Page 4 of The Hockey Player and the Tutor
He peers over the tiled shower wall and gives me the middle finger.
“Fuck off, ya monk and mind your own fucking business,” he sputters his comeback. The term monk is supposed to be an insult to me I’m sure, but I let it slide off my back along with the water sluicing down the drain.
“What Kimber doesn’t know won’t hurt her. Plus, sorority chicks love hockey players and don’t care if we’re single or not. They just want in our pants.”
“Jesus, Conrad, shut your fucking idiotic mouth already,” Brecks says from across the bank of showers. “You’re giving hockey players a bad name around campus.”
A few of the guys chuckle at this, but they know it’s true. Blake Conrad is the worst sleazeball I’ve ever known and a shitty player to boot. He’s always in the sin bin for his dirty plays. It makes me nervous that some of the under-classman sorority girls who don’t know anything about him will easily fall for his shit.
Some guys just don’t know how to treat women. While I may have never had a girlfriend, per se, I do know that cheating and sleeping around is disrespectful as fuck. And all women should be treated right, even if you’re not in a serious relationship with them.
It’s not as if I don’t like girls and truly live up to the nickname of “Monk,” because I have hooked up with girls over the two years I’ve been on campus. I enjoy fucking just as much as the next guy, but I don’t go out of my way to get laid every night like some of my teammates.
Would I someday like to have a girlfriend? Of course. But I learned early on where my priorities lie—on the ice. When I am finally ready to settle down, I want to find a woman who’s special so I can give her everything she deserves, including my time.
There’s also the problem about post-graduation logistics. Once I graduate, my plan is to either move back to Philly, or if my dreams come true, get drafted to the NHL.
But first I have to graduate. A feeling of dread washes over me along with the soapy suds drifting down my body. The level of anxiety that plagues me right now is at an all-time high, reminding me of two things on my to do list this week.
The first one is to schedule an appointment with the campus doctor to refill my anti-anxiety meds. I’d never admit it to any of my teammates, but I struggle with anxiety. I know it’s nothing to be ashamed of and is a fact of life for so many people, but it makes me feel inferior to my friends. None of my teammates seem to have any problems juggling school, hockey, and life.
If I can keep myself stabilized, maybe I could accomplish what I need to do this semester.
Which leads me to the other thing on my list—reaching out to my new English tutor to schedule our first session. When I left Coach’s office the other day, he sent me home with the name and number for the tutor who agreed to take me on.
Having to rely on anxiety meds and tutors to get through this semester isn’t what I would call winning. But it sure beats hanging up my skates and failing out of my classes.
Choose your battles, my dad would say. And these are my battles to conquer.
ChapterThree
Brinly
Today has been a complete and utter shit show.
It started off with my alarm failing to go off. I can’t even blame my alarm when it was my own fault for turning my phone off last night. I was dragged to movie night at the student union with Megan and Maddie, and afterwards we drove over to Dickey’s Drive-In for burgers and shakes. The minute we returned home I began cramming for my Chemistry exam, scheduled for this afternoon, and pulled an all-nighter.
I must’ve fallen asleep sometime around 3:00 a.m. and woke up when I heard Maddie running the shower this morning. I’d groggily reached for my phone and realized I’d never turned it back on and when I did power it up, I panicked when I saw the time. I’d overslept by forty-five minutes, completely missing my Women’s Studies lecture.
To add to that overall disgust with myself, my mother called me during my lunch hour and I actually took the call. She grilled me yet again about my choice of studies and major and something about “wasted potential,” none of which I really listened to. I’ve heard it all before and it’s a never-ending battle of wills. Sometimes she drives me nuts with her need to control my life, and I’m glad I’m far enough out of her reach from New York City that she can’t just pop by anytime she feels like it.
Then it started to rain. And thanks to the crazy-ass fall weather in the Northwest, which the weather reports can never be relied upon to predict accurately, it went from a light drizzle to a complete downpour in ten minutes flat. That shouldn’t have been a big deal since I have a car and was planning to drive to the library, but as luck would have it, I somehow misplaced my keys and don’t have time to look for them because I’m already running behind schedule. So my only option is to make a dash for the library in the pouring rain with a measly umbrella to meet up with my new tutoring student.
Preston Dahl.
The name alone sounds like a Class-A Ivy League asshat. And I should know. I’ve been around enough of them in my mother’s circle of friends that have left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
I make it to the front of the building in record time, but have to shake off my dripping wet strands of hair as I step through the arched doorway, standing with my chin down toward the pristine hallway of the library. I’m sure I look like a mess with my clothes soaked through to the bone.
When I peer down my body, I realize that even with the umbrella, my white T-shirt is practically see-through now and it clings to my breasts. Shit. There are more than enough problems that come with having embarrassingly large boobs. I’ve suffered through either wearing oversized shirts that make me look like a bag lady, or tops that don’t provide enough room and mold so tightly to my breasts that they’ve attracted much unwanted attention since I hit puberty.
It's a no-win situation.
Thank God I always have a sweater in my bag just in case I get cold. I yank the garment out of my overstuffed backpack and wrap it around my shoulders, hoping to hide the telltale signs of the cold that’s seeped into my body in the form of “headlights.” My nipples are puckered and hard from the chill and the draft from the air conditioning isn’t doing me any favors.
Adjusting the strap of my bag over my shoulder, I make my way through the back of the building to the bank of stairs that leads up to the third-floor study carrels where we tutors set up shop. Preston and I had messaged yesterday with the purpose of giving him the location of our study session, as well as inquiring on the actual topic he was studying and needs my help with.
I was thrilled to know that it’s a class I’d already taken last year, English Lit and Sexuality in Literature. It was one of the most eye-opening courses I’ve ever taken and the professor, Char Feldman, was a breath of fresh air. Studying the works of writers such as Tennyson, Woolf, Nabokov, and Tennessee Williams can sometimes cause your eyeballs to roll back in your head, but she drew out comparisons to the world we live in today and how their words shaped our contemporary thoughts on sexuality.
