“So your first season was easy?”
“Fuck no. The pressure was very real and there was uncertainty in every direction.”
Including in his personal life.
With him in Vermont and Bennett in Illinois, things had felt . . . topsy-turvy. Bennett had grown more and more distant with each passing day of their first season as professional hockey players, and Sandro had thrown himself into the sport and his new teammates and his new city in a way most people threw themselves into new hobbies—with intense enthusiasm and focus, determined to soak in every piece of knowledge he could.
Professionally, his first season had been amazing.
Personally, it felt like his foundations were crumbling around him.
Sometime around Christmas of that year, Bennett had admitted to second-guessing his decision to play professionally. “It’s not what I expected,” he’d said. “It’s all forcing a smile at community events and for the media and pretending everything is fine and making sure I don’t fuck up so my sponsors don’t drop me and putting on a brave face. Nobody prepares you for the expectations that come with being a professional athlete.”
What he’d said wasn’t dissimilar to what Eli just said.
To Bennett, Sandro had responded with a benign, “Don’t sweat it, B. Once you’ve got your NHL legs under you and you’ve adjusted to this life, you’ll be fine.”
Except Bennett had retired from hockey at the end of that first season.
Retired from Sandro too.
“How did you deal with the pressure and uncertainty?” Eli asked now, drawing Sandro from a past he wasn’t keen to revisit.
“I kept my head down, played good hockey, and showed up where I was told to. Don’t worry, Eli. You’ll be fine once you’ve got your NHL legs under you.”
Eli didn’t seem any more impressed by that than Bennett had.
Sandro seriously needed to up his encouraging-words game, but it’d been so long since he’d been a rookie himself that he was struggling to figure out how to relate to Eli. He had to figure it out, though, because the alternative was leaving Eli out in the cold to flounder alone.
And that wasn’t what the Trailblazers’ family was about.
chapter five
Bennett’s phone rang as he and Fowler were setting up for player interviews in a meeting room within the organization’s headquarters, which were located in an office suite several floors above the locker rooms in the Sport U Arena. He pulled his phone out of his pocket to silence it, but Fowler waved him away. “It’s fine if you want to answer that. I need to play around with the lighting for a minute.”
“Okay. I’ll be back in a sec.” He put the phone to his ear and stepped out of the room. “Hey, Mom.”
“Hey, you,” she said, her voice warm. “Is now a good time to talk? I never know with your schedule.”
“I’ve got a few minutes.” He wandered down the hallway until he found an empty meeting room so he could talk without disturbing the organization’s employees. “Everything okay?”
“Of course. I just called to see how you’re doing. How’s New England treating you?”
“It’s really cold here.”
She clearly thought that was hilarious based on how loudly she laughed. It was the soundtrack of his childhood, that laughter. No matter how tired she’d been from working three jobs or how stressed she’d been about money, Mom had never failed to make life fun.
“How’s Washington treating you?” he asked.
“It’s cold here too, I’ll have you know.”
“Not as cold as it is out here.”
“You were the one who decided to go out there.”
He couldn’t argue that.
“And how’s work?” Mom asked. “Last time we spoke, you were trying to get permission to bring cameras into the locker room.”
