, preferred his art classes over academics, would rather doodle on his iPad than study, and ate cold pizza for breakfast when he could get away with it.
His sisters loved him, he knew that, but they still treated him like he was ten years old. Tay respected the hell out of them for everything they’d accomplished; he just wished they saw everything he’d accomplished too. He’d made it to the NHL. Plus, his team was currently third in their division and it was looking good that they’d make the playoffs. Not to mention juggling a university degree with hockey was fucking hard.
Shaking off the urge to tell Lacroix not to call him kid—that was inviting him to tease him with the nickname for the rest of his life—he nodded his thanks and climbed up the ladder one-handed, careful with the streamer. Barely a quarter of the way up, he somehow twisted it wrong and got it all gummed up.
“Damn it.”
Why was decorating so hard? One would think that he didn’t have a creative bone in his body when that couldn’t be further from the truth. Hell, he’d been working on a comic book trilogy since high school. Not that anyone knew of it except for his immediate family, but that wasn’t the point. He was good at art.
Party decorating, he was coming to realize, was not art. Or, at least, not a form of art he’d ever excel in.
“Is Stanton scowling at me?” he called down to Lacroix.
“There’s a definite tick in his jaw,” Lacroix said.
Oops. It did give Tay a mental image of Rhys—one of the original characters he’d created for his comic. Rhys, too, was the clenched jaw type.
At first, the comic had been a one-page assignment for tenth-grade art class. But he’d loved his characters so much that it had evolved into a trilogy, the third installment of which he was now on. Once, he’d thought that he’d share it online just for fun, but then he’d chickened out. How did authors and artists and creative people put themselves out there without freaking out?
At the top of the ladder, he plucked packing tape he’d precut off the top rung and secured his end of the streamer to the ceiling above the chandelier. “That good?” he called down to Stanton.
“Yup!”
Able to use both hands now, Tay climbed down much faster than he’d climbed up. At the bottom, he turned to Lacroix. “Thanks, man. Can you help me get this thing over by the wall? Stanton needs to put up his end.”
Together, they got the freakishly tall ladder closed and maneuvered it between tables, waitstaff, and teammates to the far wall, where they opened it back up again.
Lacroix grunted. “Don’t kill yourselves.” He went back to his confetti. Tay almost tackled him for it, but Lacroix was bigger than him and it would hurt.
Stanton rolled his eyes and started up the ladder while Tay held it steady. Across the room, one of the waitstaff propped the door open. Alex Dean, Tay’s teammate and temporary roommate, wheeled in two dollies stacked with boxes of yet more items for auction.
Temporary because Tay was staying in Dean’s guest room while workers finished the renovation of the sixteenth-floor hallway of his condo building—his floor. He dared anyone to try to get in a much-needed pregame nap, or get any schoolwork done in their minimal spare time, to the sound of hammering and sawing and shouting. Tay had lasted two days and would’ve ended up living out of a suitcase in a staid hotel room for weeks if Dean hadn’t offered his guest room.
Tay lived out of hotels enough as it was while he was on the road with his team.
Or worse, he would’ve ended up on the couch at Gran’s or on a tiny blow-up mattress in the spare room at his parents’ that they used as an office. He loved them to death, but he’d been on his own long enough to never want to live with parental figures ever again.
He hadn’t known Dean that well before he’d gone to stay with him three weeks ago—a mere week before Dean’s husband, Mitch “Grey” Greyson, had been traded to their team from LA. Tay was a forward;