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Drew: You’re never going to stop, are you?
Lars: No.
I tapped my stick against each of my shin guards three times, then dropped my stick to the concrete floor and practiced puck handling without a puck.
This was part of my ritual. On game days, there were things I always did the same way. Hell, nearly every guy on my team had rituals, whether they admitted it or not.
I’d missed my pregame nap, spending the whole hour staring at the ceiling and wondering how I’d fucked things up so badly with Jolie.
Of course I was planning to tell her about Nashville. We’d just never gotten any time alone for me to do it, and then she’d blown up at me after Coach told her, which he shouldn’t have done. He was at the top of my shit list now, and I’d been avoiding him all day.
I’d eaten my pregame meal—a sub sandwich from my favorite deli and an unsweet iced tea—alone in the weight room. I wasn’t in the mood to look at one of Lars’s three hundred baby photos. There was no one but Jolie I wanted to talk to right now, but she wasn’t responding to my texts.
I went into the locker room and put on my headphones, turning on my pregame playlist. My head wasn’t where it needed to be for this game. Going to Nashville was the right move, but it wasn’t an easy one.
Not only was I losing Jolie, I was also going to lose my teammates. I couldn’t imagine calling another team my own. I’d have to, though. It was possible I’d be a fucking mess with a new team, too. I was used to Wes and Nash. I knew how they moved and could anticipate their choices.
A tap on my shoulder made me look. With my elbows resting on my knees, I could see Nash standing there, grinning at me.
“What?” I said, turning off the music.
“Who pissed in your cornflakes?”
I sat up straight, glaring at him. “What do you want?”
He turned his phone screen toward me. “Just wanted to show you this.”
It was a photo of Joey, grinning in a Mavericks hoodie while standing with the team mascot, Ricky the Raven, on the red carpet that had been put on the ice for the national anthem singer. He was clearly excited, giving a thumbs-up for the picture.
“Tell Sariah I said thanks,” I told Nash. “I owe her a trip to that salon she likes.”
With my usual three babysitters—Hadley, Sheridan, and Jolie—all out of commission, Sariah had offered to keep Joey today and tonight for the game. She worked in the Mavericks front office, so she’d brought him to the arena and he’d be seeing his first professional game tonight.
“She’s happy to do it,” Nash said. “Just don’t be surprised when he comes back wanting to listen to nothing but Taylor Swift.”
I couldn’t even force a smile. All I could think about was how much I wanted to walk into Coach Gizzard’s office and punch him in the face. He’d sabotaged things for me and Jolie, and not only was it unprofessional, but it meant he was a bigger dick than I’d realized before.
Someday I’d be able to tell him to kiss my ass. Someday soon, now that I’d been unofficially told I was getting my trade. I couldn’t wait to flip Gizzard the bird on my way out of here.
“What’s going on with you, man?” Nash asked, sitting down next to me.
He was my friend, but it was all I could do not to tell him to fuck off. I wanted to be alone with my misery.
“Nothing I want to talk about,” I said.
“So a certain redhead, then.”
I exhaled heavily, letting my head fall back to rest against the side of my locker. “Do you know what it means when someone says they don’t want to talk about something?”
“Yeah, I just don’t believe you.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Well, even if I wanted to talk about it, which I don’t, this isn’t the place.”
Nash lowered his voice. “Because of Izzardgay?”
“Why are you such a fucking idiot? Everyone knows pig latin.”
“Just keeping the mood light, bro.”
My mood was about as light as a fucking tank, and I wanted to get back to the Eminem song I’d been listening to.
“So she dumped you,” Nash said.
Instead of responding, I put my headphones back on, pushed play on my playlist, and closed my eyes. It would be a hell of a long time before I wanted to talk to anyone about things with Jolie. Unless it was Jolie herself, who had to stop freezing me out at some point.
Hopefully.
“Look at your little mustache, Mikey boy. Did your balls finally drop?”
We were playing Vancouver, and Craig Masterson was the mouthiest dick on his team. He actually might have been the mouthiest dick in the entire league, come to think of it.
