Page 1 of The Trade Up

ChapterOne

ZACH

“You’ve gotta stop fucking skating away like that,” Drew Jenkins says when the inevitable conversation comes up during talk of last night’s game in San Jose.

“Why?” I ask and bring my coffee cup to my lips. It’s stale, and probably only still warm because it’s been sitting on a hot plate for hours. It doesn’t matter—there’s no time of day, or substandard quality of coffee, that will keep me from drinking it.

“Because it pisses the other team off and makes you look like a pussy,” Patrick Walsh says, his voice hoarse after all the yelling he did on the ice last night. Our alternate captain is known for two things: being a family man, and his non-stop commentary on ice during games. His mouth moves as fast and as often as his skates.

“Hey, keeping a level head when a two hundred pound asshole comes crashing into me doesn’t make me a pussy—it makes me mentally tougher than him.”

Drew laughs under his breath. “He didn’t come crashing into you, you fucking checked him from behind.”

The smile tugs at my lips. “It was a clean hit. Not my fault that he can’t keep his shit together and handle it like a professional.”

“Watch out for Clark tomorrow night,” Walsh says. “You did the same thing to him when Seattle was in Boston last month, so he’s going to be out for blood this time around.”

“Let him,” I say with a shrug.

I love playing against guys like Clark who let their emotions lead them, because for me, hockey’s as much of a mental game as a physical one.

I’m one of the fastest defensemen in the league, but what really sets me apart are the mind games I can play against my opponents. It’s the mental edge that got me to the NHL as a 19-year old, and it’s the reason I’m on the first line of the Boston Rebels now, only seven years later.

Even here on my new team there’s a sense of awe at how easily I keep my emotions in check.Nothingruffles me. It’s taken a lot to get me to this point—a lot of training and hard work, and a lot of therapy and self-care, too.

“Why didn’t you go out tonight, anyway? You’re not locked down like the rest of us,” our captain, Ronan McCabe, says as he gestures around the table at the other players who are all married or have kids. “I’m surprised you’re not out with Colt, partying it up and looking for the ladies.”

Our goalie, Colt, is literally the most notorious player in the NHL. The Contacts app on his phone has hundreds of numbers with names like “Nashville Suzanne, alley behind the bar,” or “Minnesota Misty, gives great head.” Tonight he offered to set me up with “Seattle Annabelle, reverse cowboy expert,” but I passed on his sloppy seconds.

It only took me until the end of my rookie season to tire of the stream of puck bunnies who follow us around after the games. I don’t know how guys like Colt, now in something like his fifteenth season, still get off on hooking up with a different girl in every city—sometimes even a different girl every night in the same city.

“The non-stop string of women isn’t my scene,” I say and glance to my right when movement catches my eye. The first thing I notice are her muscular legs beneath the mid-thigh hem of the 1960s-style pale blue waitress dress she’s wearing.

“Hey guys, your waitress Dee had to leave early tonight, so you’re stuck with me till the end,” she says. Her voice is genuine, and she’s awfully chipper for a waitress at a late-night diner at 10:00pm on a Sunday night.

I glance up at her face as she eyes our table, littered with half-empty plates, and asks if there’s anything else we need. “Dessert menu, maybe? More coffee?” She nods toward my cup.

“I’d look at a dessert menu,” Walsh says.

My eyes slide up her torso to her name tag.Ashleigh. And right next to that, her uniform is littered with pins, the largest of which is a Starfleet insignia badge from the first season of Star Trek.

“You got it,” she says and turns to leave.

“Hey Enterprise,” I call out, and she turns back toward me with one eyebrow raised above her kaleidoscope eyes—they’re green at the edges, aqua moving toward the center, and a pale blue around her pupil. I’ve never seen eyes I couldn’t look away from, until now. We stare at each other for a moment before I clear my throat. “I’d have taken you for a Voyager girl, not The Original Series,” I say, because Voyager is known for its strong female captain, Kathryn Janeway, and the season attracted a large fan base of women. “And I’ll take another cup of coffee, please.”

She smirks at me. “Funny, I’d bet you were introduced through Discovery,” she says, referencing one of the newest series and thereby insinuating that I’m a recent fan, “and never made it back to The Original Series. But let me grab you that cup of coffee anyway.”

“What the hell was that?” Walsh asks when she walks away.

“Just some Star Trek talk.”

“Dude, are you a Trekkie?” Drew laughs.

“Actual fans prefer the term Trekker,” I tell him.

“Do you, like, go to conventions and stuff?” Walsh laughs. “Do you have a Captain Kirk uniform that you dress up in?”

“No, I don’t have a uniform.” I roll my eyes and intentionally don’t mention all the Comic Cons and Star Trek conventions I’ve attended.

---