I gape at him. I didn’t even get a chance to look at the menu. I don’t even think I want steak tonight. I’d prefer a nice plate of fish. Probably the salmon, but my father has already sent our server away. Typical Connor Sr. The minute he feels anything move out of his control he has to put his vice grips around whatever he can still touch and manipulate. Me. Always me.
“I’ll talk to Coach Chris,” he says. “I can get him to assign you a new roommate.”
“I don’t want a new roommate!” I say, my voice rising, making me sound like a petulant child. Or, I can tell by the look on my father’s face, ahomosexual. Which in his mind is worse. My vocal inflection has gone too gay for his liking in this crowded room.
My father reaches and grabs my wrist across the table, yanking it hard. “Quit arguing with me. I’m doing what’s best for you.”
“No, you’re not,” I say through clenched teeth, bringing my voice down. “You’re doing what’s best for you and your image.”
“He’s got you there,” my mom says around a sip of wine. After she swallows, she holds her glass up to me.
I don’t know what I was thinking. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s only going to make him angrier, and therefore more controlling.
My father turns his gaze onto her, but she doesn’t care. Shepours herself more wine from the bottle, emptying it into her glass.She then signals our server to bring us another bottle.
“Please, Dad, let it go,” I say, yanking my hand out of his grip. I rub my now irritated wrist with my other hand to soothe its ache. “Don’t get involved. I’m fine rooming with Gavin. It’s for the best, anyway. Me getting special treatment because of you isn’t going to be what’s best for the team. Just stay out of it.”
“Fine,” he says. His jaw is tense and his glare towards me is hard. “But if he tries any of his shit, I won’t hesitate to get him kicked off the team.”
Gavin
Of course, Bouchard has chosen the hotel’s steakhouse for where he wants to have dinner. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. The food’s cooked to perfection and I definitely need the protein after today’s practice.
The issue I have is that, from where Bouchard and I sit at the bar, I can see Connor across the restaurant having what is obviously a tense dinner with his parents. He looks uncomfortable, constantly fidgeting with his watch and hardly touching the food on his plate. It’s interesting to see someone who’s such a presence on the ice be reduced to looking like a child in the company of his namesake.
The scene I’m seeing play out has my throat tight with a growl I’m trying to keep from letting out. I don’t care how new it is. That’s my teammate. Someone I’ve been tasked with protecting even if it’s only for the next three weeks. If we weren’t in this crowded restaurant, I’d march over there and crush the elder Kennedy on general principle.
It would feel great. It’s no secret that I’ve never liked Connor Sr. To be fair, by all accounts I’ve never liked Connor Jr either, but pretty much all of that dislike is because of his father. He’s the one who’s always been an asshole. He’s the one who’s been pitting usagainst each other since juniors, leading all the way up until draft day and continuing into the present.
What a disappointment he turned out to be. To think my dad used to bring me to our local tavern back in Alaska to watch his games that we couldn’t get on our crappy TV antenna. It was a huge deal for us when we were able to finally splurge and pay for cable television to watch more games. But even after that, Connor Kennedy Sr and the Chicago Broad Wings were still our favorite team to cheer for.
But it’s true what they say. Never meet your heroes.
Bouchard snaps his fingers in front of my eyes. “Yo, Earth to Marshal. Did you get your bell rung today or something?”
I shake my head and turn my attention to him. “Huh?”
“You spaced on me, man.” He takes a sip of his beer, then points at me with the mouth of the bottle as he swallows. “You’ve got that thousand-yard stare of yours going on.”
I rub my eyes with the back of my hand, then grab my root beer to take a sip. “Just tired, I guess,” I say before I go back to eating my meal: a delicious plate of Alaskan-caught salmon.
“So I take it that means you won’t be joining me at the titty bar tonight.”
“No.” I laugh, for reasons he’s completely unaware of. “Definitely not. But by all means, go have some fun.”
He shrugs. “It’s not that fun to go solo.”
This is something I’ll never understand about straight men. For a subset of dudes who will get uncomfortable at the idea of two men kissing, they all seem to love going to a strip club in groups and jostling each other’s shoulders while they all have boners. There’s something very homoerotic about the entire display and I’m not in the mood for it tonight.
“I’m sure there’s someone else on the team who is game to go with you,” I say and cut another piece off my salmon.
“Maybe,” Bouchard says around a mouthful of food. He washes it down with a sip of his beer. “But most of these guys are married. Did you notice that?”
“Are they?” I guess I hadn’t noticed. But to be honest, I really only care about the goings-on of my own teammates on the Blizzards. And well, yeah, a lot of them are married, but that never seemed strange. Hockey players tend to marry their college or even high school sweethearts. Most of them have kids before they turn twenty-five and are thrilled about it. I’ve always been too worried about them wondering why I’m not on that path. And more importantly, why I’m never cycling through an endless stream of puck bunnies like our few remaining unattached teammates.
“Yeah,” Bouchard says. “There’s a bunch of family men on this team. You should have seen Olsen back in our room FaceTiming with his wife and two-year-old. Fucking weird watching him be all gooey with the baby talk.”
I smirk at him. “To his wife or his kid?”
