AFTER A LIFETIME of waking up at random times to head to the rink, plus two full seasons of McKee hockey, you’d think I wouldn’t mess up something as stupid as the time of the season-opener exhibition.
Yet here I am, running at a full tilt to Markley Center, my duffel bag slung over my shoulder like it’s full of cash and I’m trying to get to the getaway car before the cops. I dash across a crosswalk, ignoring the outraged honk of a car as the driver brakes to avoid me, and almost fall on my ass as I hustle past a group of students pre-gaming on their way to a party.
I smack into a girl’s shoulder, and she wheels on me, shouting, “Watch out, asshole!”
I’m not fast enough to dodge the cup of beer she throws at me.
Fantastic. I wipe the drip away as best as I can while running. When I finally reach the doors, I yank them open and skid inside.
I make it into the locker room at the exact moment Coach Ryder wraps up his pre-game chat. All my teammates are wearing our home purple, pads on, skates on, sticks and helmets in hand. This game against the University of Connecticut won’t count for the standings, but it signals that it’s time to get serious. After weeks of preparation for the season, it’s our first chance to show Coach how much we’ve absorbed the new playbook—and a chance for me to make my case for captain.
Right now, though? He gives me a hard look with those pale blue eyes that can cut through you like a knife. They remind me of my father’s, and not in a good way. “Go on,” he says. “Show me what you’ve got, gentlemen.”
“Where were you?” Evan, my defensive partner, asks me. He shakes out his braids before he puts his helmet on. “And why do you smell like a frat house?”
“I got stuck in class.” That’s not technically a lie; I just thought I had more time for office hours with Professor Morgenstern. I needed to beg her for an extension on my Macbeth essay for her Shakespeare seminar, and when she gets going, it’s hard to wrap up the conversation. The semester has been underway for a month now, but I still don’t have my shit together, especially for the three seminars I’m taking. Shakespeare. The Feminist Gothic. Fucking Milton. I haven’t done my readings in a week.
I pull my sweatshirt over my head and shove it into my locker along with my lucky Yankees cap. “I’ll see you on the ice.”
“Callahan,” Coach Ryder calls. “A word.”
My stomach sinks even though I expected as much. I keep undressing, throwing on my pads as quickly as I can while doing it right, but look up when I hear his footsteps.
I’ve had a lot of coaches in my life, but no one screams “hockey coach” like Lawrence Ryder. He always wears a collared shirt, not just for games but for practices too, and while he hasn’t played since his senior year at Harvard—when he led his team to a Frozen Four victory—he has the crooked nose and hard-ass attitude to prove he did his time on the ice. He’s improved my game so much in our first two seasons together, and we’ve spoken about the future—the only future I’ll accept for myself—in a way I can’t with my actual father.
I know Dad will never admit it, probably because Mom won’t let him, but I’m sure he still wishes that I fell in love with football like him and my older brother James. Instead, I traded cleats for skates and never looked back.
“Why were you late?” Coach asks.
I bend to lace up my skates. “I lost track of time, sir.”
“Is that why you smell like cheap beer?”
“A girl spilled a beer on me. Outside the rink.” I look up at him as I stand, balancing on the blades of my skates. “It won’t happen again.”
“What did you lose track of time doing?” The unspoken question hangs in reserve. Not that I’ve ever spoken to Coach about my personal life, but it’s not exactly a secret that under normal circumstances, I spend my free time getting tours of the campus dorms, one Daddy’s little girl at a time.
“I was in office hours with a professor.”
He nods. “Fine. But I don’t want you coming in late again, Callahan. Especially not for an actual game. Preparation—”
“—Makes the game,” I finish. I’ve heard it from him many times. He expects the best from all of us, but especially from players like me, the ones with a shot at a future in hockey.
Coach Ryder is a college coach; we’re students, not his employees. McKee University isn’t paying us to play. We’re here for an education, however important sports are to the overall profile of the college. Academics are supposed to come first—but he’s known since freshman year that if I could, I would have declared for the NHL Draft the moment I turned eighteen. I’m getting my degree for my parents; my dad has always urged us to consider past our athletic careers to the rest of our lives. Originally, I wanted to play in a junior league, get drafted, and work on an online degree in between, but that wasn’t enough for him and Mom. The only consolation? I’ve had great preparation for the NHL so far at McKee, so hopefully I’ll be able to go straight into the league, rather than start at a farm team, as soon as I graduate.
I just need to get through two more years. Two more seasons. Now that I’m an upperclassman, the pressure has ratcheted up even higher. The crop of seniors who graduated left the team in a precarious position, and if there’s anything that would help solidify my post-grad plans, it would be two full seasons as team captain, proving that I can lead as well as play. I don’t know if he’s considering me for it yet, but I hope like hell that he is.
