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17
LIAM
“Now, go to time seven minutes, thirty-eight seconds in the video. This is the kind of sloppy play we really need to make sure you shake off before you hit the pros. You won’t be able to get away with it there.”
I breathe in a slow, steady breath through grit teeth, trying to keep my cool.
“Alright, I’m watching,” I grunt out.
I’m on a phone call with my dad. After ignoring his calls for two days, I realized I couldn’t get away with putting it off anymore when he tried to call me three times in an hour. When I answered, he immediately sent me a link to an unlisted YouTube video he made of my plays during the last game.
Highlights? More like lowlights.
He personally edited a video of my worst moments during the game, and he’s insisting on us watching them all together so he can coach me on what I should have done differently.
The fact that he’s never played a lick of hockey in his life doesn’t stop him from thinking he’s an expert when it comes to identifying what I’ve done wrong on the ice and lecturing me about what I should do differently.
I try to go on auto-pilot and let my dad’s criticism go in one ear and out the other.
Frankly, it’s not even that relevant. Coach Gordon doesn’t coddle us, and any mistakes of ours he sees in a game, he drills into us both what we did wrong and what we should do differently in the future. I’m already getting plenty of coaching from, you know, my actual coach.
My dad’s mostly just looking for anything at all he can latch onto to criticize. If you’re determined to nitpick a player, you can find dozens of things in every game even if he’s the best player in the world.
Frankly, sometimes I think my dad’s so regretful that he didn’t get to live out the career he wanted as a pro athlete, that he’s desperate to involve himself any way he can in mine—and if he can’t provide any helpful advice, or guidance, or coaching, at leastanyonecan criticize.
“Now, look at this moment, son,” he says. “You had the shot. You could’ve made it. Or should’ve been able to, at least. But you passed it to a teammate instead, so thathecould pad his stats.”
Is he kidding? Scoring a goal isn’t about padding your individual stats, it’s about helping your team win. Maybe I could’ve made the goal at the moment we’re looking at right now—I’ve made harder goals, and I’ve missed easier ones, too—but Ryder was lined up perfectly. Passing to him was the right thing to do for the team.
I open my mouth to tell him this, but the words die in my throat. Standing up to my dad is like trying to use a muscle I’ve never exercised.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I say, absently, instead. When my dad starts hammering me with all my faults, I just default to what I’ve always done at those moments, clam up and wait for it to be over.
Finally, we disconnect the call. Even though I know ninety-nine percent of what he said was total bullshit, I still can’t help but feel my confidence shaken by it.
I close out the browser I was watching the video in and shut the lid of my laptop.
I need something to think about to get my father’s critical, derisive voice out of my mind.
Luckily, it’s not hard to find something that does just that.
In the week since we came home from that Ohio away game, Zoey and I have been sneaking around together. And it’s been fucking incredible.
Now that we’re on the same page, we don’t have to worry about accidentally ripping each other’s clothes off or devouring each other’s faces somewhere we can get caught, like the campus library or the hallways of the hockey arena.
I’ve been sneaking into her apartment. Coordinating times when her roommate will be away is a hell of a lot easier than coordinating times when I’ll have the Ice Box to myself.
The sex is still as scorching hot as it was the first time; but the sex isn’t the only thing good about it.
Being with her, being in her room, her space, is just … nice.
Seeing her bookshelf, the pictures she hangs on her wall, the couple stuffed animals and other knick-knacks she has in her room, it’s a kind of closeness I savor almost as much as I savor the feeling of her body in my arms when we’re in her bed.
I’m always sad when I have to hustle and get dressed, so we don’t risk exceeding the window of time we have before her roommate gets home.
I let my eyelids close, falling into a daydream about what it would be like to spend a whole day together with Zoey, alone, totally at our leisure to act like a regular … couple.
My eyes snap open as the word enters my thoughts.
