Page 4 of Good Vibes Only
Rust shuffled the deck and started flinging cards across the table.
“Hell of a game, Showtime,” Connor said, giving me a fistbump.
“Yeah, great finish tonight,” Brock said.
Brock and Connor are my linemates. We’re the hottest line in hockey going right now. Brock’s the backbone of our line, the cerebral playmaker. Connor’s the sniper with the lethal shot. And I’m the skilled little guy everybody loves to hate who gets the other team running around like their hair’s on fire. You can’t defend all three of us—so how do you want to lose? Picked apart by Brock’s precision passing? Scorched by Connor’s wrist shot? Or do you let me into your goalie’s kitchen, so I can bang all his pots and pans until he sees red and can’t stop a beach ball?
Tonight, the Colorado Blizzard chose the latter. Which is theworstoption of the three, if you ask me. But hey, I’ll gladly take it—andthe hat trick, thank you very much.
Our poker group was rounded out by Tank, team glue guy and key fourth liner, who pinched and flicked away at the screen of his tablet.
“Oh-ho. Man. Oh boy,” Tank murmured, his face lit by the glow of his iPad.
“Whatcha lookin’ at, Tank?” I asked.
I wasn’t surprised when he flipped his iPad around and showed a moist slice of chocolate cake on the screen. The big boy loves his sweets.
“Does that cake look bomb or what?” he asked. “There’s a new bakery in Spring Valley. I gotta try this place.”
His cake was met with a few shrugs and apathetic grunts.
“C’mon. That doesn’t look delicious to you guys?” He turned to me. “Showtime? How ’bout you?” he asked, shoving his screen in my face.
“Get that thing out of my face,” I said, pushing his iPad away. “That picture is borderline porn.”
Rust laughed as he zipped cards across the table. “Did you just call itporn?”
“Yeah, how the hell can a picture of a cake be porn?” Dakota asked.
“Because it’s so zoomed in. You can see every morsel, everyatomof that cake,” I said, shielding my eyes. “It’s too much detail. It’s gross. Some things aren’t meant to be seen so up close and personal like that.”
“Showtime, you arefuckedup, man,” Tank said, his big shoulders shaking with laughter.
“I’ll skip the cake. Just give me a beer instead,” I said with a shrug.
“Yeah, youwouldsay that,” he said. “How’s the brewery coming along, by the way?”
This past summer, I got the ball rolling on a business venture. I was opening my very own microbrewery in Las Vegas called BarDown Brewery.
“Good, good,” I said. “Construction just started, so we’re still a few months away from opening. But I sat down with my brewer, Eric, and sampled all the recipes he brewed up for me. So I’ve officially got my very own line of beers.”
“Cool. When do we get to try them?” Brock asked.
“Why not this weekend?” I raised my voice for the whole plane to hear, “Tasting party at my place Saturday, boys. Everyone’s invited.”
“Hey, Showtime, when the time comes to photograph your brewery,” Connor began, “you better make sure the photographer doesn’t try to use any of those damn porno cameras.”
The boys cracked up.
“Oh, trust me, I will,” I said, leaning into the joke. “No pornographers will shoot my beers. That’s the BarDown Brewery promise.”
“Showtime, all these years we’ve been friends,” Dakota began, “and I never knew you were one those anti-porn wackos.”
“Nah, porn’s alright,” I said, hiding a smirk behind my hand of cards. “If youneedit, I mean.”
The boys laughed and wentoooooh.
The thing about us hockey players? We love to give each other shit.
