Page 8 of Love of the Game
“Jonny’s two syllables,” I said. “I had a perfectly good one syllable name and you all had to make it longer. Andanyway, Sandwich”—I poked my thumb at Lou—“is also two syllables.”
Hardy waved my words away. “Eh, whatever.” A beat passed. “Jhonnnieee.”
I snickered. “Better than Hard, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” Lou chimed in. “I am not making a ‘your mom’ joke out of that, thanks, Cap.”
For his part, Drake silently put on his gear while we chattered around him. Once he donned the Otter practice jersey, he finally spoke to me again. His words were quiet but still sharp, and they slipped beneath the noise in the room. “You could’ve told me who you were.”
“Yeah, I could’ve.” I plopped my helmet onto my head. Didn’t bother with the chinstrap. “Admittedly, that probably was the easier path. But I had my reasons.”
The frustration crept back into his voice and body. “Which are?”
I chuckled and tapped the plastic that encased my noggin. “Think about for a little bit.” I clapped him on the shoulder, then headed out of the room to grab my sticks and hit the ice.
Despite having a game that evening,Mac worked us at a high-energy pace at practice. We’d blown the previous game—mostly lack of details—so he had us battling along the boards and working both on breakouts and defending against the rush. Drake slotted in at center on the second line, and everyone on the ice could tell he didn’t want to be here. His effort was… not great. Mac talked quietly with him a couple of times, as did the other coaches. Drake nodded politely, discussed the finer points of the drills, then—just didn’t go for it.
It was one of the new young guys—Alfie Joelsson, a winger from Sweden—who was the first to vent to me. “I trained with him in camp. Not that he remembers. He looked right through me when I said hi.” Alfie shook his head in frustration, then switched to Swedish. “But what pisses me off is that he’s got amazing hands and legs and IQ, and he’s half-assing everything out there! No wonder they sent him down and called Gavin up.”
Gavin Lacey was one of the other new guys—drafted last year and one of those Canadian born and bred hockey players. He wasn’t as good as Drake Williams, but he had something that our new grumpy, frustrated dragon didn’t have at the moment: determination.
“He needs time,” I told Alfie. “And a little shift in his neurons, I think.”
“I don’t understand what happened. He was great his first two years.”
Alfie’s sentiment was a common refrain and one I was starting to wonder, too. Drake didn’t say anything to the guys he’d been in camp with. He didn’t really say anything to anyone, but you’d think he’d at least acknowledge the guys he’d met.
I hadn’t been invited to the Lions camp for years, mostly because I was on a PHL contract now, so I’d never get a call-up, but partly because I asked them not to after the first two years. I was alot. Bearsy called me Guy Smiley because I was this, as he put it, happy chatterbox who was always going. The boys loved me, but I didn’t want to be a distraction, especially once it was certain I’d never play in the NAPH again.
The Otters were my team, my home. I was still a chatterbox here, still smiling, but I was part of the fabric of this team, even with its rotating cast of characters.
And now Drake Williams was here with his sad blue eyes, pretty blond curls, and fucked-up attitude. It was one thing to not know who I was, but some of these kids—he’d spent two weeks working with them.
Mike Smith (we called him Bike, partly because he’s sometime show up to practice on his bicycle and partly for… other reasons) muttered at me while we waited for our turn in a drill. “Fuck that dude.”
Oh, I still wanted to.
Bad thought. No good. Needed to keep a lid on that. “Was he like this in camp?”
Bike shook his head. “Nah. He was serious and hard working. But he talked to us, you know? Helped with the drills. Not like—” He waved as Drake went through the motions of another power play drill with little effort. Mac blew the whistle, then barked at Drake to do it again. “That.”
There was Alfie’s question again. Whatever had happened had been between training camp and the start of the season. Or early on.
I stuffed that to the back of my mind as my turn with the drills came along. Mac used me on both the power play and the penalty kill, so he kept me busy. My hockey IQ was pretty good, which helped when it came to knowing where openings would appear or where pucks would come from, so I tended to be in the right place at the right time. At least down here. Up in the NAPH? Not so much. The game was a hell of a lot faster and I was…not. Never had been.
But years watching my dad play had helped the brain. Iunderstood the game, but I didn’t have the hands or legs of a hall-of-famer. What I did have was an absolute love for everything hockey. The sounds, the sights, even the smell. I never wanted to leave the rink.
Drake had the hands and the legs and the IQ, but he looked miserable right now.
Practice went on with more drills, and I caught him watching me when I paused to catch my breath in between stints. Oh, he was still angry, given the narrowing of his eyes and frown when I caught him looking. But there was more there, too.
Hardy muttered, “I can’t decide if he wants to kill you or fuck you.”
“Could be both,” I replied.
He snorted. “I can guess which one you want.”
I rolled my eyes and shoved Hardy. But there were those bad thoughts again—the ones that ended up with Drake under me. Or on top of me. I wasn’t that picky, really. There were no rules about teammates fraternizing, as long as screwing didn’t screw the team, but the whole shit with Adam had kept me from doing anything more than harmlessly flirting with some of the guys. All air, no heat.
