Page 5 of These Wicked Games
“What the fuck are you talking about?” he screams, blocking my punches. I’m too mad. Adrenaline coats every single hit and move I make.
“You switched the fucking labels!” I lunge again, tackling him to the ground. I swing, and I don’t stop. I think I black out. I’m just punching and punching.
I faintly register being pulled off him. Security hauling me away. Andre’s face covered in blood. I definitely broke his nose. I’m heaving. He ruined everything!
My best friend betrayed me. It took an army of security officers to peel me off him. I’m kicked out of the arena, but thankfully, I guess, Andre and Tripp don’t press charges. My career, as I saw it, is over.
That year I don’t make it onto the Vipers’ team. In fact I don’t make it to the NHL for another five years until the Otters—sixth in the western conference—sign me during my time on their AHL team, the Washington Redwoods. Washington signed me despite my “drug history,” and I guess I should be grateful. No, I am. I am grateful, because after I beat the absolute shit out of Andre I was kicked off the Titans.
I finished that bullshit substance abuse program and the Redwood’s signed me nearly a year later, and while the Titans dropping me set me back, it didn’t matter—I didn’twant to be on the same team as him. Not that I would have had to play with him for long anyway, because Andre got signed by the end of that season.
To the fucking Vipers.
My dream team.
Everything I worked for vanished into smoke because of him. Even though I did eventually get signed, the dreams for my mother died right alongside her nearly five months after I got kicked off the Titans.
I like to believe she didn’t think it was me. I want to believe she believed me when I told her it was Andre who switched our cups. She told me she did, but there was always this doubt in her eye.
“It’s okay to be stressed, zvezdochka”
Despite how much I protested, she’d give me this pitying smile.
The team I grew up watching, and idolized, now has my enemy on their roster. I can’t even watch their games anymore. Everything got fucked up—my plans, my mother’s life, and the dreams I made for myself and her. I get tested more frequently than other players. Even ten years later, with consistent negative tests. It’s a fucking joke. I don’t understand any of it. For a while I was angry, and I let that anger consume me.
Then I started to bottle and collect it.
It fueled me to be the best.
And I did.
I am.
After I was picked up by the Washington Redwoods, I got paid peanuts, but I still worked three times as hard as any other player. Then I got a multimillion-dollar contract with Oregon, and re-signed last year on a hundred-million-dollar contract for eight years. My mother passed away in a hospital with me by her side,and when I bought a home in Oregon I brought my mother’s ashes home with me. She always wanted a big bay window in a kitchen and that’s the first renovation I made. It’s where her ashes sit now.
Andre ruined my life. I don’t even mourn the friend I lost because it was all bullshit. He used me. Thankfully I don’t have to see him much, only when we play the Vipers, and that’s when I take all that rage and spill it on the ice. They haven’t won a game against us since I was signed. I refuse to let him beat me again.
I hate him more than anything, and some days it’s only that hate that fuels me.
two
Oli
Being great takes work.
Actual tears, actual sweat, and a fuck load of blood.
And if you’re me, you have to claw yourself out of every hole you’ve been shoved into. You aren’t handed shit, in fact your starting line is way behind everyone else’s. Only when you work until you’re about to break can you accomplish anything.
That is, unless you’re Andre Tavares.
Goalie dickhead for the Virginia Vipers and the worst person who has ever graced the professional game of hockey. If you’re Andre, you cheat, sneak, and sabotage. If you’re someone like Andre you get daddy to hand you everything. You get a free fucking pass to be the worst fucking prick who has everexisted.
Alright, maybe that’s a bit extreme, but what’s not extreme is how much I fucking hate him. Most days I feel like a sleeper soldier, walking along just fine, then suddenly I hear his name, or worse, see him, and it’s like the rage ignites every strand of my DNA.
Whatever.I need to focus. I just hate playing the Vipers.
Staring down the ice at the asshole in question, I watch him move back and forth like an NPC in his black and green trimmed jersey with the Vipers’ logo—a slithering snake with its tongue out and fangs protruding violently. Number ninety-one.
