Page 2 of Reckless On Ice

“Grew up with the guy. He got weird in high school. Really liked watching everyone change in the locker room after gym class and practices. He popped a boner around all the guys and made things really awkward. No one wanted to change in front of him after that, if you get me.”

He’d been a bench over from me that day and I’d been getting so much shit from Commisso and Sanders, juniors on the hockey team who teased me mercilessly for myfriendship with Knox. They’d made it clear I needed to make a choice—stick with Knox and suffer their wrath and hazing that would end up forcing me off the hockey team, or distance myself from him and join them. When I’d turned to throw some comment his way, I’d noticed the obvious tent in his boxers he was trying desperately to hide, and my mouth worked faster than my brain.Knox can't help himself when he’s around guys. Hide your bodies, boys, he wants ya!Yeah, it was stupid and immature, but my teammates' voices kept echoing in my head, teasing me about Knox being my boyfriend. So I did the first thing that popped into my head to prove I wasn’t into him. When you’re fourteen, no one has impulse control, and everyone is a target for whatever thought turns up in your head. I was a victim of my circumstances, even if he was my best friend.

“Wasn’t he with that thirst trap chick, Harlowe Sorenson?” Campbell asks.

I shrug and sip my beer before replying. “He might have been, but she’s married to one of the rich guys who owns our team now, so who knows what kind of situation they had?” Honestly, I don't know what Knox likes now, but my brain doesn't want to let go of the boy I knew all those years ago who couldn't control his dick anytime dudes undressed.

“I don't know, she’s crazy hot, and they were together for months,” Nico adds, gesturing with a chicken wing in his fingers. “If you get a chance to hit it with a smoke show like that, you’re not going to slum it with dudes. There’s no way.”

Now I’m pushed to defend my statements, so I lean in hard. “Knox came on to me,” I spit.

It’s so vivid, I recall all the details like it happened yesterday. We were hanging out after one of my hockey games early freshman year before things went sideways. My team had won, and I wanted to celebrate with Knox after. We grabbed a pizza and went back to his house to play some video games until way too late. We both passed out on the couch, and I woke up to his fingers in my hair, like playing with it. It took me a minute to realize it wasn't an accident, he was intentionally touching me super softly, like he didn't want to wake me up. It was so confusing, because it felt kind of good, but I knew I shouldn't like that my guy best friend was doing it, or that he'd touched me at all. When he dragged his fingers down my neck, like he was going to touch me somewhere else, I finally pushed his hand off and asked what he was doing. His face was so scared, but he said my hair looked soft and he'd always wanted to touch it. It was super weird that he waited until I was asleep to touch me, like a fucking stalker.

“He was obsessed with me and wouldn’t leave me alone. That’s not normal behavior,” I finish.

“Ahh, Kingsy had a boyfriend!” Rook announces in a sing-song voice.

My hackles raise and I want to shut that shit down. It’s freshman year all over again with my teammates calling him my boyfriend and giving me shit for Knox always hanging around the ice rink waiting for me. No one is going to make fun of mefor what someone else did when we were fourteen.

“Fuck that. Knox was a fucking queer stalker. I wanted nothing to do with that shit.” My voice is harsh. The words come out with a sharp bite to eviscerate their claims before they really begin.

“Chill,” Mercer says, the humor clear in his tone. “No one is saying anything about you, just the unfortunate situation you had to deal with. I think we’ve all been there with a stalker or someone who was too into us and couldn't take a hint.”

“What does it matter, anyway?” Davy asks. “Who you want to sleep with says nothing about you as a person or a player.” A few heads look at the quiet Russian quizzically. He doesn't normally weigh in on any of our discussions, yet here he is, dropping that bomb.

“Seriously. I think we all know a gay athlete who’s absolutely killed it in their sport at this point. It’s not like who you fuck influences how you play,” Westin adds, seeming to placate the rest of the table.

“Right? A hole’s a hole, and we all know sticking your dick in an asshole feels pretty damn good. It’s not too far a jump to gay sex,” Chad says.

“Fucking hell, Chad,” Campbell says as he throws a celery stick at our left winger who gets in more trouble than all of us combined. We’ll have to watch Chad when we play Vegas because there are a few too many rumors of him nearly getting arrested after being kicked out of strip clubs.

“Hey, even our sport has its homoerotic qualities. All theass patting, helmet kisses, and group showers make us all look a little gay,” Fisher adds with a laugh. Campbell launches a carrot stick at him this time.

“I like the helmet kisses. It’s part of the tradition,” Magnus says in his Swedish accent.

“Can't forget the groin stretches for warm-ups,” Sebastian adds, shrugging.

“All I was saying is Knox should be used to playing with balls, ‌so fumbling them is out of character for him,” I say, raising my hands to keep them from jumping on me again. I catch the chicken wing Campbell tosses at me now that he’s out of veggies. I laugh and bite into the wing and let the conversation move on now that we have finally stopped talking about football and closeted dudes.

Two

Knox

The team is pissed as we file off the field and back to the locker room. A few throw their helmets on the ground, and others are calling it bullshit. No one likes losing the first game of the season. I’m struggling even more knowing I contributed to it with a big-ass fumble. I’m better than that. My hands are huge and sticky, so I don't fumble passes like an amateur, and Luke and I have an almost telepathic connection to know where the other is on the field for shit like that. But this time, Buffalo’s lineman held me up, and I couldn’t get away as fast as I should have to grab that ball and run it into the end zone. Those points would have won the game.

Luke pats my ass as he follows me into the locker room. “Don’t put it all on yourself. I can see you’re all up in your head. It’s one game, and one fumble. It won't be like that every time, and you know it. We all have our good and bad games. I took that massive hit in the second that absolutely could have been a beautiful pass if I’d decided to throw it instead of run, so I’m just as much at fault.”

He means well, and I appreciate it, but that sack he’s talking about didn’t cause a turnover with the other team running the ball halfway back down the field. “I hear you,” I say, anyway. No one wants to listen to me mope, especially Luke, one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL.

“Mathews, Contraire, stop gossiping and get your asses over here,” Coach Adams yells, his face a mottled scarlet that doesn’t look good for us, or his coronary artery.

We walk all the way into the locker room and sit on the bench in front of our lockers at his command.

“Get the fuck out of your heads and stop feeling sorry for yourselves,” Coach starts, looking around the room at the entire team. “It’s one game. Yeah, you played like shit and had some terrible calls, but we can learn from this. Next week, there’s another game, and the week after that all the way until February, if we’re lucky. We’ve only failed if we walk away from this without learning the lessons it taught us about our weaknesses and where we can improve. Practice this week will drill into those spots so we’re not left holding our dicks in our hands again next game. Now, hit the showers and see the PTs. I want you fresh for the next practice when we’re going to runthose plays the way they should have been done today.” Coach Adams finishes with his not-so-motivational speech and turns it over to Coach McAvoy.

“Contraire, you’re on media duty. Don't let them get in your head about what happened, and I don't want anyone saying shit about Antwon, got it?” Coach McAvoy tells me.

We nod our heads in understanding, and the coaches make their way out of the locker room. I rise to my feet, feeling a weight on my shoulders that makes me far heavier than two-sixty, and shuffle back out for my newly appointed duties and the media circus that is our post-game press. Once I’m settled behind the microphones and the reporters have closed in on me, I answer questions about the game, sticking to my perfected lines. Finally, I pick my favorite local journalist to finish up by nodding in her direction.

---