Page 113 of Hockey Bois
*
“I know it was a hard loss last game,” Benns said. It was only a day later, the game too fresh and their indignant anger too hot and righteous. None of them were happy with the reminder; leave it to Benns to power through anyway.
They were huddled around Guy’s net, as far as possible from the other team. Benns had refused to do a team speech in the locker room, and it wasn’t until Nick had realized that the Mother Puckers were literally a thin wall away that he understood why.
“I don’t like to say it, but I think the refs really screwed us over with that no goal. We did our best to come back, with great work from Jensie and Mags scoring and an all-around solid effort, and they got a lucky bounce at the end. Remember that, boys. It was a lucky bounce, and that was it. They didn’t outplay us. They didn’t have a better performance from their goalie. The refs helped ’em out, and they had some good luck.”
“We’ve got different refs today,” Brady pointed out. “So don’t go bringing last game’s baggage into this one. These two guys are here with no clue what the fuck happened last game except what the score sheet says, so don’t give them shit. Being an asshole doesn’t help, and pissing off refsespeciallydoesn’t help.”
“Good point, Jens,” Benns said. “We play a clean game, and I think that works to our advantage. If the Mother Puckers want to get scrappy and we don’t respond, the refs see that. It also makes the Mother Puckers more careless because they’re too busy trying to start something instead of playing. Keep your head in the game, do everything we’ve already been doing, and don’t forget… have fun. At the end of the day, this is still agame, and if you didn’t have fun then there’s a problem.”
“I have fun winning,” grumbled Mags.
“Me too,” Benns said without missing a beat, “but it’d be a lie to say Ionlyenjoy the games we win. We’ve had losses where I had fun on the ice, on the bench, and in the locker room. Ultimately, I feel those laughs stick with me more than the final score. It keeps me coming back. It keeps my love for the sport going. So let’s have fun tonight… and let’s get that win while we’re at it.”
They weren’t much of a “team cheer” kind of team, but Benns put out his hand and, slowly, others joined him. Gloves and bare hands piled onto each other as bodies pushed together to reach the center.
“Clear eyes, full hearts?” Lexi joked.
Benns ignored him. “Let’s go Jagr Bombs on three. One, two, three—”
“LET’S GO JAGR BOMBS!”
The words echoed throughout the rink, pounding off the walls and filling the cold space. Everyone stared at them—the other team, the refs, the few people gathered in the bleachers. Instead of making him feel silly or embarrassed about their team’s antics, Nick felt… powerful? Or was it empowered? He felt confident and relaxed in a way he rarely did before games.
They should do that more often.
If it works, he amended.If we lose… well, worry about that if we need to.
*
Crickets chirped in the grass around them. They were at a far end of the parking lot, shielded from view by Brady’s Jeep and the low-hanging branches of a tree. They’d taken refuge here after their game to decompress; an hour later, Nick still felt the vestiges of adrenaline buzzing through him.
Or it could just be Brady’s presence, keying him up more than was fair.
“It’s a one-to-one series,” Nick mumbled over his beer. It was actually Brady’s beer, the last from a six-pack Nick had gifted him for scoring last game. Gail and GG had joined them for a while, but both had people waiting for them at home, so they’d left after a beer. Now it was just Nick and Brady, sitting a little too close together on the curb.
And no, Nick wasn’t thinking about the implications of Gail going home to someone.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want good things for Terry. He did, and Terry definitely deserved them. It was more he was a little too buzzed right now to be generous to his cousin instead of jealous of him.
“Basically, the previous two games meant nothing,” Nick went on as he brushed a firefly off his leg. “Waste of time.”
Brady rolled his eyes and snatched back his beer. “We played a good first game and they barely won, so yeah, in that sense, a waste of time. But we’ve for sure got the momentum going forward. We know it, they know it, and now we can embarrass the fuck out of them before we close it out.”
Nick leaned forward so he could invade Brady’s space. Bad idea, what with the beer and all the pretty that was Brady’s face, but he did it anyway.
“You’re gonna jinx us, you butt,” he said.
Brady snorted. “Yeah, okay. If we lose, I’m willing to take the blame for jinxing it.”
“I’m holding you to that. I’m gonna tell Gail that you did it, and she’ll never forgive you.”
“Probably not. She’s still pissed about me dropping my coverage against the Pumpkins. She pretends she’s not, but she keeps yelling at me to ‘play my man!’ and I know she’s about five seconds from hitting me with her stick.”
Nick nodded grimly. “She’s very angry for someone so small.”
“She’s actually calmed down a bit since she started dating your cousin.”
