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I take longer to process the question because I’m not currently dating anyone. It’s been ages since I’ve even engaged in some extra cardio with a partner. As a rule, I try not to mess around during the season. I used to. It’s hard to find a wide-eyed rookie who doesn’t spend a little time gorging on the money and attention that comes with an NHL contract. I had my fair share of a few wild years before the lure of extra sleep outweighed the desire for random hookups. Popping a handful of ibuprofen every morning can only do so much when your knees and back are pissed after holding a naked woman up against the slick tile in the shower.
Most guys fall into some form of long-term relationship, but I’ve avoided those too. I can’t imagine someone being willing to put up with my travel schedule. I’m pretty sure about as much care goes into planning the league’s away schedule as goes into mail routes. A lot of time and energy for something that ultimately is as chaotic as it is possible to be. A few of my teammates don’t even live in Quarry Creek. They come here for the season and travel back home after the playoffs.
“No way. Varg is dating Elsa?”
That question comes from Pelletier, and I glare at the left winger.
“Elsa?” Spaeglin again.
“Watch it.” I feel the words grate against my vocal cords and I turn back to my cubby before I say something I shouldn’t. It’s never bothered me before, the way the team sees the little marketing genius, but today the nickname and the insinuation scrapes against my skin like sandpaper.
“Yeah,” Pelletier’s voice sounds muffled as he pulls on his undershirt. “She’s got that white blonde hair, and she’s an ice queen.”
“Is this because she rejected you?” Spaeglin asks and there’s a roar of laughter as the remaining guys throw wads of balled up tape at Beau. I have the urge to throw something harder. The game puck is sitting in my cubby. Right there. Within reach.
“Nah, she was colder than the rink before that. Why’d you think I took my shot?”
My knuckles ache, the skin turning bone white as I curl them into fists.
“‘Cause you don’t mind freezing your nuts off?”
There’s a whistle of a towel and a slap as it connects with skin, then Spaeglin yelps and the room dissolves into another roar of laughter. I tune them all out, scrubbing the towel down my face. This one is a little worn. It catches on my stubble and the rasp echoes in my ears.
This conversation isn’t something I want any part of. I don’t know if Tristan will be down tonight after the game. She usually gets the footage she needs before we hit the ice, but she has been known to badger us into submission after we’re put back together. She and I have nothing on our schedule for today, but she still has her regular content to push out. What we do, the videos we’re working on, are a side project. She still has stuff for the whole team.
So I don’t want a part of this. I don’t know if she’s coming down—although my gut instinct is no, she’d have shown up by now—not that it matters even a bit. I worked with her yesterday. We’ll film again in the next few days. It doesn’t bother me to see her pointing her camera at any of my teammates. It doesn’t bother me when she rolls her eyes at them and raises that one eyebrow. I get the same glare when I smile at her. And sometimes, I get the tiny curve at the corner of her mouth, as if she can’t help herself. That curve is better.
And maybe if I’ve tried to make those micro smiles happen? Well, it’s just fun to see her riled up. I enjoy seeing her break through the cool exterior and show the fire roaring underneath. That’s why I don’t like this nickname, or the way the guys see her. That’s why I’m not laughing it off and joining in. Not a single one of them understands that she isn’t as cool and removed as she tries so hard to be. She’s fire on the inside. She’s an inferno kept under such tight lock and key that she’s sizzling at the seams. They don’t know her at all.
Not like I know—
“They aren’t d-d… they aren’t d-da… they aren’t together,” Ólaffson says, breaking me out of my thoughts. He’s sitting on one of the long wooden benches, tossing a puck back and forth between his hands. “Just working.”
“Right, working,” the rookie says, thrusting his hips as if we all missed the sarcasm dripping from his pretty boy mouth. He’s going to be toast after our free skate tomorrow. I’m going to have him bag skating until he can’t move another inch. Maybe until he pukes.
“Be fucking respectful,” Robbie says and for a moment, I remember what it was like growing up with him. Strapping on roller blades with my brother and my best friend and playing until the streetlights came on and Mom stood on the front step calling us back inside for dinner. Even then, as a kid, I never believed that someday we’d strap on the same pads and colors and hit the ice together. Hoped, of course, what kid hasn’t? But dreams are just that. Dreams. I remember getting the notice that all three of us—Robbie, me, and Erik—were going to play in the junior league. Erik and I had just turned sixteen, Robbie one year older.
I remember him sitting in the hospital waiting room with me as I fought back tears. There was enough crying all around me and I couldn’t afford to add to it. I remember a shoulder pressed to mine, a knee leaving a solid weight against my thigh as we waited for the doctor to tell us the unthinkable about Erik.
The way he contacted the league for me with a handwritten note to see if I could pretty please with sugar on top play for a team closer to home. Close enough to visit my brother as he went through chemo and surgery and still lost his leg. So I wouldn’t have to choose between my dream on the ice and leaving my mother alone. Anna was in college by then. If I’d gone to play in another state, packed up and moved in with a host family the way so many players do, she’d have been all by herself, drowning under the weight of her fear.
Our eyes meet for a sliver of a second and I watch his shoulders rise and fall as he sucks in a huge breath. And suddenly I’m not thinking about IV bags, and metal legs, and lost hair. I’m not thinking about red-rimmed eyes and shaky breaths as my mother and twin try to pretend everything is fine. I’m thinking about the girl who lived two houses down. The one Robbie left behind when he flew to Wisconsin and donned the blue, gray, and white of the USHL team there. The two had been inseparable when Erik and I met them. She’s a high-fashion model now, taking the world by storm while Robbie pretends he doesn’t keep a google alert for her name almost two decades later. I remember finding him on our back deck, staring out into the yard, wet trails drying on his cheeks after he had broken the news to her that he was leaving.
There’s a certain kinship that comes with navigating heartbreak with someone. A way of reading each other that gets etched into your bones when you know someone so well you can read them without words. I used to know my brother like that. I’m trying like hell to get back there now. It’s been a year since he moved to Quarry Creek and while our telepathy hasn’t been re-established yet, despite what most people seem to believe about identical twins, it’s getting a lot better.
The conversation around us shifts to more mundane topics. The younger guys are excited about our first match up with Vegas this month. We’re flying out to meet them on their turf, and while normally we all prefer to play at home, there’s something magical about going to Vegas. Too bad the young ones don’t know we rarely have time to do anything more than play, sleep, and come home.
“Is she?” Robbie asks as I pull my shirt over my head. When I don’t answer, he adds, “your girlfriend?”
I shake my head, ignoring the swoop in my gut.
“You know she isn’t.” I keep my voice low so we don’t attract any more attention. They’re currently discussing the rules of Blackjack and from the little I hear, I am going to have to keep a close eye on the guys if we spend any time near a casino. Everyone knows you’re supposed to split aces and eights when the dealer hands them to you as your first pair of cards. Well, anyone who beats the house.
“Everyone thinks you are,” he says as he pulls his shirt on, too.
I send him my standard grin and shrug my shoulders.
“That’s because hockey players are big gossips.” It’s true. The locker room trades in stories and secrets as currency. “We’ve been spending extra time together for this series the guys upstairs want.”
