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ledger cole

I was already in a shit mood before Coach called me to tell me the first family dinner of the preseason would be at my apartment. It was worse because I’d intended to binge Vikings on TV and relish in the last quiet night I would have before my final season in the NHL.

I may not be considered old by societal standards, but in the world of hockey, I was aging out of the game. Straight out of college, I was hailed as one of the League’s top players, and I’d consistently performed well over the past decade. However, an injury to my knee last season sidelined me for ten weeks, preventing me from stepping onto the ice until I’d fully recovered.

Despite the coach’s optimism that I would bounce back this season and extend my career by a few more years, I wasn’t so sure. I was approaching the twilight of my time in a sport that had been my passion and dedication throughout my entire adulthood. Unsure of my path after hockey, I decided to keep to myself, indulging in ice cream and binge-worthy TV shows rather than try to better myself for the preseason.

So, when Coach called and demanded I host the team dinner to start off the season, I rolled my eyes. When he told me it would be tonight, I protested. I’d moved away from my parents when I was eighteen to focus on hockey, so all this team bonding stuff drove me nuts, but what Coach McNulty wanted, he got. So I was off to find a way to feed an entire hockey team.

As I was about to head to the store, I noticed a tiny…someone huddled on the sidewalk right outside the building. I lived in Chicago, and weird shit happened all the time, but this struck me because the person was curled in a fetal position, and their back was shaking from sobbing.

She had her hood up, but when I finally got a response from her, her bright-blue eyes struck a chord within me, making all the air leave my lungs. I was not surprised often in my life. Most guys on the team would call me chill because little bothered me. I was rarely the hotheaded one on the ice with my gloves off, taking swings, but with this sad woman in front of me, I had an urge to fix her problems so she wouldn’t have to cry again.

I didn’t know her, but sadness reflected in her irises. I stared at her, trying to memorize her. Her curvy frame and petite height added an intriguing contrast to her demeanor. Yet she quickly wiped away her tears and turned like nothing had happened. As she walked away, disappearing into the bustling crowd, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had missed an opportunity. In my eagerness to offer help, I had forgotten the basics. I never exchanged phone numbers, and her name remained a mystery, leaving me with an unexpected yearning.

“Ah, fuck it,” I said, shoving my hands into my pockets. “Just another girl you bumped into on the street.”

I sighed, continuing the trek to the store to figure out what the heck I would feed a hockey team of hungry men.

* * *

“Fucking pizza?” Coach McNulty asked as he walked into my apartment. I lived in one of the penthouse apartments of a building that the Ravens basically commandeered as their own. I started living here first, appreciating the amenities the building offered because I was not about to learn how to cook.

“I hate cooking,” I grumbled as I opened a few more boxes of pizza and set out wings from their Styrofoam containers on the large kitchen island. Some of the guys had helped me set up a few extra foldable tables. I grabbed a few paper plates and napkins; figured it was as good as any fancy cutlery and meal the other guys would set up. Well, maybe not for some of the bougie dudes like Coach, but pizza was sustenance.

“Jesus,” Coach said as he grabbed a few slices, then went to the dining room. It was a big room with floor-to-ceiling windows covering the entire apartment, shaped like an L. I’d had a designer come in and decorate a couple of years ago, trying to make it not seem as cold as it started out, so it was filled with leather furniture and wood accents. I had replaced the original marble floors with hardwood planks, but kept the kitchen and bedroom modern and clean. At the end of the day, I had a bed to lie in and a couch to watch shows on, so I didn’t care what it looked like.

“Settle down!” Coach shouted over the loud group of men as I grabbed some pizza and slumped into a chair in the corner. The area was slightly secluded from everyone else and faced the city, so I could watch the lights twinkle and admire the darkness of the lake.

“We got the new guy coming today,” Coach announced, standing, so we all turned in his direction.

“You mean the kid we have to babysit?” Alex piped in from the other side of the room, and everyone erupted in laughter. We were getting a brand-new one this year, the youngest kid the League had seen, and while we’d all seen him play in videos, it was hard to believe that an eighteen year old would somehow fit in with the rest of us since most of the guys were in their mid-twenties.

