Tom: Oh, this is tricky.Phil is the only guy on the team with any outdoors skills, but there’s only one thing in this world I hate more than fishing and that’s talking about fishing.I’m taking Jax.We’ll die of starvation, but at least it will be fun.
Phil: Christ, none of the guys are making it on a desert island.Can I take a coach instead?Morris is really handy.He could build a shelter or something.
Top comments:
Susannah Lindenberg: [crying laughing emoji]
1682rox: Tom choosing Jax so he can die happy I can’t.
(From “San Francisco Sea Lions Call Each Other Out For Fun, Part 2,” posted to YouTube on 11/20/2024)
Phil woke to the sound of someone banging around in the bathroom.
For a heart-stopping moment, he thought someone had broken in.Then, he thought Camille had come back from Monaco and wanted to try again.She hadn’t given him her key when she left, though their lawyers had agreed Phil would keep the house.
The thought filled him with dismay and a deep, abiding desire not to get out of bed and deal with it.
That was a relief.
Stuck in the house by himself, he’d imagined texting Camille more than once.The thought of having her here purely to feel less alone was seductive.Good to know he didn’t actually want to rekindle their marriage.Less good to know that being alone at home for a week and a half had made a measurable impact on his sanity.
Finally, Phil remembered: Coach Morris—Ben—standing in front of his door with his suitcases and a mulish set to his chin.He must be in the bathroom now.Weird.It’d been three days, but it would take some more getting used to, having a coach in his house.
Not that Ben was like any other coach Phil had known.
Phil’s research had revealed very little about the man so far.Google had shown him a few pictures of Morris with a college hockey team and a CV of coaching experience with a variety of age groups in Utah.The teams he’d worked with were so small they didn’t have an online presence of their own, which tracked for hockey in Utah.It decidedly did not track with getting a head coach job in the NHL.
Pulvermacher had cited the Sea Lions’ disappointing playoff results as a reason for hiring an unknown.He’d given interviews about it several times in the run-up to the season, which he rarely did.Historically, the only things Pulvermacher had wanted to talk about included merchandising, his success at scoring big trades, and how important family values were to him due to his staunch Mormonism.He’d never cared much about staffing, which was why Trout still had a job, though Phil knew for a fact that three separate players had complained about him, and two had asked for trades because of him.
Everything about Ben getting hired screamed desperation, which wasn’t Pulvermacher’s MO at all.
The best theory Phil had was that Pulvermacher planned to leave the team if they couldn’t get past the second round of the playoffs yet again.Perhaps he’d hoped a radical shake-up in the coaching would get them there.But radical enough to hire a college hockey coach from Utah?
Phil needed more information about Ben to follow that leap in logic, but he didn’t know how to go about getting it.Having Ben show up on his doorstep could be a helpful workaround.
Not that Phil had planned for Ben’s presence in his house.Sure, he’d exaggerated how pathetic he was to Tom, even talked about a lawsuit he had no intention of pursuing, trusting his friend to tattle to their coach.Tom’s entire life centered on hockey, so Phil had known he would seek a hockey solution to a personal problem.Phil’s hope at the time was for a conversation or two with Ben so he could get a feel for the coach’s motives and methods before he offered any suggestions about the roster.But he’d underestimated how worried Tom would be and how strongly Ben would react.
Ben’s readiness to move in with a player in need at the drop of a hat had done nothing to allay Phil’s suspicions.What coach did that?The team had more staff than just the coaches for a reason.They had trainers and physical therapists and even a full kitchen crew on retainer.
With a groan, Phil forced himself to sit up.The last few days of having Ben in the house hadn’t given him any answers, but he appreciated the other man’s presence.Phil’s knee was still swollen, and he couldn’t put weight on it.He would have been fine on his own, of course, but as little as he wanted to admit it, having help…helped.Having a project in the form of figuring Ben out would also be good for him as he stared down the barrel of long-term injured reserve status.He’d need to keep busy or he’d go nuts thinking about how being on LTIR would affect his contract negotiations.
Phil hated contract years.He’d spent his last one, five years ago, trying to prove his value to the team all season, doling out more hits and pushing himself harder and harder.The year after, his knee gave out.This season, he’d compensated for the stress by taking weekly Toradol shots and Ambien from the trainers even though he knew his knee wouldn’t hold up under the strain forever.Now, he got to reap the consequences of that shitty choice.
The one snag to his genius plan of distracting himself from the excruciating pain and the existential crisis by focusing on the weirdest coach he’d ever had was that the resolution to said existential crisis depended on said coach.Phil couldn’t imagine Ben wanting to extend his current six-million-dollar-per-year contract when he had literally helped Phil to the bathroom the last few nights.To his credit, Ben had been very nice about it.Unlike pretty much every other coach in Phil’s career so far, Ben respected personal space and emotional needs.Also, surprisingly, hair care needs.Phil tended to avoid taking care of his hair in the locker room—Hayes had a habit of making fun of anyone who used any sort of grooming product not located on the bottom shelf of the CVS soap aisle.And Phil did not feel equipped to become the ambassador for stupid questions about Black hair.
It was still nice that Ben knew to ask.
He’d been accommodating in so many small, quiet ways—like how he’d dropped to his knees to help Phil with his brace the first night.No one had touched Phil with that kind of gentleness since long before Camille left.
Phil should probably not think about it in those terms.
The en suite door clicked shut on the other side, meaning Ben had finished.Getting to his feet, Phil grabbed a crutch and hobbled over to the bathroom.He pushed open the door and finagled his way inside.He would be truly grateful when he no longer needed the crutches and could get around under his own steam.Even now, he could tell that standing for long enough to wash his hands and brush his teeth would be a tremendous effort.
But when he finished organizing the crutches and his body and entered the bathroom, he discovered something entirely novel.
There was a chair in front of the sink.
It was such a simple thing, the obvious solution, and at the same time, something Phil could not have done for himself until he’d recovered enough not to need it.Ben must have gone downstairs first thing and gotten it from the dining room.
