Page 103 of What if I Told You

Let’s just get this fucking game over with.

We get through the pregame ceremonies with no problems but the game itself starts out with a flurry of drama. Oliver faces off against the Gators’ center, Mickey Fyte. Oliver wins the puck but breaks his stick on the draw. Harrison gets an early touch on the puck and keeps possession long enough to get it passed to Ollenberg who’s off to a good start. We’re able to keep the puck under an Anaheim hold for a solid thirty seconds of game play before we lose it to the Gators. Bear blocks their first shot attempt and sends the puck back to Ollenberg who shoots it down the ice. I’m able to sweep in for the take, but without warning, I’m checked by Homer Offerston from the Gators, hit hard behind the net. It quickly becomes three on one and they refuse to let up, each one of them crashing into me as if it’s all legal game play.

What the ever-loving fuck?

I lose my balance and fall but not before I hear, “Furbling says hello Blackstone.” Offerston sneers and I swear I hear him mumble something like, “Punk ass Rumpleforeskin.”

“What the fuck are you doing?” Harrison shouts at Offerston with Griffin and Ledger right behind him.

With a swing of a fist Garrison adds, “That was completely uncalled for, you potato face humpty bitch!”

Fists fly and words are shouted and a couple helmets are knocked off as six of us fight on the ice. I land a few solid punches to Offerston and one of his comrades who I don’t recognize and one of them grabs my jersey before landing an uppercut to my chin. “We played with Furbling back in the day, fuck nut,” the guy says to me. “We saw what you did.”

Son of a fucking bitch, so this is how it’s happening now?

Instead of social media posts he’s resulted to letting former teammates fight it out for him?

“You don’t know shit,” I spit back at him. “So, fuck off limp dick!” I get a few more hits in before the referee breaks us up, but now I’m revved up and ready to kick some Gator ass.

“You okay Blackstone?”

“Never better,” I tell him, feeling the heat of anger boiling up inside me already. I fix my helmet and look up at the jumbotron to see we’re only a little over a minute into the first period of the game.

Seriously?

A fight in the first minute of the game is not a good omen.

But fuck the Gators.

Karma’s a bitch and all is fair in the game of hockey.

And fuck Furbling.

If he wants to fight, he can fucking show up and do it himself.

Homer is called to the penalty box and I’m off to the bench to get cleaned up. Quite sure I’m cut above my eye because there’s blood on my glove. The team has a two-minute powerplay, but a second stringer takes my place on the ice.

“What the hell was that about?” Anthony, our team medic, asks me while taking a quick look at me eye.

“Nothing important.”

“Hey Blackstone!” a fan calls from behind the glass. “I heard you were the worst player on the last team too.”

I pay no attention to the stupid cunt in the stands. Most of our fans who pay enough to sit this close to the ice are damn near drunk by game time anyway.

“It doesn’t look bad. I’m just going to steri-strip it and put a band-aid over it for now. We’ll revisit it after the game unless it gets worse.” Anthony dabs the wound with alcohol and cleans it up before covering it with the appropriate bandages and then sends me on my way. I’m ready to get myself back in the game.

Because Offerston’s got it coming.

“Hey Blackstone, you’re definitely not pregnant because this period is slamming you!”

“Yeah? Then you can suck my bloody dick asshole,” I mumble right before jumping the wall and reentering the game.

The Gators finally get the puck into our territory and Bear has to be fast on his feet. He blocks a shot and sends it back down the ice but it’s rebounded and shot at him again, this time banking off the net. I loop around as the puck slides right to me and pass it off to Ledger until I can get out from behind the net. Once I’m back in the open, Griffin dribbles the puck down the ice with me out in front clearing his path. The crowd gets louder the closer to the net we get. Griffin looks at me and smiles with a wicked grin that tells me he’s about to do something stupid and then he comes to a screeching halt, looks at Findley, the goalie for the Gators, and says, “Hey man. How many wieners do you think I can deep throat at one time?”

And then without even looking he passes the puck to me, and I shoot it into Findley’s five hole to score the first goal of the game. The siren blows and the crowd erupts and all I can do is laugh as the guys crowd around me and give me celebratory hugs.

“Well done Blackstone, but what the fuck was that?” Oliver asks with a laugh as he collides into me, slapping my helmet.

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