Page 44 of Keeper
I knew I couldn’t start the game tonight.
When my alarm went off, it was time to head to the locker room and get ready with the rest of my teammates.
I pushed open the locker room door and was greeted by my teammates’ wall of noisy banter and laughter.
“TV33!”someone shouted.
“Hey, Vaughnsy!”
“Sup, boys,” I said.
The boys thought I was trying to be funny as I staggered across the room, bowlegged. The jokes came from all over:
“What’s with that walk, Vaughnsy?”
“He looks like a sheriff.”
“Or a gunslinger from the Old West.”
The room laughed.
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered.
Dane stood in the middle of the room and taped his stick. The captain side-eyed me as I shuffled past. “Seriously, Vaughnsy, what’s your deal? Were you riding horses all night?”
“Nah.” The new guy, Jack Cameron, stepped into the spotlight and spoke up on my behalf. “Iknow what Vaughnsy’s problem is.”
“Go on,” Dane said. “We’re waiting.”
“That’s the blue ball strut if I’ve ever seen it,” Cammer said with a confident nod.
“Makes sense to me, Big Rig,” Jean-Gabriel Parisi said in his heavy Québécois accent. “Vaughnsy wasstill walking normally when I saw him sneak out of Club Plush with some girl last night, too.”
“Hell, I’m sold,” Reavo said. “Because ifanyoneknows what blue balls looks like, it’s Cammer.”
The room exploded into laughter.
(Everyone gives Cameron shit about his ‘best friend’ Piper—a girl he swears he doesn’t have any feelings for, even though he’s constantly video chatting on the phone with her and can’t stop talking about her to us.)
“You guys are so dumb,” Cameron said. The defenseman smiled and threw a balled up towel at Reavo. “How many times do I have to tell you? It’s not like that with me and Piper. We’re just friends.”
The locker room belted back the oft-heard refrain:“Just friends!”
Reavo slapped the new guy on the back. “We’re just joshin’ ya, Cammer.”
But the funny jokes and the rampant speculation suddenly died as everyone watched me wince with pain as gently lowered myself into my stall. The fun atmosphere dissolved into a stony silence when they saw me press a bag of ice to my groin.
“Shit,” Dane hissed. “Are you okay, Vaughnsy?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Just a little banged up.”
“What happened?” Hathaway asked, his head tilted.
In the midst of my struggles, thelastthing I could do wastell these guys that Cameron was right—that I’d gotten banged up bynotgetting banged last night.
“Nothing,” I said.
“You didn’t tweak your groin, did you?” Reavo asked, concerned.
