Page 13 of The Poster Boy
“Thought I could walk out with you.” He looked sheepish as he shoved his hands into his pockets and I almost softened toward him.
“What, you’re worried you’ll get lost?”
Despite my shitty tone of voice, Myers smiled. “Something like that.”
He fell into step beside me. The spring in his step when he walked reminded me even more of a golden retriever.
“You have a hell of a wrist shot, by the way.”
“Can’t be that good if you stopped every one of them.”
Myers might be the media darling and a pain in my ass, but I had to give credit where it was due. He had a good glove hand, and he was as quick and agile as a cat.
“I didn’t say you weren’t good. I’m just better, that’s all. Don’t take it personally.”
I looked over at Myers in time to see him wink at me. When my scowl deepened and I didn’t respond, his sunny disposition faded a little, proving that he was human after all and not some programmable robot with his factory default stuck on perpetually happy.
Boone would kick my ass if he could see me now. But, thankfully, Boone had bolted out with a quickness.
Chapter 7
Marek
It hadn’t been all that long since I’d heard the buzz of a home ice arena waiting for a game to start, but with the trade and the interruption in my schedule, it had made it seem like an eternity. Plus there was the fact that this was my first game on home ice.
Well, my first time sitting on the bench on home ice. It was all I could do not to go to the coach and beg to be put in. But people like Jay already saw me as a threat to Church, and I wasn’t about to be obnoxious and prove him right.
I tried not to automatically chalk it up to him being a homophobe. There were plenty of reasons why he might be particularly frosty towards me. It didn’t necessarily have anything to do with my sexuality. Besides, I was assured by my manager that this team was full of LGBT-friendly guys. Which wasn’t always the case.
My old team flashed to mind, and I had to wonder if the media attention was the real reason I was traded, or if they’d wanted to get rid of me from the start but kept me on for an acceptable amount of time so it didn’t look like they were offloadingthe queer.
Twisting my head to the side, I stretched my neck and listened for the inevitable pop.
“That’s so gross, dude,” Andrew said. The defenseman had taken a liking to me, regardless of what Jay might think about it. “I still say you need a ritual.”
“Maybe that was my ritual.”
“Maybe you’re full of shit.”
“It’s not like I’m going to actually be on the ice anyway.” I tried not to sound like a petulant child, but I wasn’t sure how successful I was. The trade had knocked me for a loop, and I was still trying to get my skates under me. It was probably for the best that I wasn’t thrown into the deep end right off the bat. I’d only had two practices with the team. A longer one yesterday, and a shorter game-day practice earlier.
Andrew shrugged and reached for his helmet.
“They wouldn’t have traded for you if they were just going to keep you on the bench the whole time.” He gave me a pointed look, his gaze darting over to Church and back to me. His expression said a lot more than his mouth was willing to.
The whole league knew that Church was in a slump. It had started back when they were playing Vegas, and he’d ended up getting his brain rattled when one of their forwards plowed into him. The hit had been accidental. Church had moved from between the pipes to shoot the puck away from the net, and the forward hadn’t been expecting him to be out of the crease.
The Vikings hadn’t responded kindly to someone taking their goalie out, even if the guy hadn’t meant to. It was Brookbank who got up in the guy’s face about it. Puffing his chest and shoving at the other player. You didn’t need to be good at lip reading to make out what Jay said to the guy.
At least, that’s when I noticed Church’s problems begin. The rest of the game had gone to shit. Church missed some easy saves. The other team pulled ahead by a goal. Yanking Church at the end for the extra attacker hadn’t got the job done and they left the ice with a loss. And they’d been losing ever since.
They managed to win a game last week against Anaheim, but that was a combination of dumb luck on Vancouver’s part and bad luck on Anaheim’s. It hadn’t turned their losing streak into a winning streak.
Coach came in for the pre-ice pep talk. He reminded Jay to keep his fists to himself and keep his ass out of the penalty box. Jay made no promises. Coach had a few instructions for other players, and then his attention turned to me. The murmur of voices died and Coach O’Neil gave me a bit of a smile and a nod of his head. “Welcome to the team, Myers.”
For some reason, I’d expected more, but O’Neil wrapped up his pep talk after that. I watched everyone get to their feet, Church at the head of the line. Then Boone. Then Griffin, the assistant captain. Then Jay. Then everyone else.
Then me.
