Page 14 of Drop the Gloves

Twenty-four hours was the perfect amount of time for Evan to reconsider whether he was making a huge mistake.

It was a pendulum of doubt, swinging back and forth between ‘this is a good idea’ and ‘what the fuck was I thinking,’ and it had just landed back at ‘what the fuck’ when practice ended.

He was wondering how to weasel out of it when Barczyk appeared at his side on the ice, blocking the exit.

“Ready, bro? Don’t worry, I’ll take it easy on you today.”

“Uhm.” His stupid brain couldn’t come up with an excuse, and then his stupid mouth said, “Yeah, sure.”

Nobody looked twice as Barczyk dragged him to one of the circles, well away from the boards and benches.

By the time they were at the face-off dot, everyone else had disappeared back to the locker room.

Thankfully, today was a closed practice, not open to the public; Evan was relieved there’d be no witnesses.

As good as Barczyk was at fighting and as bad as Evan was, he didn’t need anyone seeing him getting beaten up by a guy that seemed like half his size.

“Today is just about the basics,” Barczyk said. “We won’t get to any actual punches, I don’t think.”

“Today? How many lessons do you have planned?” Evan had not signed up for that.

“The Barczyk School of Hockey Fights is a work in progress,” he said. “I’ve only got the first three lessons planned out, but we might need to improvise.”

“Three!?” he squeaked.

“Minimum three. Abs, you suck at this. You’re really good at hockey, so maybe you’ll be a quick study, but it took me years to get good at this. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think you’ll need three lessons to get non-sucky.”

“Years? I thought you were just naturally good at being annoying.”

“Oh, I am,” Barczyk said, shameless as always. “But perfection at anything takes time. So let’s start with the gear.”

“Gear?”

“Yeah, the gear. Lots of rookie mistakes with people who can’t handle their gear.” He nodded to Evan. “I’m coming in hot. We’re about to fight. Drop your gloves.”

“Oh.” Evan shook off his left glove, switched his stick to his left hand, and did the same with his right glove. He looked up to see Barczyk’s bewildered expression, like Evan had grown a second head.

“What the fuck was that? Why do you still have your stick? Like, holy fuck, Abs. I’d have knocked you out cold by now!”

Evan blushed. Right. In a fight, people wouldn’t wait for you to take off your gloves and gingerly put down your stick. He reached down for his gloves. “Can I try that again?”

Barczyk crossed his arms across his chest. “Please.”

The second time, Evan did better. He dropped his stick first, wincing slightly as it hit the ice, then shook off both gloves at the same time. One got stuck, but still, overall he did way better. He thought it was good enough to move on, but Barczyk looked as unimpressed as before.

“You are in greater need of my services than I thought. You've gotta be faster, and you've gotta get it out of the blast radius. Look where you left your stick. It’s right in front of you! You’re gonna trip over it or break it.”

Evan looked down. Barczyk had a point. There was more to this fighting thing than he thought, and they hadn’t done any actual fighting yet.

“Okay, let’s try something different.” He backed away from Evan. “Time me.”

“Time you?”

“Yeah, time me. Do a ready, set, go. You don’t need a stopwatch. One-Mississippi it.”

“One-Mississippi—? Oh.” As a kid, Evan had seen people on TV and in movies count seconds that way, but he’d never done it himself. “Okay, yeah.” He waited for Barczyk to give him a nod of approval before starting: “Ready…set…go!”

As soon as he said go, Barczyk tossed aside his gloves and sticks and had his fists up. Evan hadn’t even gotten through one full Mississippi. He gulped, both impressed and a little concerned. Maybe he was lucky Barczyk had checked him and not fought him. It seemed like that was the better option.

“Wow,” Evan said as Barczyk went to retrieve his gear.

“That’s how long you've got until a guy like me is going for your face, so you've gotta be that fast too.”

They spent fifteen minutes just dropping and picking up their gear. Evan would never have thought to practice this, so it was a relief he could at least have one takeaway.

“All right,” Barczyk said when he deemed Evan could drop everything at an acceptable speed. “You’ve got the hang of it. Hard to do it in the heat of the moment, but you shouldn’t embarrass yourself.”

“Wow,” he deadpanned. “I’m glad you’re proud.” He was ready to call the lesson a success and go home, but Barczyk cut him off before he got the chance.

“Now time for the most complex part of hockey fights.”

Evan froze, mouth dry. “I thought you said we weren’t going punching today.”

“We won’t. God, you’re not ready for that. We've gotta get you swinging on solid ground before we put you on ice.”

If Barczyk had said that to him in August, Evan would’ve thought it was super condescending—Evan had been skating since he was four and was perfectly capable of staying on his feet, thank you very much.

Only two months later, he wasn’t even annoyed.

He’d had all of one fight, made a fool of himself, and had to concede that it wasn’t as easy as it looked. Barczyk was the expert here.

“So what are we doing instead? What’s the most important part of fighting?”