“Yes,” Coach says, those serious eyes still studying me closely. “And I thought we cleared up your issues last season.”
I hold my chin up, despite the hurt that hooks into my belly and tugs, like a fish caught on a line. We fell just short of Regionals last season for lots of reasons, but I won’t pretend that the fighting penalty that led to my suspension from the last game of the season didn’t play a big factor. I should have been on the ice for that game, and I wasn’t. “We did.”
“All right,” he says. He claps me on the shoulder. “Warm up quickly. Show me what you’ve got.”
After the quickest stretch I can get away with, I head to the ice. Even though it’s only an exhibition game, there are a bunch of students here, and even some supporters for UConn. While the football program is the jewel of the school, McKee hockey games turn out a good crowd.
Evan and I are first shift defenders now, so when Coach Ryder stops his chat with UConn’s head coach and the referee signals the first faceoff, we’re already on the ice, in position to protect our goalie, Remmy—Aaron Rembeau—and our zone. I settle into the game quickly, relishing in the pace, however low stakes, of a game. When the season officially starts this Friday, it’ll really feel like I’ve moved on. Since the spring, I’ve stewed over the failure of last season and everything that came along with it, but I’m finally close to wiping the slate clean.
The puck rockets down the ice, followed by one of the UConn players. I meet him at the edge of the defensive zone and try to jostle him for it, but misread his pass. The puck ends up on our side of the rink, deftly brought in by another player on UConn’s offense. He slaps it straight between Remmy’s legs into the net.
Shit. I don’t usually make mistakes like that.
I skate off the ice when my shift ends and watch the second shift take over. Settling on the bench, I gulp down some water. Despite all the conditioning to stay in shape in the off-season, I’m heaving from the near two-minute sprint. I rub at my chest guard. There’s a knot of pressure building behind it, making it hard to swallow. It’s not just about being late and missing the opportunity to screw my head on straight before the game, or about letting that goal through. It goes deeper than that, running like a fissure down my breastbone.
The pressure of performing well so the NHL will come calling when I graduate.
The pressure of helping the team make it to the Frozen Four this season, rather than sabotaging the whole effort.
The pressure of taking care of my little sister Izzy, a freshman at McKee this year, like my parents are expecting from me now that James has graduated and gone on to the NFL.
Usually, the ice is where I want to be. I’m focused there. Calm. But during practice for the last few weeks, and now during this game, and last spring when I punched Nikolai Abney-Volkov in the mouth and got us both ejected from the game, I’ve been losing my grip on that focus, along with everything else.
If I’m being perfectly honest with myself, there’s another reason, too. Something I haven’t wanted to name, because it sounds stupid, even in my head. It’s one thing to like sex, and another to feel like I’m on edge because I haven’t had it.
But I haven’t gotten laid in months.
Months.
The last time I saw a pair of tits, it was spring. Now it’s almost fucking October, and I’m striking out with every girl I try to chat up. Usually, my status as a star hockey player on campus leads to my choice of puck bunnies, but now, I’m not getting their attention. I don’t know what’s wrong with me; why it feels like I have cooties or some grade school shit like that. I look the same, act the same, talk the same—and the charm that used to lead to me fielding multiple offers a night is giving me a big fat nothing.
Sex wouldn’t solve anything, but getting off inside a girl instead of my fist would be a start, however embarrassing that sounds.
We’re only playing a few ten-minute periods, since this game’s just for practice, so time flies by, and soon we’re in the last few minutes, knotted at 1-1.
“Callahan,” Coach says. “You and Bell are back in.”
Evan and I hop over the boards and settle in. Not thirty seconds go by before one of our freshmen, Lars Halvorsen, sends a beauty of a shot into the UConn net. We skate over to congratulate him. It’s not a real game goal, but he’s talented, so I’m sure he’ll have his first one soon enough. Plus, it breaks the tie, and we won’t have overtime for a game like this. Another minute, and we’ll be able to hit the showers and go home.
We win the faceoff, but we’re quickly forced back into our own defensive zone thanks to good pressure. A UConn player shoves Evan into the boards behind the net. I rush over to see if I can jostle the puck free and smack it away, forcing a chase until time runs out.
“—Mom was a hot lay,” the UConn player is chirping as he pins Evan with his shoulder. “When did she have you, when she was fifteen?”
Evan freezes. For a heart-stopping moment I think he’s hurt, but then I realize that he’s working back tears. My whole body locks up, my heart pounding so hard I can hear the rush of blood in my ears.
Evan’s not just my teammate, he’s one of my best friends.
And his mother died of cancer over the summer.
My fist connects with the UConn player’s jaw with a satisfying jolt.
