Page 13 of Puck Shots (Love The Game #6)

Cosmo

“ W ho gives a quiz in week three?” I ask, stomping through the house, staring down at my phone still loaded on the blackboard app.

The marks for a pop quiz Mr. Ericsson held yesterday in basic statistics stare back at me.

I didn’t do well. I did really fucking terribly if I am being honest. Dead last in the whole class and it’s right there on a fucking shared backboard.

Why is it that part, makes it so much worse?

“Relax, man. It doesn’t count toward your final grade. They just wanted to get a baseline for where everyone is up to,” Luka says, trying his best to reassure me.

“Then why post the grades on the blackboard for everyone to see?”

“It’s only our class and the faculty that can see it. You’re fine. Like you said, it’s week three, no one expects you to be across it already, that’s why we’re in the class, to learn this shit.”

“Thanks, man,” I say, hoping to end the conversation.

Luka is my best friend, and I know he means well, but like he said, the faculty can see this and I know for sure the coaches will be checking up on us to make sure we’re keeping up with our studies or they’ll sit us on the bench, and no way I get drafted to the NHL from the bench.

I need to study. But fuck, I hate studying.

I try to focus on the words on the page, and it’s like five minutes and my brain is all nope, time to replay in detail the last twenty minutes of The Real Housewives of the NHL.

Fuck, that show’s good. The sex, the drama, the sneak peeks into the lives of the guys who are living the life I want.

A life I have zero hope of getting if I don’t play.

I was sure I would have been drafted already given my speed, but speed isn’t enough.

I’ve been focused on every other aspect of my game all summer.

My stick handling has improved heaps, but my passing accuracy still needs work, and my shot variety is meh.

I’ve been working on a super-speed slap shot, but when I’m going that fast, I struggle to maintain control of the puck and usually miss it when I go for the shot.

I also was a little more into partying last year than I should have been.

Almost got me kicked out of the team on a couple of occasions when I’d miss a practice or two or three.

I like to think that if I stand out in every game this year, then I can undo any prior bad opinions of me and start setting new good ones.

Great ones, even. I need them to see that the party-hard playboy of last year is gone and I am fully committed to making my dream come true.

“You ready?” Eli asks, standing from my bed the second I walk through the door, a chessboard laid out on the covers.

How do I expect to learn how to play chess when I can’t even get a passing grade on a basic pop quiz?

“Are you sure this is easy?”

“It is easy to learn the basics, winning the game can be hard, or impossible depending on who you are playing. You look stressed. What’s up?”

Luka walks past me to the bathroom.

“He thinks he’s stupid. Maybe you can convince him otherwise. My words seem to be doing nothing to change his mind,” Luka says before closing the bathroom door. The shower sounds a few seconds later.

“He’s not right, is he?” Eli asks, and I pass him my phone and plonk onto the end of the bed. It jostles the board, and more than a few pieces topple onto their sides.

“Oh, shit, sorry. Umm, I think this is… wait, what are these?” I ask, holding up something tall that sort of looks like a part of a castle.

Like a tower of a castle, but its base is a light ash grey wood, and the main castle tower piece was cut from a section of a soda can, thin black rubber lining the sharp edges.

“That would be a rook. It can move both vertically and horizontally on the board and as many spaces as it wants on a turn as long as your fingers are still holding it. As soon as you let go, the turn is over.”

He passes me back my phone, the screen dark.

He gently sits on the bed on the other side of the board and helps me return the pieces to their positions.

I notice now all the ones on my side have the same light wooden bases, carved to make up part of each piece, but topped with various objects like shells, colored glass, and bent copper wire to name a few.

“You know there are lots of statistics in chess,” he says.

“So you saw the grade then.”

“I try not to look at grades as a sign of intelligence, it’s more a sign someone is good at taking tests. There are lots of ways to be smart, and I’ll prove it to you.”

“Go on then,” I say, and he nods to the board.

“You’re sitting on the side of the white pieces, and mine are the black, right?”

“Yeah,” I reply, spotting the deep charred wood that makes up the bottoms of his pieces, it’s shiny like it’s covered in some kind of gloss, too, whereas my pieces are dull, like the wood came straight from a seaside shoreline.

“Well, white moves first, and in chess, that gains it a first-move advantage.”

“Okay, but like how does that relate to statistics?”

“Several studies have been done,” he says, lining up the last of his pieces. “White scores better than Black for the four main opening moves, 1d4, 1c4, 1e4 and—”

“1f4?”

“1Nf3 actually.”

My cheeks burn, but he continues like I didn’t just mess it up.

“White’s winning percentage is then calculated by taking the percentage of games won in addition to half the number of games drawn.

So, if out of one thousand games, white won four hundred of them and draws three hundred and twenty and loses two hundred and eighty, white’s total winning percentage is four hundred, plus half the draws, so five hundred and sixty. ”

I nod, surprised that my brain is keeping up with the math so far.

“Divide that by one hundred and you get the percentage, fifty-eight.”

