Page 12 of Shutout
We start filing back out to the locker room. The younger guys take turns congratulating me, probably out of relief that Coach didn’t go fully nuclear and make one of them lead this circus. My brain says this is going to be a shitshow, especially because the seniors have the maturity level of gnats and will try to sabotage this whole enterprise—if only by being lazier than ever.
And yet my heart hammers as hard as if I was in the middle of a game, nil-nil in overtime and during a penalty kill.
At my bench, I peel off my jersey and let it flop on the floor with a wet splat. I make quick work of removing my pads and twist around to fish around my bag until I produce my cell phone. I click on the text messaging app and…
Stop.
The thrumming in my veins dulls to nothingness when I realize I have no one to tell the big news to.
If I tell Dad that I just became only the second non-senior to be named captain, because technically Max is an outlier, he wouldn’t care. He hasn’t exercised a single molecule ofenthusiasm for my hockey career, or me, ever since I announced that I wanted to play defense instead of being a forward like him. Which also coincided with the time he and Mom were divorcing.
Nah, he’s much happier with his new wife and my half-brother, Lee, who’s still young enough to look up to Dad as a hero.
And Mom? She hasn’t contacted me in years. All my attempts to reach out to her have gone ignored and last I knew of her was through the tabloids. Apparently she’s moved to Monaco to live with some guy from the royal family. Ridiculous.
Then there’s Liv. She’s never enjoyed hockey, but she used to make an effort because it was what made me happy. Except I made her hate my guts because I was trying to impress Liam Roberts back when I was a gullible little turd.
I slide the phone back into my bag and lean down to unlace my skates, sighing. It is what it is. Hockey’s my only constant. Friends and family… not so much. It’s why I got the weird tattoo I did. I’ve never told anyone what it represents because I know it’s cheesy—they can just think it’s some abstract stuff. But when I’m down in the dumps like right at this second, I look at the lines and remind myself I at least have one of the three things going for me.
After removing my undershirt, I run my finger across the lines that start at my inner wrists. A thick, fully black line for hockey. A fainter one in the middle that represents friends. And then a lighter one for family. The three lines run around my arms, over my elbows and triceps, to the back of my shoulders, and the meet in twin downward curves at the middle of my back. If I hold my hands at my back you can see that the lines make a giant heart.
Because these are the three things that are most importantto me. Two are incomplete, which means I pour my entire heart into only one. Hockey.
I smack my face hard to snap out of the sentimentalism. After undressing, I haul my ass to the showers. The icy spray of water helps me clear my head. I’ll have to rearrange my semester schedule to make more room for hockey. It’s not like practice will necessarily increase because I’m the captain now, but there are some admin duties associated to it that I’ll have to accommodate. And maybe I should start paying more attention to plays, stats, how they all mesh with my teammates. That all is probably part of theinfectingCoach wants me to do.
“O’Malley’s to celebrate the fact that this year is going to suck but maybe not as bad as we thought?” Dane asks from the shower stall behind mine.
“Sure,” I return with a snort. “But I’ll catch you there. I need to do something first.”
“And what’s that? Squeal into your pillow?”
“No, squeal into your momma’s pillow.”
Somehow the lazy joke still gets me a round of chuckles, even though the mechanics are weird. Shouldn’t I be making his momma squeal into her pillow? Whatever. I need to be more serious this semester, and being the biggest clown in the team isn’t going to help my case.
First step, finish showering and get dressed. Step two, high tail it out to the admin building. I was going to take two electives this semester and I’m thinking it should now be zero.
*
Once I get to the admin office, I discover that the ticket machine is down. Like maybe it gave up after the place packed up with people like me, changing their minds at the last minute. Or complaining about something. The line movespretty quickly, though, until I’m only three people away. That’s when a little racket starts at the front.
Wait. I recognize one of the voices. I lean out of the line and a slow smile takes over my face.
It’s Liv.
“I’m telling you it wasn’t my fault. I’m a hundred percent sure I clicked on protein biochemistry andnoton—” She pauses to read her schedule. “Reproductive biology I.”
I stuff my fist against my mouth so I don’t burst out laughing.
One of the two people ahead of me moves over to another booth. My blood starts pumping like I’m on the bench, waiting for the line change.
“Are you sure?” a softer voice retorts to Liv.
The person in front of me moves to the third booth that is now freeing up. I step forward and stand behind my former best friend as she throws her hands in the air.
“Can we please focus on what matters? The question is whether you can please, with a cherry on top, fix my schedule, and not on who made the error—which by the way, wasn’t me.”
Over her shoulder, I see the admin guy give her an eye roll. But then he catches me glaring at him. This gets Liv’s attention because she turns around.
