Page 23 of Gross Misconduct

“Yo, which one is the cat and which one is the cow?” Fuentes asks.

“It doesn’t matter,” Miller says.

Cat-cow is one of the silliest names for an exercise, but damn if it doesn’t stretch out my back and relieve the tension. I can feel my spine extending.

“Hey, I can’t give you a ride to work tomorrow. I’m taking my mom out for her birthday.” Fuentes loves coming up with secret activities for his family for birthdays and anniversaries. Last year, he took his mom on a hot air balloon ride. They’re super close, a foreign concept in my family.

“It’s okay. I forgot to tell you, I quit my job.”

“What?” Fuentes gasps, his hands almost slipping out from under him.

Miller shushes him. “Calm thoughts. Calm thoughts.”

“I couldn’t stay there. It was a very toxic work environment.” Everything with me and Dad is toxic. “Don’t worry. I have rent covered this month, and I’ll have a new job to take care of rent next month.”

“Awesome.” Fuentes gives me a thumbs up, but his heart doesn’t seem in it. “What kind of job are you looking for?”

“Yoga is meant to be a silent conversation with your spirit,” Miller says.

I shrug my shoulders at Fuentes’s question. “Whoever will hire me.”

“Come on, man,” he says, sounding disappointed. “Is there anything you want to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t want to hop from job to job, only focused on making rent. Don’t you have, like, ambition to do something?”

Sometimes I forget that Fuentes isn’t just a good friend and a fun hang. He’s a smart businessman. His point stings, but it gets me thinking…and the thinking leads to a dead end. My only ambition growing up was to make it to the NHL. That’s what I trained for day and night. That’s the only thing Dad said I could be. I don’t know if I can be anything else except for a hockey player.

“Fuentes, you’re fucking up my Zen,” Miller says, his hands curled into fists. He takes an abnormally deep breath and exhales. “And Gross, you should be paying attention. You definitely need calm after that last practice.”

Is getting judged by your yogi part of class? Miller has us get into warrior pose on our feet. I find it deeply ironic that yoga is about being Zen, yet one of the most popular poses is called warrior.

“The fuck you talking about?” I ask.

“Yeah, what was that about?” Fuentes asks me. “You looked like you wanted to rip the Comebacks player a new asshole.”

Maybe it’s because that player didn’t want to do anything with mine. When I saw Griffin’s face at practice, he had the same patronizing expression that he wore on the roof when he cast me aside after leading me on. I look around and find my other teammates eyeing me.

“Excuse me for sticking up for our practice time, for being competitive, for wanting to win! We can’t let ourselves lose to a team called the Comebacks for fuck’s sakes.” I would never hear the end of it from Dad, his resigned satisfaction that he was right—he raised a loser. “Can we go back to stretching?”

I signal for Miller to get on with it. He instructs us to get on our stomachs and move into the cobra position. Again, another yoga position named after a snake that can either kill you with venom or crush you to death.

* * *

The next morning,I take a break from filling out job applications online and run over to Summers Rink. I needed to sign one last form. So many waivers to sign since there’re so many ways to mangle your body in this sport.

The administrative wing is through a door next to the snack bar. The smell of popcorn fills my nose as I head down the hall to Marcy Summers’s office.

I stop just before her door. Griffin’s grumbly voice echoes in the hall. I shift a touch closer for optimal eavesdropping.

“Jack Gross needs to be disqualified,” he says.

What the fuck? I knew Griffin wasn’t interested in me, but his words are filled with animosity. I guess he didn’t like being shown off on his own turf.

“And why is that?” she asks in her thick New York accent. She has the tough, no-nonsense attitude a woman needs in a male-dominated field. Not to mention all the hyper-competitive parents trying to “do right” by their perfect angel children.

“He’s a ringer,” Griffin spits out. “He doesn’t belong here.”

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