Blonde Date

by Sarina Bowen

  Jesus, Graham, I ordered myself. Get a grip.

  “Hartley?” Coach called to our team captain. “Rikker can have McCaulley’s old locker. That okay with you?”

  “Yeah,” Hartley answered, his voice rough. He and McCaulley were best friends from way back. So Hartley didn’t sound too pleased about it. “Come on over here,” he said anyway, calling the new player. The one whose eyes I was going to avoid from now until graduation.

  I retied my skates, just so I’d have something to do.

  Coach said, “let’s get out there! On the ice in one minute, boys.” Then he disappeared.

  “How’d you transfer, exactly?” Hartley asked Rikker. And he must not have been the only one who was curious, because the locker room stayed quiet. There were about a hundred ACAA rules against transferring. Usually, if you wanted to switch schools to play Division One hockey, you had to sit out a year.

  I heard a familiar chuckle, which made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. “I don’t think we have the time right now for that story.”

  God. The sound of him was like being scraped raw. The rough quality of his voice turned me inside out with memories. Both good and bad.

  “…I’ll tell you later,” he said. “Over beers. It’s the kind of story that requires alcohol.”

  Hartley chuffed out a laugh. “Okay. But with a buildup like that, it better be good.”

  “Trust me,” Rikker muttered.

  I couldn’t sit there any longer after that. Feeling like I might pop out of my skin, I stood up fast and went for the rink door. Yanking it open, I felt the cold slap of rink air on my face. I sucked down a deep, icy breath, and hurried down the chute, the rubber floor pads springing back against my steel blades. Without slowing down, I stepped over the lip, pushing off across the slick surface.

  My heart was still banging around in my chest. So I bent my legs and powered forward, flying down the rink. The boards passing beside me began to blur. Skating hard would help steady me.

  It would have to.

  -Rikker-

  In hockey, unlike other sports, there aren’t many time-outs. And that’s too bad. Because after walking into that locker room and getting a quick glimpse at Michael Graham’s face, I really could have used one.

  I knew he’d be in there. I’d read the team roster before I transferred. And I thought I was prepared for it. After all, I’d had five years to get over being angry. The scars on my face had long healed, and the broken ribs were a distant memory. I’d moved on in so many ways.

  Crossing that crowded room, I got only a glimpse of him. But a glance was enough to make me understand just how hard this was going to be. Because you never really get over your first love, right?

  That’s what the lyrics of pop songs tell me, anyway.

  He didn’t even look the same. All this time I’d been picturing that skinny, scared teenager who’d left me bleeding on the asphalt. But it was version 2.0 of Graham that I saw suiting up in the corner — a big bruiser of a defenseman. I didn’t need x-ray vision to see that there was a hell of a lot of muscle underneath those pads. Dayum. But looking down from atop the new rocking bod were the same icy blue eyes, framed by the thickest blond eyelashes I ever saw on a guy.

  And I’ve looked at plenty.

  The sight of him was enough to give my heart a big old kick. Unfortunately, the look on his face told me that there were tough times ahead. Because the dude did not look happy to see me.

  Of course he didn’t. No surprise there. If he’d wanted to remember that I’d existed, he might have called some time in the last five years. Or emailed. Or texted. I already knew he was as done with me as a person could be.

  But damn if his scowl didn’t send another roundhouse to my solar plexus.

  There weren’t any time-outs, though. Not in life, and not in hockey. So I was just going to have to deal with all that shit later. Right now it was time to skate. And to say that I’d have something to prove to this team was the understatement of the year. The new guy always does, right? Now, take that typical burden, and multiply by a hundred. That’s what it was going to take once they heard my story.

  So I strapped on my pads as fast as possible. Everyone else cleared out of the locker room, except for the captain. That guy — the one they called Hartley — seemed to be waiting for me. “You don’t have to be late on my account,” I said, tugging on my skate laces.

  “No big thing.” He stood twirling the blade of his stick on the floor. “I’ve heard the opening day speeches before. Coach likes to quote dead presidents.”

  “Yeah?” I glanced around. The locker room looked brand new. “Nice place you got here.”

  “Right?” Hartley agreed with me. “It was pretty skanky before the renovation. Now there’s a new weight room. New showers. New everything.”

  I stood up and crossed the room in my skates, peering around the corner at the tiled facilities in the adjacent shower room. “Maybe that’s why Coach took me on. You’ve got shower stalls with doors on ‘em.”

  “How’s that?” Hartley looked confused by my tactless joke. So that meant Coach had not given him a head’s up about me.

  I probably should have just shut up then. But the past year had wrung me out. So if Hartley was going to freak out on me, I’d rather just get it over with.

  Looking him in the eye, I said: “my transfer came through because the ACAA took a stand on Saint B's chucking me off the team.” I picked up my stick, and so Hartley turned toward the ice door, holding it open for me.

  “That’s cool. But I’m still not following you,” he said, leading the way down the chute.

  “The coach at Saint B's is a hardcore Catholic. And a bigot, I guess.” Hartley didn’t turn around, so I just plunged ahead. “I’m gay, dude.”

