Page 38 of Heartbreak Hockey

“Don’t you dare, Jack,” Stacey says from the other side of me. “You have twenty more minutes.”

And that right there is why Stacey often gets the captain spot. So much so that we just consider him team captain even though on our team it’s not officially a permanent position.

I groan, but I keep peddling so that my bike turns on again. I’m smiling on the inside though. It’s safe to say I’ve won this round. Maybe the new plan can be to drive Mercy Meyer right back to Vancouver and we can get a coach who understands the need to let loose once in a while.

Oh, and also, not be someone who had their dick in my ass.

We drive back to the condo in the van we rented to use to get us to the rink while we’re here, but my big plans of painting the town red are kiboshed by my tired body. Thank God with the five of us contributing, we were able to spring for one of the condos with a hot tub. Otherwise, we’d be fighting over the regular tub.

This is the point in the day we’d have cracked open beers. Instead, we each have a ginger beer, which is apparently one of the few beverages allowed by the team’s new nutritionist. It’s not that I don’t like ginger beer, I do, I just don’t like not being allowed a beer whenever I want.

“Hey, so, I think dying on the sofa sounds like a better plan for tonight. What say you?” I ask my crew.

“It sounds like the more peaceful way to go and I’m here for it,” Dirk says.

At least Coach willthinkwe’re all headed out to hookup and if I can ever resurrect myself after practice, we’ll make it a real and regular occurrence.

* * *

Hockey life seeps back into my veins and while I don’t love the draconian regimen, the repetitive nature of it is comforting. One side of me is soothed by the bounds of a scheduled life, while the other craves chaos and then being brought back to equilibrium.

In addition to the five of us sharing a condo, we also share one bed. We did it last season too. We have a massive super-king-sized bed delivered—it’s larger than a regular king mattress—that’s big enough for five large hockey players to sleep comfortably. Other than that, we use the furniture that comes with the place, and we won’t bother bringing the new mattress home with us at the end of the season. There are two spare rooms we use to store our shit and for hookups.

The alarm is blaring, and I want to murder whoever that’s for, but then I realize it’s for me. Stacey, who’s on the other side of me, pulls me up by my arms and guides my legs over the side of the bed.

“Up and at ’em, sunshine.”

“Don’t fucking call me that,” I mumble.

Next is Dash slapping my face. “C’mon. Open your eyes, Leslie.”

“This is bullshit,” I groan.

“He’s your boyfriend. Suck his dick and get him to release us from this early prison,” Casey mumbles still half-asleep on the other side of me.

Mercy’s dick. I smile. He does have a nice dick. “He’s not my fucking boyfriend.”

I crack my eyes open, the dark room comes into view as someone opens the curtain. Casey and Dirk—who are tangled together—do not appreciate the light bursting in on their perfectly happy morning-time darkness. “If all I do by the end of the season is strangle Coach, it will have been a successful season. I hurt right down to my bones. I don’t care about your stupid rules, seduce him and make him be nice to us, Jack.”

I let the awake members of our crew work on the other two while I stumble into the kitchen to make coffee. Coffee’s the real lifeblood of our hockey team and if “Coach” tries to ban coffee, I will help everyone abduct him from his sweet penthouse and toss him into Okanagan Lake.

We manage to make it to the arena on time, but late by the standard fifteen-minute-early coda I usually keep. The chill air of the rink seeps into my bones and the scuff of skates against the ice fills me with the same magic it always has, butterfly wrestle mania inside my stomach.

I was a precocious but shy child. The captain wanted to make sure I had a solid foundation to build my self-esteem from. He bought me a pair of ice skates and even as busy as he was, made time to teach me. I caught on quickly and it’s all I wanted to do. My older twin brothers played hockey too, but it was recreational for them. They both stopped after graduating from high school.

Inhaling the cold into my lungs, I join the team in some warm-up laps to get my blood going and then I’m ready to play.

And to grind.

Practice differs from games in that it’s less freeing. It’s not just play. There are on-ice drills. We’re critiqued to death during the scrimmage. It lasts for hours and then we have to immediately hit the stationary bikes to flush lactic acid from our muscles to help our bodies recover and reduce next-day soreness and tightness.

We used to head out for a few pints after practice. Now, we collapse like the dead back in our condos ready to Netflix and chill for the night. My dick hasn’t seen any action other than my hand for all of training camp. I hope to fuck that changes once we get into the season.

Thank God for apps like Benduovr. I’m getting a hookup in every city.

I’m fresh out of the shower at the condo, grabbing myself a hearty freshly squeezed Juice Truck juice filled with all kinds of healthy shit that actually tastes good, when my phone goes off. It’s Rhett. Again. Ever since he’s decided that I’m sleeping with Mercy Meyer, he’s been on me. I wish I could say I was above making him jealous, but I’m not. It’s as good as revenge for making me think we were going to do whatever it took to be together and then making me choose.

“Please take a call from me, sunshine. I’m missing you hard tonight.”