Page 20 of Game Misconduct

Singer plowed on through it, like he had a predetermined point in the conversation he needed to reach, and he was going to get there whether Mike helped him or not. “So, uh, if there’s anything you’ve got going on in your personal life that’s, ah, affecting your play, or your general well-being, I just want you to know that we’re here for you, me and everyone else, and also if you, um...well, what Coach said, the other day. That was pretty not cool, uh, generally, pretty much the opposite of cool, I really don’t want you to get head injuries. Like, I don’t want anyone on the team to get head injuries. But I particularly wantyouto know you shouldn’t get head injuries. And that you’re not expendable.”

Mike stared at him. It was probably the longest speech he’d ever heard from Singer, who tried so fucking hard to be motivational, but who squeezed out words like he was embarrassed anyone would bother looking at him. What Coach had said... Mike was so used to hearing things like that, he hadn’t even remembered it after he’d gone out on the ice. Singer continued staring at him, blue eyes so earnest, so concerned.

“Seriously, Cap, it’s not even a thing.”

“Okay, well, I’m here for you, buddy,” Singer said, and patted him dadishly on the shoulder. “Good talk.”

Mike said, “Oh my fucking god,” but Singer was already walking across the long hall to the dressing room doorway, where Reed was waiting for him.

He was still in a foul mood as he dressed for the game. Singer had meant well and in a weird way Mike was like, touched, or something, something stupid like that, that he’d at least identified something that might have been a legitimate issue.

Knowing people thought there was something wrong was infuriating,humiliating. Especially when there was absolutely nothing wrong, when it was just that he was fucking distracted at the worst possible times by the thought of Garcia’s dark eyes and long eyelashes, by the image of Garcia naked burned behind his eyelids, the way he couldn’t stop thinking aboutI don’t know what I’m doing, the way he hadn’t even answered when Mike had tried to figure it out, like.

It probably wasn’t normal to extrapolate what someone was feeling just from text when you didn’t even talk all that often, but everyone was worrying about Mike, and he just had the feeling that Garcia was the one who was really fucking sad.

Which was a good thing, because he hated Garcia.

Garcia deserved to be sad.

Mike was trying to be more strategic about his fights, but when he beat the shit out of the Barracudas’ biggest forward, he felt like probably if anyone knew what was going on inside of his head, they wouldn’t blame him for it. They won 5–2 and Mike got his first goal of the season, but he was starting to realize that he could beat the shit out of someone different every night and he wasn’t going to make himself feel any better that way.

Mike couldn’t get it out of his head.

Garcia was sad.

It bothered the shit out of him. He was furious that he was thinking about it; furious that it bothered him. He didn’t know why it’d gotten under his skin like that in a way that the actually embarrassing thing—Garcia making him come so hard he’d punched himself in his own damn face—hadn’t. It wasn’t even that it bothered him, actually. It was just that Garcia was an asshole who deserved to be sad, but that didn’t mean Mike didn’t want to know why.

And it wasn’t like he could just ask.

He scowled at the buckwheat pancakes Mäkelä was making for the three of them while Bee was in the shower. Mäkelä wore a pair of athletic shorts and nothing else, and his sandy blond hair was sleep-messy, but he didn’t seem self-conscious about any of it at all. There was no reason for him to be.

Mäkelä was kind of an enigma. Clearly, Bee saw something special in him, and so Mike was predisposed to like him. Also, generally, he was a good dude. Mike sure as fuck didn’t understand him, though, and he wasn’t sure if that had more to do with the fact that Mäkelä was a goalie or the fact that he was Finnish. He was a weird guy, but he made good fucking pancakes. Mike probably would have appreciated them more if he’d been in a better mood.

He did appreciate that Mäkelä, unlike almost everyone else in his life, wasn’t trying to pry. In fact, he just acted like Mike wasn’t there. Which normally Mike really would have appreciated. However. He considered that maybe Mäkelä had some kind of goalie wisdom. Bee, who otherwise had excellent taste in associates, put up with him on a regular basis so like...maybe there was something there. Maybe Mike could pick his brains about the entire Garcia situation without, like, actually going into detail about the Garcia situation.

“Mäkelä?”

“Yes, Michael.”

Mike wrinkled his nose: he’d have to explain to the goalie that just because Bee did it, didn’t meanhecould. But he had more pressing concerns. “You like...knowpeople, and stuff.”

Mäkelä turned those ice-chip eyes on him and flipped a pancake without looking at the pan. “I know a lot about reindeer.”

“Ha, ha. I mean your goalie wisdom. You understand people. You can get in their heads, right?”

“So you have a question about people, is what I gather.”

“Well...a person, really.”

“Oh?”

“It’s not anything—”

Mäkelä looked at him over the kitchen counter and said, very seriously, “Michael, I’m here for you, but you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to tell me.”

Mike half choked, because apparently he was collecting dads this week, then took a long drink of his coffee to try to cover it up. Mäkelä also made really good coffee. It was a big deal in Finland or something. Bee was lucky as fuck, really. For all she’d tried to make things complicated she had figured it out in the end, and her boyfriend was the kind of guy who’d make excellent coffee for her in the morning.

“I mean just...what do you do when there’s someone you’re like...not dating...kind of...talking to? But not really...talking to...” Mäkelä was waiting for him to go on, so patiently that Mike’s entire body almost withered and died in protest. “Like, a person you’re, you’re fucking, I mean...you have fucked...or you want to fuck...”

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