Page 6

ALDER

I wake to the sensation of what I hope is my dog’s tongue on my face. “Gordie, chill.” I groan, the effort of speaking too much for my pounding head. My entire body is one giant cramp, and I realize I’m folded in half on a sofa.

I peel open one eye. I’m in my living room, on the couch. The room is cluttered with empty alcohol containers, and … I groan. Two of my brothers are sprawled on the floor, and another is in my recliner.

Gordie whines and keeps licking. Shit. He probably needs to go out.

I rescued Gordon mid-season, and I never get hammered while I’m in season. Nobody could have prepared me for the horrors of having a small creature depend on me while I’m hungover as fuck.

I sit up, and Gordie starts yipping, which feels like tiny needles hammering into my eyes.

I have no idea how Tucker and Gunnar are sleeping through this, but they’re probably still plastered.

I glance at my body, see that I’m wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt, and decide that’s plenty to take a dog outside.

I rise to my feet, feeling the ache in my ribs where I was checked extra hard last night. Last night. Fuck .

“Come on, Gordo.” I hobble toward the sliding door and onto the small patio, wishing I were farther along in Gordie’s training so that I could just let him loose and know he’d come back.

I clip his leash onto his collar and try sitting on the step, but Gordon Howe Stag can’t just piss in the grass by the porch.

My picky-ass dog wants to do his business where other dogs in our neighborhood can see and smell him. I assume.

He drags me toward the drainage ravine, and I mutter brief thanks that he’s not pulling me toward the jogging path by the river where other humans are inevitably out and about. I don’t even know what time it is.

Twelve hours past my public humiliation? Fourteen?

The dry, caked feeling in my mouth mimics the sensations in my brain as I think about watching Adam suck face with another guy.

In a hockey arena. In the hockey arena where I was playing game seven.

If I had just played things cool, people wouldn’t have figured out that he meant something to me.

If I had gritted my teeth and stared at my brother or something, this would still be a private pain.

But, remembering the post-match locker room screaming now, my brothers tell me my face twisted in rage, and I was howling louder than Tucker when he lost his tooth.

Shit. Tucker.

“Gordon, come on, boy.” I tug him back toward the house.

My twin needs to get back to the training facility today to get his mouth fixed, and Tucker is terrified of the dentist. I’ll never understand it.

I absolutely love having my teeth cleaned.

The dentist gets all up in there with that scraper, and my mouth feels like a million bucks by the time I’m done.

Regular people only go to the dentist twice a year.

But since we have one right there on site and nobody else takes advantage, I get my plaque scraped every few weeks.

Tucker? Hell, he asks me to pretend to be him when it’s his turn for mandatory oral health checks.

It used to work with Doc Boman. Something tells me the new dentist won’t be fooled.

It’s hard to imagine keeping my cool with a woman like that leaning over me, complimenting my gums. But I don’t want to think about her right now. I should be focused on my enormous humiliation.

I walk back inside, and the stench of my living room almost knocks me on my ass. We seem to have blended whiskey with strong beer. No wonder my guts feel like there’s a rip tide in there. I concentrate on focusing my eyes on the microwave clock and see that it’s just past nine.

This is fine. We have time.

I offer Gordie a biscuit and tread carefully back into the living room, where Tucker is starfished on his stomach on my rug. I nudge him with my toe, which is wet from the grass. I’d laugh at how gross this is, but I’m too fucked up. “Fucker, bro. We gotta get your mouth fixed.”

He grunts.

I crouch next to him and manually peel open one eyelid. “Don’t make me spit on your eyeball.”

His pupil contracts, and Tucker springs into a sitting position. “How are we related? You’re vile.”

“Apparently.” I think again of chasing after Adam for six fucking months. Six months of me calling him and initiating our hangouts. And then I was so overjoyed by any scrap of attention I wrecked everything by blab-bragging.

Sure, Adam was always down for the physical stuff. I guess that’s all I’m good for. Although, evidently, not even that good if he’s so eager to do that shit with someone else.

A thought invades my brain fog. “Tuck, what if he gave me a disease?”

My brother sighs, fully awake now. He claps a hand on my shoulder. “You’re safe, right? You use the basket?”

I sigh. Our parents always insisted each Stag kid had a “safe and satisfied” selection, no questions asked. Even now that I’m a grown-ass adult, Mom still restocks the wicker basket on my fridge whenever she drops by. Condoms, lube, pamphlets for HIV prevention…

I nod. “Yeah. I use the basket. But, you know, none of that stuff is foolproof.”

Tucker flops over with his head in my lap. He drags his palms down his face. Then he winces and opens his mouth, revealing the jagged edge of a tooth broken off near the gum. “When’s the last time we got tested for shit? Not since pre-season?”

I shake my head. “I don’t even know. I didn’t get called for randoms this year.”

Tucker sits up, then stands, clutching his ribs in the same spot where mine ache. “Well, you’re taking me to get my face fixed. You can just ask Doc to check your junk while we’re there.”

With this extreme vote of confidence, Tucker and I shove our feet into shoes.

I grab a baseball cap from the peg near the door, and my brother helps himself to get another one, which was probably his first time.

I pull my phone and keys off the table by the door and see that I’ve missed approximately 7,000 calls and messages.

“Fuck me. I need to change my number.”

Tucker peeks over my shoulder and looks at his phone. “I only missed 45 messages from Mom. And twelve calls from Brian.”

At the sound of our agent’s name, it appears on my phone screen as the device vibrates in my hand. I lean against the wall by the door and answer.

Brian, as usual, does not waste time with greetings or small talk. “A-Stag, this is a shit show. Oy vey, this guy you were schtupping is making problems. Did you know about any of this? Don’t answer that. I’m meeting you at the facility.”

He hangs up, and Tucker and I leave the apartment. Gunnar and Odin will let themselves out later.

Tucker squints into the sun as we walk toward my Escalade. “Did Bri say shtoop? What’s that?”

I unlock the doors and slump into the driver’s seat. “Using context clues, I’m guessing it means fuck, Fucker.”

“Yeah. Probably.”

I shake my head and start to drive. Coming out as bi when I was in college was, thankfully, a non-issue for my teammates and has remained that way. There’s another out-player on the Fury, too, although people usually refer to us both as gay, even though I’m super bi.

Brian has been great about setting up opportunities for Banksy and me to talk with youth hockey players about the importance of inclusivity in hockey. It’s all been rainbows and Pride flags until I got cheated on.

Tucker must be scrolling through social media because he starts making all sorts of noises while I’m driving north.