“Okay.”
Theo is a distraction I can’t afford.
My job is to play hockey, score, and be a role model.
Theo and I might mistakenly ruin everything for each other.
We should be winning against Cincinnati, but we’re tied. Their goalie is playing out of his head, but so is Benz. He’s our biggest hype man behind us.
We’ve all made our share of mistakes, and I’m annoyed by the chirping tonight. It’s the third period, and their strategy is mental distraction through insults. But it’s all insults I’ve heard a million times, as if it’s a revelation that I’m one of the few Black players in the league.
I’m tangled up at the boards, fighting a Cincy defender for the puck. He hurls an implied slur about my sexuality, but it distracts him more, and I take off with the puck. Griff is waiting for my pass, but they see it, so I find Mav, and he sneaks it past the goalie with a tap.
A whistle stops play, and I’m surprised the defender who insulted me is on the ice, and Theo’s receiving a penalty. On his way to the sin bin, he skates to the bench to yell at Ace. My line is coming off, but Ace’s helmet isn’t on yet as he grabs Theo’s face shield to calm him down.
Fighting with a teammate is unacceptable, and Ace should put him in his place.
I vault over to the bench, and Gray hands me a bottle of water.
“You good?”
“Great.” I keep my eye on the puck. Benz needs all the help he can get while we’re a man down.
“O’Keefe wants Ace to report their defender to the refs for a misconduct penalty for what he said to you.”
“That was normal shit. Barely crossed the line and certainly not misconduct.” I hand Gray the bottle back. A misconduct penalty can range from ten minutes to being ejected from the game. It’s serious.
“He said it was hate speech.”
“O’Keefe wasn’t fighting with Ace? He was upset over the chirp at me?” I fasten my chin strap, gearing up for a line change. Theo’s released from his penalty and charges onto the ice.
“Truth.” Gray moves down the bench.
There are so many sides to Theo.
Theo strips a Cincy player and dishes the pass to Brant. Brant crosses the blue line, fakes out their winger, and passes to Lucky.
Drake fires a shot on goal that ricochets off the pipe like a bullet. There’s a mad scramble for the puck, but Theo is in the perfect position. The middle is open, but everyone is closing in. Somehow, with the speed of the puck, Cincy’s defenders forget about Brant.
Theo passes to Brant, and we score again with five and a half minutes left. The fans leap to their feet, and the cheers are deafening. Old Theo would’ve taken it up the middle into traffic, but tonight he’s the team player we need to win.
On my next shift, the same defender who chirped me shoves me while the puck is on the other side of the ice, and the refs miss it. “You need your stepbro to be your enforcer now? Too scared to fight me yourself?”
I skate into the action, unfazed by his insults. To fight someone, they’d have to say something inhuman. I very rarely lose my temper. Except with Theo, he’s the exception to everything.
Next time I snag the puck from the mouthy defender, I say, “If you can think of an insult I’ve never heard, I’ll fight you.”
It could be a risk, but the guy doesn’t have more than six brain cells.
We win by one, and it’s hard fought. We’re going to need to step up our game to make a run at The Cup.
This win fills the stadium with cheers, and I can feel the fans’ enthusiasm lift me up. It’s such an amazing high, better than any drug.
“King, in here.” Ace points to a dark office. “You can trust me if someone is harassing you. It’s my actual job to report unsportsmanlike conduct. I can’t do it if I don’t know.”
“If a player ever crosses the line or makes me feel unsafe, I will,” I assure him, ready to move on.
Ace flips the light on and demands a play-by-play of all my interactions with their defender. He’s taking this seriously, so I recap for him.