  Hartley’s back was to me as we walked toward the ice. I felt the seconds ticking by as he covered the last ten feet or so to the plexi door. Putting his glove on the handle, he finally turned to face me. His expression was a hell of a lot more thoughtful than I expected from your average jock. “Coach doesn’t bring in just anybody,” he said, “He must believe that you can be a good fit for the team.”

  “I’m sure I can be,” I said, hoping like hell that it was true.

  Hartley shoved a glove under his arm and snapped his helmet shut. “The athletic department is pretty clear where it stands on this issue.”

  For a second, I bristled at the idea that I was an issue. But what Hartley said was both accurate and informed. One of the reasons I’d transferred to Harkness was that they put the “liberal” in liberal arts. They had even done a campaign around inclusiveness in sports last year. It was called If You Can Play, You Should Play. On the college website, I’d watched a three minute film of student athletes repeating that phrase, and a narrator assuring the listener that all students were welcome on sporting teams, regardless of sexual orientation.

  It was the most progressive thing I’d ever seen. And I hoped like hell that they really meant it.

  “I saw the video,” I told him. “Didn’t see your face in it, though.” In other words, what do you think, pal?

  “Don’t read anything into that,” he chuckled. “I was laid up all of last year, and not Coach’s favorite person.” His smile was rueful. “Welcome to Harkness, man. You can play this however you want. If you need me to say something to the team for you, let me know.” His brown eyes studied me.

  So far, his reaction was as good as I could have ever expected. “I haven’t decided how to play it,” I said truthfully. I’d never been out to my teammates before. And I probably wouldn’t choose to be now, if I could help it.

  Hartley swung the ice door open. “Let me know. But for now we skate.”

  I went out hard. Ridiculously hard. I skated as if demons were chasing me. And they were. Because this was the last stop on the hockey train for me. Transferring from one great college hockey team to another one was just not something that happened. I was all kinds of lucky to be
here. If this didn’t work out, I wouldn’t get another shot on goal. And I loved this game.

  As a twenty-one-year-old sophomore, I was eligible to play for three seasons on this team. If they’d have me.

  After a warm-up, which I skated as if there would be a quiz later, Coach set up a passing drill. And I lost myself in it. I gave every particle of my attention to the pucks flying at me. This was what had kept me sane the past five years. Hockey required absolute focus on the puck and on the other bodies flying around. If you let your mind wander, even for a split second, it all went to shit; the other guy stole the puck, or you found yourself squashed like a bug into the plexi.

  I was good at this — at surrendering my conscious mind to the game. Ninety minutes went by before I knew it. When coach blew that whistle for the last time, I was dripping sweat. When I yanked the helmet off my head, I could see steam rising up from inside it.

  “Next time we’ll scrimmage, I promise,” Coach said as we filed past him, breathing heavy. “I’m not a total asshole.” Coach had a kind word for every guy as he stepped off the ice. “Good hustle,” he’d say. Or, “bring that attitude back next time.”

  I was the last one to step off, and he grabbed my forearm. “Well done, kid. You bring that foot speed with you every day, you won’t have to answer to nobody.”

  “That’s the idea,” I said.

  Coach chuckled. “I got a good feeling about this. You’re going to shake ‘em up a little bit, but there’s nothing wrong with that. You’ll want to stay close to your Captain, okay? Hartley is a good kid. The best there is.”

  “Roger that,” I said, heading for the locker room.

  The lockers, I’d noticed, weren’t lockers at all. The Harkness dressing room had attractive wooden cabinets instead. They looked a little like the cubbies I remembered from preschool. Only this was a preschool for warriors. Every guy had about three feet of space, and there was room for the skates, the pads, and a shelf above for the helmet. It was more Ritz Carlton than locker room.

  Everything was open to the air, which was damned smart. It would keep the good old hockey stench to a minimum. If the renovation had been done right — and I was sure that it had — this place would also have a billion horsepower ventilation system.

  There was a bench at the bottom of each guy’s space, which meant that when you sat down to unlace your skates, you were facing out. That setup made the room feel spacious, but it wasn’t ideal for me. If I was going to convince my new team that I wasn’t scary like the devil, I couldn’t be staring at them while they stripped. So I turned the other way, lifting one foot onto the rubberized bench to unlace my skates.

  “Towels are around the corner,” Hartley said as he pulled off his pads. “It’s your basic setup.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Well, hallo!” a female voice said into my ear. I looked up to see a very attractive curly-haired girl with a clipboard smiling at me. “I’m Bella. I’m the student manager this year. So if you need anything, you come and find me.” Then she actually put her hand up to the side of my sweaty face. “Anything at all,” she added. Then she flounced away.

  Beside me, Hartley began chuckling. I risked a look at him, and he grinned big. “She’s not subtle,” he said. “Let her down easy, okay? You don’t want to be on the wrong side of Bella.” Then he laughed again.

  Whatever. I took my time setting up my locker area. I wrote RIKKER on the white board above my cubby, with the marker provided. Seriously, they’d thought of everything.

