Page 79 of Heartbreak Hockey

“Nope. I’m just gonna watch your ass get naked.”

He assesses me. “There you are, Jack. Keep breaking your screwball rules, eh? Looks good on yah.”

Itfeelsgood on me. Know what? Maybe I will.

* * *

On The Ice

We are getting our asses kicked and these refs need to go back to ref school.

“Oh, c’mon, ref! It’s a great game, too bad you’re missing it, eh?” I shout when he gives Dirk the high-sticking penalty and nothing to fucking Wham Barnes for his dirty elbow. Who names their kid Wham anyway?

“Change!” Mercy calls and I skate off the ice ready to kill something. He grabs me by the helmet. “Settle down.”

I pull away and throw my stick at the ground. “They’re not watching the damn game. Someone paid off these refs.”

He rolls his eyes as if that’s not a thing. It’s so a thing!

“Hydrate and cool off, Leslie.” He moves to the front of the bench to shout things at the team, while I watch the slaughter in progress and dump water on my face from a squeeze bottle.

Vancouver has some goons this year the size of Big Foot. Our offense is better, but it doesn’t fucking matter when we can’t get past their Orc army that won’t let us travel more than a foot with the puck before slamming us—painfully—into the boards. I might need a spleen transplant after this.

Lance—one of our defensemen—limps off the ice after another hit that was soooo fucking illegal, and does the ref see it? Nope. Yet when Casey accidentally—very accidentally—trips their centerman, he gets two fucking minutes.

Bullshit. Totally rigged.

“How are you not gonna call that, ref?” I yell when Dash hits the ice belly first because of Beauchampman’s foot.

Oh, wait. Something’s gonna happen. Stacey from Casey on a break. Forward, backhand … top shelf … Fucking, yes! It isn’t the most magnificent goal anyone’s ever seen, but it was so hard won, we celebrate it like it is. Stacey breaks his stick over his thigh in celebration. Everyone hops off the bench, ecstatic, knocking helmets with him.

It makes this long and brutal game one to nothing and that’s how it stays.

Then it’s the usual in the locker room; Coach telling us what we did well and what we really didn’t, then bikes for thirty, then showers.

A lot of us live in Vancouver, but some of us don’t, so there was still the option of a hotel and that’s where the social’s happening after the game. Of course, our twice-monthly social lands when we’re in Vancouver.

I’m going to have to miss it because I promised my parents I’d go home but guess I can stay for one beer. The cold, foamy hops and barely is smooth going down my throat.I missed you, beer.Okay, maybe just one more …

Two beers later, I leave the party room, grab my stuff from the room I left it in and head down to wait for my brother to pick me up. I catch sight of Merc’s long Neo jacket and one of his brothers behind the driver’s side of a large blue truck. I drop my stuff intent on going over to give him a goodbye kiss, but then I stop myself.

He’s with his family. That’s, like, a whole other level.

“Leslie! Get your ass over here,” a voice that sounds like Mercy, but isn’t Mercy shouts across the parking lot. Mercy’s brother.

I know what he’s doing. I have brothers and we do this shit to each other all the time. I’m one hundred percent game to play along. Sauntering over, I adjust my cap, so it’s spun backward and stick my hands in the pockets of my jeans.

I’m already a tad buzzed from the two beers I had since my tolerance is so low now, and I kinda chugged them. My lips spread into a goofy smile. “Hey there, handsome,” I say to Mercy’s brother even though he’s sitting next to a beefy man wearing black-rimmed glasses who is clearly his boyfriend.

I’ve already caught in conversation that they’re looking for a third.

His jaw drops, quickly transforming into devilry when he figures out what I’m doing.

“Whoa, you are trouble, Jack,” he says.

Mercy growls and yanks me to him saying “mine” without saying the word mine, hooking me around the waist with one arm against his hard body. His breath is hot in my ear. “You’re gonna pay for that.”

I sure fucking hope so. “What’s on for tonight, fellas?”