Page 69 of Crush
“Hustle. Hustle! Harder, damn it!” Coach barked at us, never satisfied with our effort.
I started to wonder if Coach wasevergoing to put an end to this madness, or if his plan was to skate us to death.
“You're looking awfully pale today, Brooksy! What's the matter, gentlemen? I thought a little 'hair of the dog' was supposed to do us wonders? I thought we were supposed to be feeling great today?”
After hours of torture, the moment finally came when Coach had seen enough, and he blew his whistle and told us to hit the showers. We practically crawled off the ice to the dressing room.
Coach strutted into the room last. He paced around the room, staring us down, letting us marinate in the physical pain before he delivered his final sermon. No one dared meet his angry gaze; it'd be like trying to stare down a pit bull. Instead, we sat in terse silence and studied the floor as we struggled to peel the sweat-drenched pads off our bodies.
“If you're going to hurt the day after,” Coach finally snarled at the team, “I want you to hurt because ofhockey.Not because you're out late drinking.”
Everyone nodded with agreement.
“Time to get serious,boys. Curfew's at six tonight.”
“Six!” Brooks protested.
Coach whipped around to face him. “You got a problem with that, Brooksy? You wanna sit Game 1?”
Brooks grumbled in surrender.
“Didn't think so.”
***
Back at the hotel hours later, I tried reaching the girls again. Brynn didn't answer her phone. Chloe didn't answer either, but she did send a quick follow-up text message.
“Hi Dad, what's up? I'm with friends, I can't talk right now.”
“You can text but you can't talk?”
“I guess I can talk if you really need to, but we're just about to sit down and eat dinner with Nicole's family.”
“I just want to make sure everything's going good with you and Brynn.”
“Everything's fine, thanks Dad, love you.”
I grumbled.
I tried calling Brynn one last time before I called it a night.
This time, she answered. “Hello?”
I couldn't believe it had only been a day since I heard her voice. Having her in my ear again made my heart skip a beat and brought a smile to my face.
“Brynn,” I said.
“Hi, Shea. You sound surprised.”
“I am. I haven't been able to get a hold of you all day yesterday or today.” I paused. “Started to wonder if you were mad at me.”
“Sorry. I'm not mad. I've just been busy.”
“That's okay. How's everything with you and Chloe?”
“It's going well. We worked things out over breakfast yesterday, so everything's fine now. Today, she did photography in the park with Nicole. As for me, same ol', nothin' new. How are you?”
“Beat,” I said with a yawn. “Coach is furious with us because a few of the guys broke curfew last night and came back wasted. He really rode us hard today during practice.”