“He doesn’t need babysitting…”

“Says Google,” I chimed in. A swift online search of his name revealed, beyond his hockey stats and numerous awards, he had a penchant for going wild at parties and teetering on the brink of getting arrested. Frankly, it was likely the influence of the small-town politics I knew all too well that kept him out of jail. Only further emphasizing the fact I had no intention of playing babysitter to a team member who was a reckless child.

“His mother is in town—” I burst into laughter, and the team joined in, finding it amusing that a statement about one of our players had to start with those words.

“You think it’s so funny, Cole, then you mentor him,” Coach threatened as I put my pizza down on my lap.

“Hey, hey”—I threw my hands in the air—“I didn’t say shit.”

“Be fucking nice,” Coach reprimanded me, and suddenly I felt like the child here, a feeling I despised.

“Whatever.” As I took another bite of pizza, they talked in the background, and I stared out at the city, letting my imagination wander. That sad woman I’d met earlier was out there somewhere. I wondered if she had finally gotten her smile back and whatever was bothering her was fixed.

My thoughts were interrupted, and my head snapped up. The door clicked open.

A child walked through the door. An actual kid, with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans, his hoodie with his high school team on it, and an awkward shuffle of his feet. It was going to be a long fucking season, and someone was going to have to hold his hand.

The entire room went quiet. “Oh, uh, is this the team dinner?” He looked around a few times, but no one said a word, not even Coach, who closed his eyes and swallowed. I wondered how much of the child’s hiring was the Coach’s choice since the child was such a risk.

It was Dirks, one of the defensemen, who finally walked over and threw his hand around his shoulders. “Yeah, brother. Glad you’re here. We were just getting settled in.”

He grabbed him a plate and threw on a few slices before leading him around the room to do proper introductions. They looked somewhat like brothers or distant cousins with their blond hair. Although Dirks had straighter hair and the kid had curly hair, they both looked like they could have been cast right out of the show Laguna Beach .

“Isn’t that your job?” Alex walked over to me, handing me a beer from the fridge. He was a left-wing with a slight Russian accent, dark black hair, and piercing green eyes. He was from Moscow and had been with the Ravens for almost as long as I had. We were the two oldest on the team and neighbors, so I probably considered Alex my closest friend. Plus, he had a cool-as-shit wife.

“Eh, let Dirks get it. He seemed eager,” I mumbled, and Alex huffed out a laugh as he brought his beer to his lips.

“He’s a fucking reckless option,” I said.

Alex nodded. “But he plays like a fucking boss.”

“Yeah, but without a team mentality, he’s going to fail. He needs to be able to know his place. It’s not always about raw talent anymore.”

“Okay, Coach,” Alex teased, and I shoved him.

“Here they come.”

“Motherfucker,” I hissed under my breath. This was the last thing I needed tonight. The one reason I didn’t want to play happy host was because I wasn’t.

“Yo, this is our cap, Ledger Cole, but we all just call him Cole.” I tilted my chin before Dirks continued. “This one here is one of the alternate captains and the greatest left-winger in the goddamn League, Alexsey Popov.”

The child looked like he was about to shit his pants, and Alex, noticing that I refused to stand, extended his hand. “It’s just Alex, but I’ll take the accolades, Dirks.”

“Oh, hey, Austin Hart.” Dirks and Alex stared down at me as I splayed my legs, with my pizza on a paper plate on my lap and a beer in my hand.

I sighed, taking a deep breath. This was why I needed to retire. I loved playing hockey, but shit like this was painful. The politics of hockey made me want to bang my head against a wall.

After getting a stare-down from my two teammates and friends, I finally stood, but not without letting out an exhausted sigh.

“Welcome to the team, Austin,” I said as I extended my hand to the child. This seemed to warm him up, and a grin spread on his face.

“Thanks, man.”

