Page 17 of Breakaway Goal

8

RHYS

“Carter, your girl won’t stop sending me nudes,” Sebastian says in the shower room as we’re washing off after practice.

“She’s obviously notmygirl if she’s sendingyounudes,” Carter grouses bitterly.

I bark out a laugh. “What’s the story here?”

“Sebastian stole the girl I was trying to pick up on Friday,” Carter answers, his voice still a sour grumble.

“I did not!” Sebastian exclaims.

“Dude, you butted in the middle of our conversation and spoke French with her for like half an hour,” Carter retorts. “What the fuck did you think you were doing?”

“I overheard she was a French major, and I wanted to practice my French!” Sebastian cries with such naivete that I wouldn’t believe him either if I were in Carter’s shoes.

But I know Sebastian. He’s such a bookish dude by nature that he can get starved for similar company when he’s surrounded by jocks who mostly aren’t.

More than once I’ve seen a guy on the team hanging out or talking with a girl who majors in English, or Philosophy, orsomething like that, and when Sebastian finds out, he swoops in to talk to them about it—and they ended up totally forgetting the guy they were with and going swoony for Sebastian.

“How do I get her to stop!” Sebastian pleads. “I feel like a bad friend if your girl is sending me pictures of her tits and stuff. I mean, they’re nice, really nice, don’t get me wrong?—”

“You were already a bad friend when you stole her from me with your fucking French sweet talking!” Carter yells.

“I did not steal her, and I was not a bad friend, and I was not sweet-talking her! We were talking about our favorite French songs and poems!”

“Sounds like sweet talking to me,” Hudson interjects.

“And if there’s an authority on sweet talking, it’s my bestie here,” Tuck pipes up in the stall next to him. Tuck always insists on showering right next to Hudson since they’re best friends now, and I can’t decide if it’s adorable or weird. “I mean it, you guys should hear some of the sweet nothings I overhear him whispering in Summer’s ear when Olivia and I are on a double date with them.”

“Tuck,” Hudson growls in warning.

I laugh to myself and shake my head as I soap myself up, the conversation still raging and every other guy adding his input.

Conspicuous in his silence, though, is Lane.

I glance at where he’s showering a couple rows down. His expression is morose. His eyes are dim, where normally there’d be a resolute spark in them after a practice, especially after a pre-season practice that always reveals so much to look forward to and so much that needs to be worked on to a team captain’s eyes.

I get it. He’s gotta be feeling left out considering he’s not even cleared for practice yet, and at minimum is going to miss the first couple months of the season.

Lane’s a team captain to his core. And part of being a team captain, for Lane, was always setting an example. He could tellus to work harder because he always busted his ass in practice and in the weight room. He could ream us out about stupid mistakes on the ice because he hardly ever made any. He could lecture us about spending more time reviewing footage because he poured over it with Coach to help him strategize for hours on end.

He's still team captain, because no one could imagine anybody else on the team but Lane stepping into that role, but now he’s not in the thick of it with us. Not yet. He’s not exhausted and sore after practice like the rest of us are, because he’s under doctor’s orders to take it easy to let his leg heal.

I know it’s eating him up. Even though the doctors expect him to be able to be back on the ice by the middle of the season, it’s not guaranteed. And I know any bit of uncertainty over whether he’s going to be able to keep doing the thing he loves is like a stab in the chest.

The only reason he’s even in here showering with us given that he stayed off the ice during practice is because I told him I caught a whiff of his BO while walking with him off the ice, and suggested he get a shower too since we’re going out to eat afterward.

It was total bullshit, but he’d be feeling even worse right now if he were just sitting alone in the locker room, waiting for the rest of us and overhearing a conversation he was left out of.

When we’ve toweled off and are getting dressed by our lockers, the conversation still hasn’t moved past Sebastian and Carter’s night out.

“Don’t blame me just because you fumbled a girl you were into,” Sebastian says. “Jamie fumbled, like, four girls that night and he’s not blaming me! He’s taking responsibility for his own lack of game! Right, Jamie?”

Jamie, the sophomore rookie, rolls his eyes. “Whatever.”

The rest of the guys chuckle. We’ve all seen girls approach Jamie at parties or during nights out only for him to turn red-faced and tongue-tied.

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