“Jerseys,” Barczyk said grimly, almost apologetic. “We've gotta work on your jersey-pulling game.”

“Jerseys?” he asked, but it clicked as he said it.

He knew players often grabbed each other’s jerseys during a fight.

You could use them to hold the other person in place while you punched them, or to keep them at arm’s length to avoid getting punched yourself.

Some more ambitious players tried to take off the other person’s jersey, pulling it up over their head, effectively blinding and trapping them. “Oh. Right.”

“Show me what you've got,” Barczyk said.

He still had his mouthguard with him, chewing it as he made Evan drop his gloves and reach for his jersey.

Once Evan had done it a few times, Barczyk nodded.

“Good. You've got a lotta reach, so use that. Keep the people you don’t want to fight away from you and then pull them in when you’re ready to punch.

You could also shake ‘em a bit, try to throw them off balance.”

“I can handle that,” Evan said, mostly because he liked the idea of ‘keeping away people you don’t want to fight.’

Barczyk chuckled—a deep, throaty sound that Evan unexpectedly felt in his gut. “Yeah, only because I’m letting you manhandle me.”

And again, the words hit Evan oddly, leaving him more unbalanced than if Barczyk had pushed him. He gulped. “So you gonna fight back?”

“I’m gonna try to grab your jersey, yeah. No punching.” He held out a finger sternly, but his eyes lit up in amusement. “I don’t need you giving me a shiner.”

“No punching,” Evan repeated. His heart was in his throat. He was suddenly hyperaware of how close he and Barczyk were. It hadn’t mattered when Evan had been the only one grabbing, but this was more…what? Intense? Personal?

Intimate?

He shook off the thought and instead skated away to grab his gloves and get some space.

Space that almost immediately evaporated, because as soon as he’d squared up with Barczyk, he winked at Evan and dropped his gloves with lightning speed.

Evan threw his gloves at Barczyk more than onto the ice, but he dodged Barczyk’s first attempt to grab hold of his jersey.

Not the second, though, and before he could return the favor, Barczyk had gently slapped his face.

“How the fuck”—Evan took a deep breath, heart racing—“do you do that so fast?”

“Lots and lots of practice. Let’s go again.”

They did it again and again and again, like they were practicing a dance, so quickly that Evan soon lost his self-consciousness about their proximity.

He focused on the task at hand, trying to get faster at it.

He got better at aiming his hand for Barczyk’s chest, grabbing a fistful of coarse fabric.

Sometimes their hands knocked into each other as they lunged, and after a few minutes, Evan was breathless and laughing. This was stupidly fun.

And maybe chasing that feeling made him bold and reckless. As they squared up again, Evan went for it. He was going to try to pull Barczyk’s jersey over his head.

When Barczyk dove for him, Evan side-stepped him and instead of going for the front, he reached for the back of Barczyk’s jersey.

Barczyk squawked indignantly and flailed to stop Evan as he started pulling the jersey (and Evan appreciated that he didn’t start punching out of instinct), but there wasn’t much he could do once Evan got it over his face.

The helmet made it impossible for him to take it off, and instead Barczyk was trapped in his practice jersey.

Eventually his knees knocked against Evan’s, and they both went down onto the ice in a heap: Barczyk fell backwards and Evan didn’t let go quick enough, tumbling after and landing right on top of him.

“Jesus, Abs, you weigh a ton,” Barczyk said through laughter as he wiggled and tried to get his jersey off his face.

Evan, proud of himself, showed mercy and helped.

When Barczyk’s face reappeared, rosy-cheeked and grinning from ear to ear with his stupid missing tooth on display, Evan froze.

His heart did a weird flip-flop he didn’t understand, while his dick reacted in a way he definitely did.

“You might win a fight yet,” Barczyk said. He leaned back on his elbows and looked up at Evan, and yeah, Evan’s dick was feeling a certain way about having Barczyk pinned beneath him. “You gonna get off me or what?”

“Huh?” His brain hadn’t put those words in the right order at first, and his cheeks burned before he realized what Barczyk had actually said. “Right. Sorry. Lemme just…” He untangled himself from Barczyk and backed away. How was the ice not melting, because fuck it was too hot in here?

“I think that’s a successful first lesson,” Barczyk said as he picked himself up, stopping to grab his mouthguard from the ice.

He popped it back in his mouth, chewing on the end like that wasn’t absolutely disgusting.

“Probably can’t get much done on the road trip next week.

We’ll figure something out when we’re back in town? ”

Evan didn’t know if he could handle any more rounds with Barczyk, but he nodded. “Yeah, sure thing,” he said, distracted.

He turned his back on Barczyk and headed off the ice.

He changed as quickly as possible, avoiding eye contact with the few guys left chatting in the locker room, and disappeared into the showers (a refreshing cold shower).

It was an enormous relief that Barczyk had disappeared by the time Evan finished, because Evan he absolutely zero clue how he would ever look Barczyk in the eye again after…

whatever the heck had just happened on the ice.