Page 4 of Delay of Game

“Therapy, bro. Maybe you should, like, look into it?”

“You’reshittingme.”

“Nah,” Jammer said, shrugging and making a sort of grabby hand motion at the bong. “You’re too high strung to fuck around with. Like kicking a puppy.”

“Fuckyou,” Zach growled, but passed it anyway. Jammer could be obnoxious as fuck, but he was still a tier one bro.

“So you write back to Singer yet?”

“Ugh, yes. That asshole.”

“Thought that was nice of him, actually. Considering you’re damaged goods and all now.”

“It was so fuckingcondescending, Jams!”

“How was it condescending?”

“‘It doesn’t matter here,’” Zach said, with an exaggerated accent, like he imagined a Philadelphian must talk. He mostly only hadRockyto go on and he hadn’t seen that in years. It probably didn’t sound like someone from Philly at all, but he hoped that wherever Nate Singer was, he felt insulted, somehow.

Jammer looked at him pityingly.

Zach tried not to think about all of his broken promises: the team breakfasts he’d missed, the practices he’d been present but not-really-present for, constantly telling Kelly he’d clean up his actnexttime. Well. Kelly had dropped him, and so had the team, and now all he had to look forward to was Philadelphia and Nate fucking Singer.

“Besides. I’m just gonna go and I’m gonna play hockey and I’mnotgonna get in any more trouble and it doesn’t fucking matter what Captain America or the rest of the team thinks about me.”

Jammer raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

“What?”

“I love you, bro, but you know...”

“What?”

“It was what the rest of the team thought about you that got you traded in the first place.”

Zach reared back, like Jammer had punched him in the chest. That’s what it felt like. It felt like betrayal.“Jams?”

“Ididn’t think that, obviously. But I’m not the whole team. And you’re so fucking good, Zach, you could be like—legendary. If you’d just fucking get your shit together.”

Zach put his head down in his lap and did not cry, but shit, his head was a fucking mess. “I just gotta go and I gotta prove them wrong.”

“Foryou,” Jammer said, patting his back.

Zach didn’t know if doing it for himself was gonna be enough, but he didn’t have the heart to tell Jammer that. “Pass it, bro. I got a week before I gotta start training again.”

Jammer beamed at him. “That’s what I like to hear.”

The first thing Zach thought when he landed in Philly was that the city was a lot uglier than Montreal and it smelled like piss. That seemed appropriate, given his overall life experiences recently. He breathed it in deep, just to spite himself, and thought,this is the first day of the rest of your life, buddy.

The second thing he thought was that there was no way he was looking up anyone on the team before he had to. They might’ve been in the same city, but that didn’t mean they had to befriends. He’d ignored friendly text messages from Nate Singer, who’d gotten his number from someone Zach was going to have to yell at later.

No. He was going to unpack his shit, figure out how to get around to the practice facility from his apartment, and work the fuck out at the gym until he could show everyone on the ice that even if he’d fucked up his life, he was still one of the best players out there.

The weird thing was that it felt like being in a billet again. Like he’d left home for the first time.

He’d really loved the guys on the Royal, with the exception of the Morin twins, who always looked at him like they’d look at some shit on their shoes, and although Zach tried to tell himself they looked that way at everyone, it was especially geared at him. He’d really loved Montreal. He’d really loved the house he’d been so close to buying. He’d put in the offer right before the trade and he had been ready to adopt a dog.

It was a whole life he’d never actually get to have, and Zach, for the first time he could remember, found out that it really fucking sucked not to get what you wanted.

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