It was the most progressive thing I’d ever seen. And I hoped like hell that they really meant it.
“I saw the video,” I told him. “Didn’t see your face in it, though.” In other words,What do you think, pal?
“Don’t read anything into that,” he chuckled. “I was laid up all of last year, and not Coach’s favorite person.” His smile was rueful. “Welcome to Harkness, man. You can play this however you want. If you need me to say something to the team for you, let me know.” His brown eyes studied me.
So far, his reaction was as good as I could have ever expected. “I haven’t decided how to play it,” I said truthfully. I’d never been out to my teammates before. And I probably wouldn’t choose to be now, if I could help it.
Hartley swung the ice door open. “Let me know. But for now, we skate.”
I went out hard. Ridiculously hard. I skated as if demons were chasing me. And they were. Because this was the last stop on the hockey train for me. Transferring from one great college hockey team to another one was just not something that happened to people. I was all kinds of lucky to be here.
If this didn’t work out, I wouldn’t get another shot on goal. And I loved this game. As a twenty-one-year-old sophomore, I was eligible to play for three seasons on this team. If they’d have me.
After a warm-up, which I skated as if there would be a quiz later, Coach set up a passing drill. And I lost myself in it. I gave every particle of my attention to the pucks flying at me. This was what had kept me sane the past five years. Hockey required absolute focus on the puck and on the other bodies flying around. If you let your mind wander, even for a split second, it all went to shit; the other guy stole the puck, or you found yourself squashed like a bug into the plexi.
I was good at this — at surrendering my conscious mind to the game. Ninety minutes went by before I knew it. When coach blew that whistle for the last time, I was dripping sweat. When I yanked the helmet off my head, I could see steam rising up from inside it.
“Next time we’ll scrimmage, I promise,” Coach said as we filed past him, breathing heavy. “I’m not a total asshole.” Coach had a kind word for every guy as he stepped off the ice. “Good hustle,” he’d say. Or, “Bring that attitude back next time.”
I was the last one to step off, and he grabbed my forearm. “Well done, kid. You bring that foot speed with you every day, you won’t have to answer to nobody.”
“That’s the idea,” I said.
Coach chuckled. “I got a good feeling about this. You’re going to shake ‘em up a little bit, but there’s nothing wrong with that. You’ll want to stay close to your Captain, okay? Hartley is a good kid. The best there is.”
“Roger that,” I said, heading for the locker room.
The lockers, I’d noticed, weren’t lockers at all. The Harkness dressing room had attractive wooden cabinets instead. They looked a little like the cubbies I remembered from preschool. Only this was a preschool for warriors. Every guy had about three feet of space, and there was room for the skates, the pads, and a shelf above for the helmet. It was more Ritz Carlton than locker room.
Everything was open to the air, which was damned smart. It would keep the good old hockey stench to a minimum. If the renovation had been done right — and I was sure that it had — this place would also have a billion-horsepower ventilation system.
There was a bench at the bottom of each guy’s space, which meant that when you sat down to unlace your skates, you were facing out. That setup made the room feel spacious, but it wasn’t ideal for me. If I was going to convince my new team that I wasn’t scary like the devil, I couldn’t be staring at them while they stripped. So I turned the other way, lifting one foot onto the rubberized bench to unlace my skates.
“Towels are around the corner,” Hartley said as he pulled off his pads. “It’s your basic setup.”
“Thanks.”
“Well, hallo!” a female voice said into my ear. I looked up to see a very attractive curly-haired girl with a clipboard smiling at me. “I’m Bella. I’m the student manager this year. So if you need anything, you come and find me.” Then she actually put her hand up to the side of my sweaty face. “Anything atall,” she added. Then she flounced away.
Beside me, Hartley began chuckling. I risked a look at him, and he grinned big. “She’s not subtle,” he said. “Let her down easy, okay? You don’t want to be on the wrong side of Bella.” Then he laughed again.
Whatever. I took my time setting up my locker area. I wrote RIKKER on the white board above my cubby, with the marker provided. Seriously, they’d thought of everything.
Hartley disappeared into the showers. When he returned, wearing only a towel, I left for my own rinse down. Stepping into the brand spanking new shower stall, I pulled the curtain closed. And I stayed in there a long time, letting the hot water beat down on me. By the time I came out, there were very few players left. Hartley was gone. And so was Graham. If I had to put money on it, I would have bet that he was the first one out of the room after practice.
Out on the ice, I’d been too wrapped up in the drills to look around much. But I did notice that each time I came face to face with another player on the lineup, that face was never Graham’s.
It’s not that I expected a warm welcome from him. Five years ago, he’d made it very clear that we were no longer friends. Or anything else. And it didn’t take a genius to see that Graham had decided that he was a straight guy now. Or at least deep in the closet.
So he was probably shitting bricks right now, wondering if I’d start any conversations with, “Guess what Graham tried out in high school?” But I would never do that. Last year at Saint B's, I’d been outed against my will, and it had been awful. Nobody deserved that. I’d never tell tales on Graham, because if I did, I’d just be sinking to their level.
He wouldn’t know that, though. And seeing me was probably a huge shock. I just hoped that Graham could pull himself together enough to at least shake my hand. Or it was going to be a really long year.
Someone had added a note to my white board. “Capri’s Pizza, 7 PM,” it read. It was signed, “H.”
Huh. That could be read either as an invitation or an order.
Stick with your captain, Coach had said.
