Page 12 of Lovesick
My vision whites, bile surges up the back of my throat, and I humiliatingly lose my balance in front of all my teammates. I’ve been punted numerous times in my career, but never to this extreme. That wasn’t a defensive play. No, that was an attack spearheaded by pure loathing.
It feels like I’m wading through molasses when I finally come to, grabbing onto the boards before I’m left to forage for the shattered fragments of my dignity.
“Nice job,Captain,” a voice sneers, and I don’t need to pinpoint the face to know who it belongs to. Steeped in animosity, wrapped in a subtle warning, it’s a tone not unlike the rattling trill of a venomous snake.
Knox Mulligan. Pre-star player of the Minnesota Mustangs.
I.e., the guy I stole the captain’s spot from.
Everyone and their moms knew that Knox was qualified to be captain. He has great leadership skills, impeccable talent, and a history of being one of the top scorers on the team. There really was nothing stopping him from being promoted—until me, my stupid self, and I decided to stumble in on his three-year plan. I didn’t ask to be captain. Hell, I didn’t ask for any attention at all. I just wanted a fresh start, and I wasn’t expecting an enemy as a part of the welcome package.
Knox spent the entire summer trying to one-up me—trying to prove to Coach that he’d made the wrong decision by making me captain. My body looked like a putrefied, rotting pear by the end of the first week of practice.
I don’t hate the guy. I pity him, if anything. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be so consumed with success that you have to tear down anyone who gets in your way. Hockey is a competitive sport, sure, but we play as ateam. We rely on eachother, and cooperation is the only technique that’ll secure us a spot in the Frozen Four. If we’re at each other’s throats the whole time, our opponents will rip us apart without even having to lift a finger.
“Calloway!” Coach’s authoritative voice growls, practically resounding off the echo chamber of the arena. “You have teammates for a reason. Pass to them if there’s a goddamn opponent coming toward you. In fact, check your blind spot every once in a while. It might do you some good.”
I hold my throbbing shoulder and hiss under my breath, doing a piss-poor job of keeping my breakfast from propelling up my esophagus. Coach is right—I was distracted. Not only has Merit stripped me of my sensibility, but she’s stripped me of my athletic ability. Why am I letting some girl occupy my brain? Hockey is the most important thing in my life. Securing a career in the NHL takes precedence over getting my dick wet.
Show everyone that you belong here, Crew. Show everyone that you’re good enough to be captain.
While I straggle behind whizzing jerseys and raucous laughter, my best friend, Harlan Beaumont, skates over to me, clapping me on the back. I wince and grind my molars when he hits my Knox-inflicted bruise.
“Coach is just being a hard-ass. Knox came out of nowhere at the last minute. You weren’t granted any time to pass,” he says.
While I appreciate Harlan’s words, I don’t deserve them. The first rule in hockey is to always be aware of your surroundings. I have to remember that I’m not operating a one-man show anymore. I’m responsible for ateamnow. They look to me to set a good example, and they rely on me to make the right calls when the time comes. So far, I’ve shown them that I’m incapable of doing either. Our first game is this weekend. If we don’t impress everyone out of the gate, nobody’s going to take us seriously for the rest of the season.
Taking my helmet off, I relinquish a sigh, watching as my heated breath snakes into the air like a visible contrail. “He’s right, Har. I’ve been off my game. How am I supposed to lead us to victory if I can’t even score a goal? I should’ve seen Knox coming.”
The chorus of skates slicing ice and pucks scuttering across the surface desecrates the serenity of the rink, further enhanced by overlapping voices. Trundling over to the bench, I swipe a water bottle before squirting a stream into my mouth.
Harlan discards his own helmet, shaking out his hair and leaning on the butt of his stick. “You’re being too hard on yourself. Sure, you’re captain and you’re responsible for a lot of the plays, but we as your teammates have to hold our own weight too. You can’t be expected to succeed if people aren’t willing to cooperate.”
The influx of ice-cold liquid slops heavily into my empty stomach, but I bask in the way it soothes me like a balm. Bowing my head, I squeeze the bottle and spray a rivulet down my neck, feeling the coolness trickle under my jersey and douse the internal bonfire crackling in the hearth of my ribs.
“I don’t know if I can do this, man. I wasn’t even captain at my old school. Everything’s so serious now. I have people counting on me, I have scouts watching me—one wrong move and I’ll screw the whole thing up.”
I take a seat on the bench, still reeling from the aftershocks crawling up my arm. My eyes lower to a sizable chunk of ice pockmarked from one too many blades, forming a divot that sits between uneven edges. My reflection is a mirage, distorted by the blinding fluorescents and the unbuffed surface.
“If you keep punishing yourself like this, the grief is going to kill you. The truth of the matter is that you’re setting yourself up for failure, which will indirectly impact your performance,” Harlan explains matter-of-factly, a frown twisting his lips. It’s a juxtaposition to his normally cheery demeanor—the one that’skept me levelheaded through Knox’s relentless assholery and Coach’s equally relentless harping.
For the first time this practice, I welcome the smile that materializes between my cheeks. “When did you get so smart?”
Harlan taps his head. “Psychology major.”
“Ah, my built-in therapist,” I muse, pretending to clutch my heart.
Harlan and I only met over the summer, but we hit it off right away. He was the first guy on the team to come up and welcome me. I learned quickly that I have to earn my place here. I don’t blame the other guys for having their reservations. I’m the new kid who’s disrupted the entire balance of things, but I’m going to prove to everyone—including Knox—that I’m the right fit for captain, and that with a lot of hard work and overtime, I’m going to lead the Mustangs to the Frozen Four.
I don’t think Harlan views hockey through a life-or-death lens. He’s ridiculously smart, and even though a career in psychology isn’t necessarily the most lucrative, he has plenty of options to succeed in other fields. Engineering, chemistry.
After I dive-bombed my first practice with the Mustangs, he offered to buy me dinner. I’m not sure if it was out of pity, but crab Rangoon was involved, so I clearly wasn’t going to decline. He told me that hockey was an extracurricular for him—a way to express himself beyond equations or essays, a place where he was more than just his brain. He liked the aspect of being a part of a team. He also played minor league when he was little, and it was the one sport that he wasn’t terrible at.
He was the first person to give me a chance, and I’ll forever be grateful. I don’t have the legroom to pursue a different career like he does. My whole life has been on the ice. It’s my focus, my passion, and the driving force behind who I am.
Hockey means everything to me. This sport is my lifeblood, so failure isn’t an option. It also doesn’t help that I’m only here because of an athletic scholarship. Yep, my shit-for-brains dadtook all the money with him when he left during my childhood, and my mother doesn’t have enough in savings to pay tuition for such a prestigious school.
Enter: Coach Lawson. My saving grace, my angel in disguise. He scouted a few of my community college games, and he offered me the chance to show the world that I was more than some poor kid who got dealt life’s shitty hand. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him. He saw a light in me that I didn’t even know existed, and after living the majority of my life in darkness—deprived of the love that my dad locked away—I yearned to be seen.
