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“Fine, I’ll own that.”
“Besides, it’s not like you’re not enjoying the show.”
“Of course I’m enjoying it,” Beckett groans. “Kara, what are you doing over there with this asshole? I’m clearly the better man here.”
Shane’s hookup partner slides off his lap and settles beside him. I notice him do some strategic rearranging, as if we all haven’t seen it before. Dude’s been making a sport out of hooking up since his girlfriend dumped—sorry, mutually dumped his ass.
He throws his arm around Kara’s shoulders and reaches for the IPA on the coffee table. “Still no list?” he says, also checking his screen.
My phone dings, and both guys lean forward.
“Is that it?” Shane demands.
“Jesus Christ. Relax. No, it’s just Owen.”
OWEN MCKAY:
Got time to chat?
I’m about to text back, then think Fuck it and decide to give him a call.
“Be right back.” I’m already dialing Owen as I duck out of the living room.
I walk barefoot toward the glass sliding doors in the kitchen. It’s early September and the sun has already set, but it’s still warm outside. The houses on this street have decent-sized backyards, and I sit on the top step of our small cedar deck. Shane’s parents bought us a patio set to put out here, but we’ve been too lazy to assemble everything, so the table is still in its box in the garage, the chairs covered in plastic wrap.
Voices drift toward me from several houses down. Mostly male voices, with a few female ones in the mix. Loud guffaws of laughter intermingle with a pop-rock song whose lyrics I can’t make out. Sounds like someone’s having a party down there.
“Hey,” I say when Owen picks up.
“Hey,” his familiar voice slides into my ear. “How you doing?”
“Good, brother. You?”
“Busy as hell lately. I got suckered into a bunch of OTAs and it’s been eating up my schedule since July.”
Offseason team activities. I know the lingo. And I will say, it is kind of sick that I know an actual superstar in the form of NHL powerhouse Owen McKay. This must be how Gigi feels.
Sometimes I watch his games and wonder what the hell I’m doing wasting time in college. Owen went to play for Los Angeles right out of high school at the age of eighteen. As a rookie he didn’t see a lot of ice time, but during his sophomore season, watch out. He’s been playing for four years now, each season more explosive than the last.
Owen’s the one who talked me into sticking to the college route. He knew how important it was to me to get an education, so when I was vacillating, debating whether I should go pro after high school and follow in his footsteps, he reminded me of the education goals I’d set for myself.
I think it was the right call. I don’t know how well I would have done in the pros at eighteen years old, as demonstrated by my childish postgame performance in the Worlds. Luckily, I still got drafted despite that incident. Dallas has the rights to me, and I’m excited to head down there after graduation.
Apparently, Dallas is also the subject of this call.
“So, listen, I spoke to Julio Vega last night. He was at the golf tournament the team was playing in. Pulled me aside after the trophy ceremony and brought up your name.”
My back tenses. “What did he say?”
There’s a beat.
“What?” I press.
“He mentioned the Worlds. Made a point to say that the higher-ups are watching you.”
I wince.
Fuck. I hate hearing that. Julio Vega is Dallas’s new general manager. The franchise recently made the change, and I had a call with him a couple of weeks ago. I thought it went well, but now it turns out my behavior at the World Juniors is going to follow me until the end of time.
I let out a breath. “This shit is going to haunt me forever, man. And the worst part is, I never lose my temper. You know that.”
“Trust me, I know.” He chuckles. “You’re like the iceman. Stoic to the core. Klein must have crossed a serious line for you to lose it on him like that…”
Michael Klein is the teammate whose jaw I broke in the Worlds. He had to get it wired shut after what I did to it.
But I haven’t told anybody what was said in that locker room, and I don’t plan to.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he says when I don’t respond. “It’s in the past and therefore forbidden from being discussed.”
Owen likes to mock my “It’s in the past” motto, the phrase I tend to throw out when someone tries forcing me to talk about shit I don’t want to talk about. It particularly annoys women. Or people with sunshine and rainbows in their backgrounds—they’re incapable of understanding why I want to keep that door latched and locked.