I gestured to the empty folding chair next to me. “Why don’t you take a seat here?”

Another frantic nod. “Yeah, I’d love that. Cool. Thanks.” It took everything inside me not to roll my eyes, as his words came out like anxious spurts.

Coach came over, assessing the situation, but I was relaxed as Austin pulled up the chair next to mine to sit in.

“Oh, good, Austin, you’ve met Cole, our captain.”

“For now,” I mumbled. Because earlier, I’d begged to give up my position, insisting that since it was my last year, I wanted Alex to take over. He’d worked his ass off to be in the position he was. Not that all the guys didn’t also kick ass, but Alex deserved the fuck out of it before any of us.

Coach gave me a pointed look before I settled back into the seat and relished the quiet. I was about to start daydreaming about the girl in the hooded jacket when someone interrupted what would have been a pretty damn good thought.

“So, what’s it like going on the road? Are there a lot of girls?” Oh, fuck me. I leaned back, running my fingers through my hair.

Alex, who was sitting across from us, stifled a laugh, knowing how much the child would piss me the fuck off.

“Not for you,” I lamented, shoving pizza in my mouth, hoping this would be the universal signal that I was unable to have any further conversation.

“But like, do they come to you, or like, the puck bunnies just hang around the rink?” I guess the fuck not.

“Listen…” I leaned forward, putting down my plate yet again. All I wanted to do was eat my goddamn pizza in peace. This was why I didn’t want to have any family dinners, especially in my personal space. Yet another reason I had no desire to be captain this season. This doling out advice was as frustrating as all the politics that came along with leading a team. “Your first year on the ice should not be about finding puck bunnies. You are fresh, and we’ve seen your talent. You have a shit ton of it. But being on a team is about working together. If you get sucked in with the drama of the ice rabbits, then we all suffer.”

Was ice rabbits a nice term? No, but I was trying to drill it into the child that I was the wrong person to be asking these questions, and he needed to focus on hockey. The whole reason his contract was larger than some of the other players on the team was for hockey. “I will get fucked. Your team will get fucked. Everyone will get hurt if you start messing around with those girls.”

He leaned back, then looked ahead at Alex, who was wide-eyed due to the palpable tension radiating between the two of us. “So can I get a beer at least?”

Fucking. Idiot. “No.”

Coach interrupted my thoughts. “Thank you for coming to the first dinner of hopefully many this year…”

I leaned back in the chair, half listening to the speech he’d given the past few years at these things. The woman with blue eyes came to the forefront of my mind again.

Fuck, why was I like this? I wasn’t celibate by any means. Despite what the child might think, I thoroughly enjoyed the company of a puck bunny or two after a game. I’d earned my bragging rights, and with all the adrenaline pumping after a win, channeling it into something aggressive in bed was sometimes just what I needed to keep my head in the game.

I’d never had a girlfriend and never—ever—let myself get attached to anyone because everything in life was temporary. The only thing I’d ever let myself clutch onto was hockey, which was why I thought my life was over when I tore my MCL in my right knee last year. Knowing this may be the last year I would ever have in the League had me wanting to crawl into a dark hole and never come out.

But the woman on the street? The one who was full-blown crying while every person walked past her as if she was a piece of trash on the sidewalk? Something about her forced me to stop—forced me to see her, acknowledge her. She left me with a feeling that was anything but temporary.

Ugh. I needed to get over it. It had to be because it was a shit day, and I was blaming my weird obsession tonight over this entire dinner.

“Everyone, give our captain, Ledger Cole, a huge round of applause, and thanks for supplying us with pizza and beer.”

“Hear, hear.” Coach finished his beer, excusing himself to go back to his penthouse.

“Now, who’s getting the new guy a fake, and when can we go slay some pussy?” one of the younger players, Zane, shouted as soon as Coach left. Looking over at Alex, I slumped in my chair and let out a good “Fuck me” as the guys crowded around the kid, trying to figure out how to get him into their favorite bar across the street.

“One more year,” I whispered to myself. One more fucking year.