Page 49 of Slew Foot
Or, maybe they hadn’t, Mickey realized. Maybe they were doing this on purpose so everyone here would know they were allies?
It was almost touching, Mickey thought. They were all ridiculous but he still felt a surge of affection for them.
“Hey, so is that when you lost your tooth?” Tanner asked over the noise.
“Uhh, no.” Crawford dragged a hand through his limp hair. It always looked a little greasy and lank, hanging into his eyes.
“I thought it happened in an off-ice fight?” Tanner asked, frowning.
“Itdid,” Crawford said. “But that was in Toronto. With Theriault.”
Several guys hissed under their breaths. Mickey wasn’t quite sure why.
“Yeah.” Crawford let out a humorless laugh. “Wasn’t my best fucking moment.”
“What happened?” Mickey asked, because he couldn’t help himself.
“We—Gabriel and I—used to be teammates, actually. Back in Calgary. We got along fine then, I guess, but since we went our separate ways, we’ve had thisbeefon-ice. He has a temper, and he doesn’t like my chirps and it kinda kept escalating. And then I shot my mouth off about his father having a screw loose.”
Everyone did wince at that.
Even Mickey knew Alain Theriault was dealing with dementia, likely caused by repeated head injuries. He and his son had done a whole public service campaign about it and Gabriel had been working with the biggest helmet manufacturer to improve the technology and raise awareness about CTE.
“Look, at the time I didn’t fuckin’ know it wasliteral,” Crawford protested. “If I had, I wouldn’t have said that shit.”
“I’m not sure wording it that way actually makes it better,” Graham said drily.
“C’mon, you know what I mean. Like I thought the dude was a little fuckin’ nuts. I played with Alain too in Calgary. And he was always kinda … well, I just thought that’s how he was. You know, all the Quebecers are a little …” He made a vague motion near his head.
Graham sighed. “I swear to fucking God, you can’t help yourself, can you?”
“What?” Luke scowled.
“Have you everapologizedto Theriault for it?”
Crawford looked confused. “When would I see Alain?”
“No,Gabriel,” Graham said.
“Oh yeah. Apologized to him after a game we played against Evanston. After the shit about his dad came out. He wasn’t like super gracious about it or anything but we shook hands and shit. Now we’re back to beefing on the ice.”
“You are unbelievable,” Graham said with a shake of his head.
“What?” Crawford looked confused again.
But the was a knock on the door and everyone turned to stare at it. No one moved to get up.
“It’s probably Jesse and Connor. Go get it,” Mickey said, poking at Tanner’s hip with his foot.
“Why don’tyouget it?” Tanner grumbled.
“Because I’d have to climb over everyone!” Mickey pointed out. There were guys sprawled out everywhere and he was pretty much as far from the door as he could get.
Tanner made an unhappy noise, but he got off the bed and opened the door. A moment later, Jesse and Connor walked into the room carrying big paper bags with handles.
“Oh. Hey. You didn’t have to pause the movie for us,” Jesse said. He squinted at the TV screen. “Wait, did you evenstart?”
“No.” Tanner said, grabbing for one of the bags. “What’s in here?”
