Page 13 of Off-Limits as Puck

I pour three fingers of whiskey and settle in to watch my career implode in real-time.

The league moves fast when you embarrass them on primetime. By morning, I’m suspended indefinitely pending review. The official statement uses words like “unacceptable” and “dangerous” and “comprehensive evaluation required.”

Translation: I’m fucked.

“Media training starts Monday,” my agent, Jerry, informs me over speakerphone while I ice my knuckles. “Anger management Tuesday and Thursday. Team-appointed therapist on Wednesdays.”

“I don’t need—”

“You need to shut up and do exactly what they say if you want to play hockey again this season. Or ever.”

He’s right. I know he’s right. But knowing doesn’t make swallowing this bullshit any easier.

“There’s more,” he continues, because of course there is. “The press is digging into your family. Your brother’s situation is about to become very public.”

My stomach drops. “How public?”

“Front page of the Tribune public. They’ve got photos, Nic. Meeting with known bookies. The works.”

I drain my glass and pour another. My little brother, the genius who was supposed to be better than me, reduced to a scandal that’ll follow him forever because I couldn’t keep my fists to myself.

“Can we stop it?”

“Not anymore.” Jerry sighs. “Best we can do is control the narrative. No comments, no interviews, nothing that can makethis worse.”

After he hangs up, I sit in my empty apartment and let the silence swallow me. No practice tomorrow. No games. No team. Just me and whatever bottom I’m racing toward.

I flip on the TV, scrolling past highlights of my meltdown to find old game footage. Better times, when I was just a hot-headed player instead of a liability. The whiskey makes everything fuzzy around the edges, softening the sharp pain of reality.

My phone buzzes. A text from an unknown number, and for one pathetic second, my heart races.

But it’s just another reporter, fishing for a comment about my brother.

I throw the phone across the room, listening to it shatter against the wall with satisfaction. Tomorrow I’ll start my humiliation tour—therapy and training and groveling for forgiveness. Tomorrow I’ll pretend to be sorry for defending my family. Tomorrow I’ll begin the long climb back to respectability.

But tonight, I remember a ghost in a black dress sneaking out of my room, wondering if she ever regrets leaving. If she knows my name now, splashed across every sports site in the country. If she’s glad she left when she did, before I became a cautionary tale with split knuckles and a suspended license to play the only thing I’ve ever been good at.

My phone screen goes dark, and I’m alone with my consequences and the echo of what that rookie said about my brother. Words that started a fire I couldn’t control.

Just like her.

Just like everything in my life lately. Burning bright and leaving nothing but ashes.

7

Three months later, and I still can’t wash Vegas off my skin.

Not that I haven’t tried. I’ve scrubbed myself raw with work, accepting a position at Northwestern that has me buried in research proposals and freshman statistics courses. I’ve moved into a new apartment in Lincoln Park with roommates who don’t know about my spectacular fall from grace. I’ve even gone on dates—nice, safe dates with nice, safe men who text back and have real names and boring jobs in finance.

They all taste like disappointment.

“You’re doing it again,” Leah says, dropping onto my bed where I’m grading papers on a Saturday night like the party animal I’ve become.

“Doing what?”

“That thing where you stare into space and sigh like a Victorian maiden.”

“I’m grading.” I wave a red pen as evidence. “This kid thinks standard deviation is a type of social media platform.”

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