Page 21 of Two Guys One Puck
“It’s a good point.” A guy from the Griffins takes a seat to my left. I don’t know his name, but my team calls him Chad. He just looks like a Chad.
“I can play with anyone.” I look at them each in turn because it doesn’t matter if this is our ‘team’. We are still competition.
When the room is settled, Coach Fig walks up to the podium and welcomes us all. He gives a very canned speech about being excited to work with us.
I focus on eating. Part of my strategy to beat Seaborn is to get bigger, so he can’t throw me around. I can’t skip needed calories. Especially while doing all the extra training this week.
“This week is not a tryout,” Fig says, catching my attention. “This week is to show you a bit about what our team is like and get some information on what playing professional is like. This is development. We want to get to know all of you on and off the ice. That being said, you control how hard you work and how you deal with your competition. All of you have the same goal. We want to help you succeed with that. We want you to take these skills back to your teams, too, and we want to see how you develop over the next year when we have some of you come back.”
A few other people from the training staff speak, and then we’re taken to a hotel next to the facility to put our stuff in our rooms and change into our workout gear. I pull on a neon red rash guard and gray shorts. Monsters’ colors. We got jerseys and gear in the Dragons’ colors for when we’re on the ice, but we wear our own clothes for the rest.
I grab a pre-workout I’d brought and walk down to the lobby to wait for the rest of the guys. When I get down there, I find Seaborn already waiting. How was he faster? It’s like this guy can’t do anything that’s not infuriating.
He gives me a tight smile when I walk over.
“Do you never take a minute off?” I take the seat across from him instead of next to him to keep myself in check. I find myself wanting to push every button he has.
“I could ask you the same thing.” He checks his watch like he’d rather be anywhere else.
I can’t decide if he’s being cold as a defense mechanism or because he doesn’t care. I hate that I care. That I can’t stop thinking about his hand on my dick.
“I propose a truce while we are here.”
His gaze lifts from his phone, searching my face. “Why?”
“Have you been hit too many times in the head to figure that one out yourself?” I throw back. It’s second nature to slip into the snark when he’s involved; I can’t help it with his fucking attitude.
He rolls his eyes. “You think they will care?”
“Are you sure they won’t? That’s the real question, and unless you can say for certain, we are only hurting ourselves by keeping it up. The whole league knows how many fights we got into last season.” Thankfully, they didn’t know anything else. “They talked about it in the lead-up to our Frozen Four game, and then after. The Dragons put us in the same group for a reason, no?”
Seaborn’s lip curls in anger, but he reluctantly nods. “They had to have.”
“And that’s to see how we interact.” If I have to spoon-feed this to him, I will.
“To what end? They won’t end up drafting us both.”
“What if they do? We don’t know how anything will go.” I want to be at the top of the draft, but no one can predict what a team will do. We both know that.
“It’s not going to happen, so what’s the point?”
“To see if we can get over petty bullshit and play with whoever is on the team, disagreements or not,” I say, not caring if it sounds condescending. He will either see the truth or he won’t.
Voices sound from near the elevator. We both turn to see a few guys getting off.
“Well?” I ask.
“Fine.”
“I’m right.” I want to hear him say it.
“I said I’d do it. That’s all you’re getting.”
Now I have to figure out a way to stop myself from pushing his buttons.
We makeit through the workout without issue. It’s solo stuff. Then we go to meet with the team nutritionist. This isn’t anything new, the Monsters also has one. But for a lot of the guys, it’s a foreign concept. I’ve heard horror stories of guys living off Red Bull and Oreos.
Although dorm living doesn’t make it easy to eat right.
