Page 33 of Pucker Up
My eyes bugged out of my head. “I thought that it was brain stuff.”
Ethan practically spit out the sip of beer he’d just taken. “Oh, Acer. It’s a good thing you’re awesome at hockey. I was just kidding. She put this scanner cap thing on my head and asked me a boatload of questions. She probed my noggin with her words.” He pointed to his head.
“Oh.” I couldn’t believe I had been so gullible.
“Although, I wouldn’t be averse to letting that girl put a—”
“Stop.” I held up my hand. “Let’s get back to golf.”
After an afternoonof shooting golf balls and day-drinking, I was tipsy and exhausted. I fell onto my sofa and scrolled through the years of games I had saved. I found the one I was looking for—Chicago versus Miami. Ethan and I were teammates now, but a few years earlier we had been opponents.He was a serious player, like Gideon. Ethan flew under the radar, staying off the hit lists and earning points to keep him at the top of the league, but not the tip top.
While the game played in the background, I checked my phone one more time. There was still nothing from Goldie. Could I have written down the wrong number on her sheet? Why had everyone else had a session with her and I hadn’t heard a word?
I set down the phone and rewound the last play. On the screen, I deked out Ethan to slip the puck between the Miami’s goalie’s pads.
Ethan was good, but I was better. At least, I used to be better. Sighing, I selected one of the current season’s games and watched as I fumbled the puck multiple times in one play, overshot passes, and was in the wrong fucking spot on every play. What had happened to me? When I was traded to Toronto, I lost my mojo.
Gideon’s face appeared on the screen. He wore a full-faced plastic shield, called a fish tank. In one of his junior years, a skate had sliced up his cheek. It hadn’t healed well, and he’d worn a fish tank ever since. I remember the game vividly because it was terrifying, and probably traumatizing too. I was playing Junior B and he was Junior A. I was sitting in the stands with our father when the player in front of Gideon fell, the blades of his skates in the air. The stick belonging to the player chasing down Gideon had accidentally become entangled in his skates.
The whole rink had gone silent when my brother’s face hit the skates. When Gideon stood, he touched his glove to his face and seemed puzzled by the red on the fingers of his glove. From where I sat, all I saw was my idol, my big brother standing in a pool of red that was getting bigger by the second.
Now, Gideon’s eyes were dark and his scar was white against his golden complexion. He got his looks from our Greek mother.My pale ass and freckles came from my dad’s Irish heritage. As he skated across my TV screen, I watched him make mistake after mistake.
I rewound the game and watched again. Holding my breath, I realized that there was a pattern. A bad one. We only fucked up when we were on the ice together. Shaking my head, I decided to study all the games from the current season. It had to be a coincidence, and I was going to find evidence that it wasn’t true. After three more Steamwhistle Pale Ales, and analyzing every current season Tigers’ game, I hadn’t found any evidence to disprove my theory. Gideon and I played well when we weren’t on the ice together, but everything fell apart the second we were on the ice at the same time.
Fuck. I turned off the game and put on aSeinfeldrerun. I needed to laugh. What I’d discovered wasn’t funny. At all.
My phone chimed with a text message. My heart paused a beat, but it resumed its regularly scheduled pumping when I saw it was Ethan on the other end, and not Professor Goldie.
Ethan wanted to hit the range again. I texted him back and agreed, but added a question, one that I wouldn’t have asked if I hadn’t been tipsy from all the pale ale.
U got Prof. Goldie’s number? I lost it.
When my phone pinged again, Ethan had set up another session at the range and included Goldie’s contact information, saved under Professor Hot Tits. I shook my head and accepted the file, making a mental note to update her name in my phone.
Fuelled by Steamwhistle, I only debated for one second before tapping on Professor Hot Tits’ name. The phone rang three times before she picked up.
“Hello?”
I sat up, brushing Doritos crumbs from my chest. Thankfully, the phone screen was dark, and I breathed a sigh of relief that I hadn’t accidentally facetimed her. The timer on the screen ticked away as I debated whether or not to hang up.
“Is this Goldie?” I asked. “I mean, Professor Goldie,” I added before she could reply.
“Yes, it is.” There was a reluctance in her voice. “Who is this?”
“It’s Acer. I mean, Ace Bailey. I’m calling because I haven’t had a session with you yet and I wanted to make sure I didn’t write down my phone number wrong on the paper.”
The seconds ticked by slowly. As a player, I knew the importance of time, and the difference that one second could make in a player’s life.
“Hold on, Mr. Bailey.” Some paper rustled in the background and then she came back on the line and perfectly recited my phone number. “Is that correct?”
I hadn’t thought this through. Now what? “Um. Yeah. That’s right. I have a pretty busy schedule, you know, and if you want me to participate in your study, I’m going to need a little bit of notice.” I winced, wishing that I didn’t sound like such an asshole.
“Fine then, Mr. Bailey. How about tomorrow at five thirty a.m. You’ve got practice at seven thirty.”
I glanced at the calendar on my fridge. Did she think that I would balk at showing up that early? If she did, the joke was on her. I had grown up practicing before sunrise since I was a teenager. “That’s perfect.”
“Great.” The word didn’t match her tone. She sounded like it was anything but great. “I’ll see you in the gym at the arena at five thirty.”
