Page 92 of Two for Holding
SFCLions: Disgusting how these kids are being indoctrinated to believe that men aren’t men and women aren’t women
sealions4lyfe: Remember when hockey teams still cared about hockey and not this social justice shit?
Camille Easton: [hands clapping emoji]
sealionsfan8216: So proud of Jax Grant and Chris Calabrese for spearheading this!We need more people like them in the league!
(Posted to the San Francisco Sea Lions Instagram on 12/10/2024)
Jax finally caved and leased a car the weekend after Tom dumped him.(Or he dumped Tom.Hard to tell which way around made more sense.) Public transit had no direct connection between Palo Alto and the Tenderloin, so using it to get out to the shelter every other day irked him after less than a full week.
On Friday, with a game-free Saturday ahead of them, Breezy suggested a Halo tournament at his and Luca’s place.By then, Jax was crawling out of his skin alone in his hotel room.
He’d known in the abstract it would be a big change, no longer seeing Tom, but he’d been thinking in emotional terms.Purely practically, Jax didn’t have anyone to have lunch with or watch tape with or talk to at the end of the day.Going to Breezy’s felt necessary so he didn’t start chewing the wallpaper of his hotel room.They’d just scraped an overtime win in the matinee game against Vegas, so the mood was tentatively jubilant, if exhausted.Hanging out with four other hockey players and trash-talking each other over video games didn’t fill the same emotional void as having Tom’s head in his lap on Tom’s stupidly comfortable couch.But listening to Breezy and Luca bicker while Mooney and Howie ate all the snacks let him feel part of something bigger all the same.
Breezy and Luca lived way up in Haight-Ashbury, though, and getting an Uber to his hotel at two in the morning was such a pain Jax bitched about it for half the evening.By the time they stood outside, waiting on their rides, Mooney had heard enough and said, “Dude, get a car already.”
Despite having the cash for it, Jax hadn’t managed to work up an interest in cars.Growing up in the Twin Cities, buses had been available if not comfortable, and it wasn’t as though his parents could afford a second car for him.The temptation was to get something really flashy, maybe a convertible in an outrageous color.Lime green and blush pink called to him.Thankfully, he took Mooney with him to the dealership on Saturday.Mooney rightly reminded him he’d be using this vehicle to get to and from the Tenderloin, so he’d want something that wouldn’t stall getting up and down the hills and wouldn’t be a flashing neon target for every car thief in the city.
“Why leasing and not buying anyway?”Mooney asked as they drove away in Jax’s new, sensible, four-door Sedan.“You have the dough, Mr.Art Ross trophy winner of 2022.”
Jax shrugged.“Waiting to see if they keep me around here.”
Mooney scoffed as though the idea of another trade was ridiculous, but with every stoplight they passed on the way to the shelter, Jax could feel the urge growing stronger and stronger under his fingernails, in the balls of his feet, in the back of his mind.Today could be the day he said it to the cameras, to the kids at the shelter, tosomeone.Today could be the day he got traded again or became so undesirable that his NHL career would be over.The only fear holding him back was that he’d be doing it for the wrong reasons.He’d be doing it to justify losing Tom.He couldn’t make this decision on a whim or a snap choice because he’d had a bad breakup.It meant too much.
So, he bit his tongue on Saturday when he and Mooney took the shelter kids to an ice rink for the first time.No hockey, just learning to skate.Lots of cute footage for the cameras.Mooney wasn’t the biggest guy, but with two teenage girls who had yet to hit a growth spurt thanks to puberty blockers, one on either hand, he looked fucking massive.People loved to see a big guy with cute kids.
Jax kept biting his tongue on Sunday, which was easy because of another grueling practice under Trout.Not much talking to be had there.He even managed to keep his staring-at-Tom time to a minimum, only giving in every other minute or so.
By Monday morning, Jax thought he was finally approaching something like equilibrium.He thought maybe he could make a decision on the whole coming out question without flashing back to the sense memory of Tom’s perfect ass spread open for him over the couch.The last few days, he’d been alternating between the hope-fueled delusion that if he didn’t come out, he’d get to keep Tom and the frustration-fueled desire to do it right away.But time had a way of eroding urgency, and as he took the elevator downstairs, Jax thought today would be a good day to make a plan.He could talk to Mara about it; she would probably have good ideas about how to do it in a classy way.
Of course, he wouldn’t see her for another few days since the next scheduled shelter event wasn’t till Thursday.Waiting to see Mara before making any big decisions sounded like something a normal, not pathologically impulsive person would do.Wait a few days, sleep on it, ask for advice.Maybe even loop in his agent, though Jax didn’t relish the thought of someone else getting a say in this, especially not someone who had a vested interest in how much money Jax made.
As he passed through the lobby, the receptionist called him over.She handed him the package with the Prada logo stamped on the outside.Jax loved the packaging for expensive things.No cheapo cardboard with a logo on the outside for Prada, oh no.They sent sleek black boxes with the letters embossed on the sides.That kind of quality meant Jax had paid north of four thousand dollars for the contents.
He had the money.He lacked the recipient.
He threw the box on the passenger seat and drove to the rink, all the calm and equilibrium from the morning in tatters.
Morris was in, so practice stayed light and mostly effective, largely due to East sitting in the stands with his leg propped up on the chair in front of him.He called out drills every now and again, and when Morris didn’t protest, the team did those drills.Occasionally, East yelled out an individual name, and the person in question skated over to get some feedback.
He never called Jax’s name or Tom’s.Not for the first time in the last week, Jax wondered what Phil thought had happened between them.He hadn’t said anything more to Jax after their brief text exchange on Tuesday, and Jax had no idea what, if anything, Tom had told him.
Knowing Tom, he’d probably said they’d had a disagreement about the power play or something.God forbid he had an emotion not about hockey.
After practice, Jax had a meeting with Breezy and the PR department about how things were going with the shelter program.They went over statistics, and Jax understood a charitably estimated 14 percent of what Kayleigh said.What he did understand interested him about as much as watching the staff sharpen skate blades for six hours at a time.The takeaway was that PR had hit their goals.The videos had caused an uptick of engagement on the team’s social media.
“Um,” Breezy said when Jax thought they were finished.“I mean, there was a lot of engagement, but there were also kind of a lot of nasty comments.”
Kayleigh smiled brightly.“That’s to be expected with such a political topic.But it drives engagement, you know, people discussing stuff in the comment sections.”
A nasty, unclean feeling stole down the back of Jax’s neck.“By discussing, you mean…”
“Oh, you know, debating whether this stuff has a place in professional sports.”
“And I assume you’re deleting every single one of those bigoted comments before the kids we’re working with have a chance to read them?”
“Ah.”Kayleigh paused, fingers steepled.“We haven’t really been moderating commentary so far.”
