THIAGO
She looked up at me, and a quiet, awkward laugh escaped her lips as she tried to balance the tray between her hands.
"I thought I could manage it on my own, but these cups are a lot heavier than they look," she said, and she kept her eyes fixed on the drinks to avoid looking directly into my face.
I did not say much in response, and I simply reached down and took half of the paper cups off her tray, making sure our fingers did not touch in the process. We walked back to the noisy section together, and the moment Cassian saw us coming around the corner, his smirk widened instantly.
"Thanks for the rescue, Captain," Cassian said, and he leaned back in his chair with a very amused look on his face as he looked between the two of us.
"Did you step in because spilling those sodas would have been more painful than watching me lose another game to a beginner?"
The entire table burst into loud laughter at his comment, and even Anastasia couldn’t hide her small smile as she set her remaining cups down on the table.
I ignored every single comment they made, and I placed my share of the drinks on the table without saying a word, knowing that getting defensive would only give them a reason to keep teasing us for the rest of the night.
The casual bowling continued for another hour, and Cassian and Miller turned the simple game into another massive competition by making ridiculous bets after every single frame. They stood right in front of the scoring screen and argued over every pin that fell down, and they completely refused to follow regular bowling rules.
"That pin was wobbling, Miller," Cassian shouted out, and he pointed a finger at the screen while the rest of the team cheered. "It counts as a strike, and you know it."
"It is still standing, Brooks," Miller yelled back, and he crossed his arms over his chest with a stubborn look. "You lost the frame, so you owe me a pizza on the next road trip."
By the end of the night, the scores on the monitor were completely messed up, and nobody could even remember who had actually won the original match, but the younger players did not seem to care at all. Anastasia spent most of the evening sitting on the curved red bench and laughing, and she kept taking random pictures of their ridiculous poses on her camera. I sat a few seats away near the rack, and I couldn’t stop my eyes from drifting over to her every time she laughed at another stupid joke.
"My friend Bellamy is never going to believe a word of this," Anastasia said to me when I walked past her bench to grab a clean napkin from the dispenser.
"She thinks professional hockey players spend all their time still being in their hats shells but you guys are acting like a bunch of children tonight."
"They are always like this when Coach gives them a night off," I muttered back, and I looked over at Miller, who was currently trying to roll a black ball between his legs. "It is much better for them to waste their energy over here than to cause trouble."
She smiled at my response, and she went back to typing a message on her phone while the constant sound of crashing bowling pins and loud cheering filled the room until the clock near the front desk neared eleven o’clock.
Coach finally stood up from his booth near the entrance and checked his watch, and he tapped his knuckles on the table to get everyone’s attention.
"Alright, boys, the fun is over for tonight," Coach called out, and he pointed a finger toward the glass exit doors. "We have a major championship game coming up next week, and I expect every single one of you to be in bed before the midnight curfew starts, so start moving."
The players groaned, but they slowly packed up their gear and walked out toward the dimly lit parking lot.
Just before the group reached their parked cars near the edge of the lot, Anastasia suddenly stopped walking right next to me, and she began searching frantically through her small shoulder bag. She pulled out a few keys, a small pad of paper, and a pair of lens covers, and her hands began to tremble as a worried look appeared on her face.
"My phone," she whispered, and she turned her small bag completely inside out under the streetlamp. "I cannot find it anywhere in here."
"Are you sure you didn’t leave it in your jacket?" I asked, and I stopped beside her while the other players kept walking toward their vehicles.
"I am completely sure," she said, and her voice sounded panicked as she shook her head. "I must have set it down on the table by our bowling lane when we were packing up the camera gear."
Cassian stopped on the sidewalk a few paces ahead, and he turned around on his heel with a look of concern. "Don’t worry about it, Anastasia. Come on, let’s go back inside right now and check."
Before she could answer his invitation or take a single step back toward the entrance, I stepped forward and cut right into the middle of the conversation.
"The rest of you need to head home right now," I told Cassian, and my voice was firm as I looked him dead in the eye. "There is no reason for half the team to stand around waiting for one lost phone when curfew is twenty minutes away."
Coach looked over from his open car door across the lot, and he nodded his head in full agreement with my order. "Thiago is right, Brooks. You rookies need to get on the road before the clock hits midnight, and the captain can handle this easily. Get moving right now."
Cassian looked like he wanted to argue for a second, and his eyes shifted between me and Anastasia with a bit of hesitation, but he knew better than to break a direct order from both the head coach and the team captain. He let out a sharp breath through his nose, and he gave a single nod before turning around to walk toward his car with Miller.
"Fine," Cassian called out over his shoulder, and he waved his hand once without looking back. "Let me know if you find it, Anastasia. I will see you at the rink tomorrow morning."
The rest of the team started their engines and drove away into the night, and Anastasia and I turned around on the pavement and walked back together.