If he threw that thing onto the ice, I’d be pretty pissed.
Where do all the hats go? Can you get them back? Who picks them up? Are the people picking them up hired specifically for that job? Hat picker-upper? I’d love to read the listing for that job. “Must be able to walk out on the ice without falling on their face and pick up a bazillion hats.”
“He scored a hat trick,” Dad says. “That means hats on the ice. You have two weeks to claim them back.”
With fewer than five minutes left in the game, I can’t stop glancing at the goaltender. He tripped that guy standing in front of him up with his stick. Can he do that? I mean, if someone was in my space, and I had a big-ass stick like that, I’d wanna smack him with it too. But how come he wasn’t sent to the glass box of shame?
The player from the other team is kind of asking to get beaten with a stick. He’s back in front of the UCR goal, and he’s all up in the goalie’s business. My guy is very clearly unhappy about it. I take my eyes off the net for like a second to check if the referees are watching this guy pissing off the goalie, but a blur of movement draws my attention back. The goalie has clearly taken things into his own hands. Quite literally. He’s swinging his fists at the opposing player’s face.
Man, they got undressed quickly. One minute they had helmets and gloves and the next, bam, fists in faces. An actual fight? But... What if they hurt each other?
I’m not sure who’s winning in this battle of the punches, but the scowl on our goaltender’s face says that he’s mad. Big freakin’ mad. Those huge pad things covering his legs are getting in the way of him kicking that guy’s ass, and he’s mad about that too.
But he’s still standing, and that’s pretty impressive. His hair is dark brown, or black, I can’t tell because it might be wet, and he has a strong jawline covered with a smattering of stubble.
The visiting player lands a punch, and the goalie grins despite the trickle of blood down the side of his face. It’s a dangerous grin, intense, full of assurance, and it sort of dazzles in all the wrong ways like a lion grinning at an antelope right before he chows down on it for lunch.
The goalie bursts into action, and before I can blink the other guy is on his ass on the ice. My muscles are so tense they’re sore, and my stomach is clenched so hard it might squeeze dinner back up. This is…barbaric.
Holy crap.
I rub my chest, trying to encourage more oxygen into my lungs. This is intense.
Dad’s gripped, his attention firmly pinned on the action. The referees intervene, and one of the guys on the goalie’s team hands him his weird looking gloves and stick.
Once the drama is over, the final few minutes tick down without incident. At the last buzzer, the crowd erupts. Final score six to zero in favor of UCR, and the team is loving on the goaltender pretty hard. I mean, he did keep all the disc things out of the net so I can see why they’re so happy about it.
They all line up to either tap his pads, glove-bump him, hug him, or pat his helmet like they’re trying to ruffle his hair through the plastic. When the other goalie from the Raccoons’ side gets to the guy at the net, they jump into this chest-bump and hug combo that has my heart warming.
After all the seriousness of the game—the intensity, the bloodshed— this wholesome, bromance display of joy and open love is quite a shift. I’m totally here for it though. They’re like one big family hugging the heck out of each other right out on the ice for everyone to see.
Emotion wells in my chest, and I blink back tears. The yearning in my entire being for a squad like the one on the ice is almost overwhelming. My dad is the best, but there’s only one of him, and the goalie has like a dozen dudes piling love on him.
Dad claps and whoops next to me. “What’d you think, kiddo?”
That nickname always makes me feel like I’m eight rather than eighteen. But I don’t hate it. “Some of those guys need to go away and think about what they’ve done.”
His shoulders shake, but I can’t hear his laughter over the still-roaring crowd. My ears might explode from the noise ringing around the arena.
“Would you come again?” he yells. “They play again next week and I’m in town for it.”
I’d rather pull my fingernails out one by one with a pair of pliers, then pour vinegar into my nail beds. But my long-distance trucker dad is around so little these days, and our relationship so strained since Mom died, that I gotta take what I can get, because otherwise, it’s just me, alone, and that’s even worse than going to a hockey game.
CHAPTER2
Ares
Everything hurts and I’m dying.
I’m regretting my life choices right now. After our game last night, I went to the club and danced for a few hours before I swung by the hockey house.
At the time, I thought I had some excess energy to burn off, hence the dancing, but now that I’ve hauled my ass out of bed to go to class, my muscles are telling me otherwise.
Like I said, I have regrets.
I laid in an ice bath until my feet turned blue and my dick shriveled up so much it thought it was a turtle and tried to climb into my balls. My knees click, and my hips have a bone-deep ache in them. It was worth it for the game win, though.
Halfway to campus, inspiration strikes. Fuck sexuality studies. I’m getting a mani-pedi. I drop a text to my number one girl over at Get Nailed and pull a u-turn.