“So I have a fifty-eight percent chance of beating you just by being given the white pieces?”

“Oh, no, your percentage is zero because you’re a beginner and I’m experienced, but you get the drift. Interestingly enough, the outcome was the same for games against computers, too, when those first moves were made.”

“Doesn’t really seem fair. Like maybe you should play an equal number of games as black and as white to get the best of them to decide the overall winner.”

“Some people do that; others love the finality of checkmate. It’s when your king has nowhere to go without being captured.”

“That’s when your piece takes another piece like the little guys do but only diagonally?” I ask, and he smiles so wide I blush.

“Yeah, that’s right. See, you’re getting it already.”

“I read up a few things on my phone this morning before class. Maybe I should have been reading up on statistics instead.”

“We’ll get you there on both.”

“You really think I can learn this?”

“I know you can, and you’ll smash that next quiz. Just like how you helped me with the pledge one, I’ve got your back.”

“KOKs forever,” I say, and he chuckles.

“Yeah, I’m not saying that.”

“You have to, it’s the code.”

“Is not.”

“It is, you can’t leave me hanging with my KOK just out there.”

He holds his waist and laughs harder.

“Stop, it’s too much,” he gasps.

“Look, you’ll have to get used to saying it without laughing sometime. Go on, try it.”

“Kappa Omicron Kappa’s forever,” he practically wheezes.

“Fine, I’ll take that for now, but seriously, the more you say it the easier it will get. How about every time you steal a piece in chess, you have to say, KOK’s rule?”

“I am the one teaching you, so we play by my rules.”

“Fine, teach me how to play this game already.”

***

“KOKs rule!” I yell, taking one of his pawns and lining it up neatly beside the one other that I have managed to nab.

He chuckles and then takes one of mine in a swift move, laying it down beside the many, many others, like a row of tiny dead bodies from the battlefield of chess.

“How did you do that?” I ask, and he chuckles.

“These move in an L shape, remember?”

“Ohhh, right. Knight moves like up and over or over and up.”

“And that is checkmate,” he then says, pointing to his horse, two pawns and his queen.

I learned quickly the queen is the most powerful piece on the board, even though you are after the king to win.

She can go any which way she wants and as many squares, too.

The only thing is, when a newbie like me found that out, I thought I was being all clever using her to capture one of his horses early on, only he took her with a bloody basic pawn a second later.

“See, if you move here, I can take you with this one, and if you move there, I can take you with that, and then there and there, and there,” he goes on to say as he shows me with the handmade pieces of the board.

He crafted them all himself from bits and pieces he found on his walks.

He does that often. Takes walks, that is.

He says it helps him to clear his head, but I have a feeling he’s more used to being alone than even he’d like to admit.

In this house, he’ll never need to be alone again, unless he wants to, that is. Actually, even then he might not be.

“Nice to know you were playing to win. Shit, we’ve been going for over an hour.”

When did Luca even come out of the bathroom?

“Time flies when you’re having fun,” he says, laying the remaining pieces on the comforter beside the captured pieces and flipping over the board.

“Oh cool, it’s like a box.”

“Yeah, it makes storing these easier. So, same time tomorrow?”

“I’m up for it if you are.”

“I’ll be prepared with some more statistics tricks for you, too.”

“That would be great, thanks. I feel like, even after just today, I sort of get it a little more. Maybe I’m not a lost cause after all.”

“You don’t really think that, do you?” he asks, closing the half of the box over the other to enclose the pieces securely inside.

I rub at my wrist where the sharpie lightning bolt stains my skin.

“Sometimes. I mean. I’m not really here because of my brains, like you.”

“Yes, you are. I mean, sure, they might have seen your potential on the ice, but they wouldn’t have given you a place here if they didn’t think you could handle the classwork, too. You don’t get to play if you don’t pass, right?”

“Yeah,” I say, my pounding heart settling just a little.

“Good, then no more talk of you being a lost cause. If I can start to see myself fitting into the most jock house on the row, you can pass statistics 101.”

“You are the smart one, so I guess you could be right.”

“I know I am,” he says, reaching over and resting his hand on my forearm.

Heat floods under his touch, and my throat goes impossibly dry.

“I better get changed for dinner. It’s pancake and waffles night, and apparently, all the pledges need to cook a full twelve-stack of each before we can join you all at the tables to eat. ”

“Ohhh, pancake and waffle night is my favorite. Just be warned, the guys like to spike the pledges’ syrup with whiskey.”

His eyebrows pick up, and he smiles an unexpected smile.

“I could do waffles and whiskey.”

“You surprise me more everyday, Eli Mores.”

“That’s how we Mores guys do it,” he says, backing toward the door. “We wear you down slowly so you don’t see it coming.”

His back hits the frame, and his face goes bright red as he clutches the chess set to his chest so he doesn’t drop it.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I reply, and he turns to go, and as I watch him leave, all I keep thinking is how suddenly my room feels way too quiet.