Page 59 of Hard Hitter
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23RD
Standings: 3rd Place
11 Regular Season Games Remaining
O’Doul spent much of his downtime that week working on his list of romantic ploys to get Ariana to agree to date him.
She’d once told him that meditation would prevent him from worrying about fights—that it would give his monkey something to do. Fortunately, his mental monkey also enjoyed pestering Becca for inside information.
“Which cookie place?” he prodded on his third phone call to her.
“One Girl Cookies. That place on Main.”
“What’s the best thing they have?”
“Look, Doulie—I have a meeting. All the cookies are great, and the whoopie pies are awesome.”
“Huh. Don’t know what that is, but I like the name.”
“I’ll bet. The corner of Main and Water, buddy. Her birth month is August and she’s a size small. But I’ve got to go, okay?”
She hung up on him, but he had the ammo he needed. Thanks to Google, he learned that the peridot—whatever the fuck that was—was the birthstone for people born in August. So his mental monkey got busy searching the web for peridot jewelry.
Not that he was an expert, but a lot of jewelry on the Internet was really freaking ugly. He’d have to dig deep. But he liked a challenge.
At any rate, he didn’t expend the usual amount of energy worrying about his upcoming fight against Columbus. And who knows—maybe three hours of YouTube review wouldn’t have changed the outcome.
But the outcome was pretty painful.
Late in the second period, Leo Trevi tripped over an opponent. The guy’s glove fell off and his hand was sliced by Leo’s skate. It was a fluke, O’Doul had never seen anything like it. There was blood all over the ice. No penalty was called against Trevi, but the other player left the game.
Their guy challenged O’Doul to a fight immediately. And he accepted just as quickly. That’s how these things were done.
O’Doul won the fight. Sort of. But their guy was a leftie. He got a champion grip on O’Doul’s sweater, and the blows rained down faster than he could weather. The tunnel of silence that always descended on him during a fight had a different quality tonight. It sounded like a high-pitched screech. He didn’t think he could hang on anymore under the assault. So he wound up one more good punch and let it fly.
***
When he watched the tape later, he’d see himself get up off the ice a few seconds after they both went down, and stagger off. But that’s not how it had felt at the time. O’Doul didn’t really come to until he was sitting on a table in the medical bay, while the team doctor stitched his face back together.
“Ow, fuck.” Those were his first truly conscious words.
“I’m almost done,” the doctor said.
Somebody’s hands—Jimbo’s as it would turn out—tightened on his jaw, helping him hold still.
“What’s the shcore?” he slurred.
“Dunno,” the doctor said. “Doesn’t really matter at the moment.”
He disagreed. He almost never left the rink after a fight, but here he was for the second time this month, sitting on his ass while the game went on.We’d better not be losingwas all he could think.
They did, though, damn it. Columbus sank one right before the buzzer, so they couldn’t make it into overtime for the extra point, either. His face throbbed and his hip throbbed and his team had needed this win.
And since Boston—still their closest points rival—won a game tonight, Brooklyn was back in fourth.
O’Doul took a tediously awkward shower while trying to keep the spray off his face, dressed his aching body slowly, and fought off all the lingering attention of the training team. “I’ll ice it at home,” he said a dozen times. It was late and he was too beat to listen to any more advice.
He was tying his shoes in the coat room when someone put a hand on the back of his head. His old reflexes kicked in, and he jerked upright, knocking the hand away.
