“You are saying I can play again, yes?” Sebastiaan said. He glanced from the doctor to the athletic trainer to his coach.
All three exchanged a glance.
“You can play,” McGee said. He leaned forward and adopted a genial expression. Trust me, kid, it said. I’m fatherly.
Fatherly affection did not make Sebastiaan trust someone more. He regarded McGee coolly.
“You have to be careful, though,” McGee continued. “You’ll have limited mobility for a bit.”
“And no brawls on the ice,” Al-Tahawi added.
“I am not a bruiser.” Sebastiaan kept his voice calm, even though he was insulted by the doctor’s suggestion that he fought on the ice. He was a starting center and co-captain of the hockey team. Others could fight. Not him.
“You’re the Basher,” McGee said. This earned him a look from Kurtzman.
“I did not make that name,” Sebastiaan said. His teammates thought it was cute. Bas became Bash became the Basher. “I just play.”
“And you’ll play it safe,” Kurtzman said. “Look, Bash. Our team needs you and needs you to be okay. Until we know how your body has recovered, you’re off the starting lineup.”
“No,” Sebastiaan said.
“It’s not up to you, kid,” Kurtzman said.
Sebastian thought about it for all of three seconds. He decided that there was nothing he could do to change Kurtzman’s mind except prove him wrong.
He stood. All six feet and two inches of him.
“Fine,” he said. He turned to the doctor. “Thank you.”
As he left the room, he added in a pleasant voice, “Je kan me reet likken.”
He was thankful, not for the first time, that Coach Kurtzman didn’t speak Dutch.
Chapter 3
Adonis
During their sophomore year, Adonis and his friends had started going to Drag Trivia every Tuesday at the Drugstore, a small bar on Main Street. It became a tradition: buckets of beer, baskets of fries, and more wrong answers than right ones.
The group changed, sometimes. Some weeks were skipped. Adonis and Clarisse Chopra, though, were religious in their attendance.
Clarisse was Adonis’s best friend and a fellow figure skater. She was an elegant girl from northern Michigan who could’ve been a model. Modeling was, in fact, her backup plan if her planned PhD in computer science and coding didn’t work out. She and Adonis had become friends almost immediately in their first year. She’d clocked his Indian heritage when she first saw him, and was shocked to learn he knew nothing about his father or his extended family. She, on the other hand, came from a large family and had many relatives in the United States and in Delhi and Mumbai.
That night, after he met her outside her apartment so that they could walk to the bar together, she looked distressed.
“Robbie is coming,” she said.
“That’s why you dressed cute,” Adonis said.
She wore makeup, a small black shirt, and wide-legged jeans.
“Bitch. I’m always cute.”
“You’re always cute. Your clothes aren’t.”
“Rich coming from you.”
Adonis looked at his outfit: a white T-shirt and jeans. “This is a classic fit.”