  Hartley disappeared into the showers. When he returned, wearing only a towel, I left for my own rinse down. Stepping into their brand spanking new shower stall, I pulled the curtain closed. And I stayed in there a long time, letting the hot water beat down on me. By the time I came out, there were very few players left. Hartley was gone. And so was Graham. If I had to put money on it, I would have bet that he was the first one out of the room after practice.

  Out on the ice, I’d been too wrapped up in the drills to look around much. But I did notice that each time I came face to face with another player on the lineup, that face was never Graham’s.

  It’s not that I expected a warm welcome from him. Five years ago, he’d made it very clear that we were no longer friends. Or anything else. And it didn’t take a genius to see that Graham had decided that he was a straight guy now. Or at least deep in the closet.

  So he was probably shitting bricks right now, wondering if I’d start any conversations with: “guess what Graham tried out in high school?” But I would never do that. Last year at Saint B's, I’d been outed against my will, and it had been awful. Nobody deserved that. I’d never tell tales on Graham, because if I did, I’d be sinking to their level.

  He wouldn’t know that, though. And seeing me was probably a huge shock. I just hoped that Graham could pull himself together enough to at least shake my hand. Or it was going to be a really long year.

  Someone had added a note to my white board. “Capri’s Pizza, 7 PM,” it read. It was signed “H.”

  Huh. That could be read either as an invitation or an order.

  Stick with your captain, Coach had said.

  Okay, then. I would.

  Changing on the fly: the substitution of players between the ice and the bench while the clock is running.

  -Graham-

  We were sitting at Capri’s with the first pitchers of the season in front of us. Most of the team was crammed into four or five of the little old booths. And the first pizza order of the year had gone in about half an hour ago.

  This was my favorite spot in the world, and with all my favorite people. I should have been relaxed.

  I wasn’t. Not even a little.

  My first glass of beer lasted about twenty seconds. Bella noticed, and promptly refilled it.

  “You know, you’re a natural at this manager thing,” I said, looping my arm over her shoulders. “I can see that now.”

  “Of course I am,” she said, lifting her own glass. “What do you have going on for the weekend?”

  It was still that glorious early part of the semester, when nobody had any studying to do yet. “The usual. Tonight I really need to get wasted. And laid.”

  “For you, it should really just be all one word. Because that’s how you roll.” She tipped her head toward mine, her eyes smiling. “You’re going to get… laisted. Because that sounds better than waid.”

  “If you say so.” I pulled her closer to me, and tried to relax. But I felt as if a concrete block had been parked on my chest.

  More beer to the rescue. I tipped my glass back and drank deep.

  “We need a new win song for this year,” Hartley was saying. “What do you got?”

  “‘After Midnight,’” I said quickly, just to get a rise out of Bella.

  “No fucking way,” she said immediately. “Clapton may be a living legend, but the dude did not write win songs. I think we should use ‘What the Hell.’” Bella wiggled her hips to try to get a little more room on the bench. The booth was a tight fit. But that was okay. Because we were tight, Bella and I. It was fair to say that she was my best friend.

  “That’s a good song,” Hartley said, because he was like that. Always so fucking diplomatic. “But I’m thinking the win song should probably be by an artist who has a dick.”

  Bella snorted. “You know how much I enjoy dicks, Captain. But ‘What the Hell’ is a great song. Even if it is by a girl.”

  “‘Can’t Hold Us,’” somebody threw in.

  “We’ve worn out Macklemore,” Bella argued. “But I’ll take it under advisement.”

  “What, like you’re picking?” Hartley asked, refilling her beer.

  “I have keys to the AV system in the locker room. I’m really just pretending to consider your suggestions, here.”

  Like I said before, the power was going to her head.

  “How about ‘“Timber?’” Hartley nudged Bella. “Pitbull and Kesha. Something for everyone.”

&nbs
p; “Not bad, Captain. Not bad.”

  The loudspeaker cracked. “Forty two! Forty two, your pies are ready.”

  “That’s us!” Bella cheered. She grabbed the ticket off the table and wiggled away from me. I gave her ass a pinch as she went. “Don’t just fondle me, chump,” she said, standing beside the table with a hand on her hip. “Do I look like I could carry two pies by myself?”

  “You do, actually,” I said, sliding out to follow her. “But I’ll help. Save our seats,” I said over my shoulder. We wove through the crowd toward the ratty old counter in back. The Capri brothers, in their trademark sweat-stained white tee shirts, were slamming pizza trays down and collecting tickets.

  Bella flashed her killer smile, and one of them found our order right away. “Ooh!” she said, grabbing one of the pies, her chin lifting toward the door. “Here comes the tasty new guy. Rikker.”

  My stomach dropped right into my shoes. Because I thought I’d have at least tonight to get used to the idea that the worst moments of my life had come back to haunt me. But I wasn’t even going to get that. He was striding toward us, wearing a faded Vermont sweatshirt and shorts that showed off his muscular…

  Mayday!

  “You get the plates,” I told Bella, grabbing the pizza out of her hands. Because looking my problems in the eye was not the way I rolled.

  What a fucking disaster. By which I meant me.

  -Rikker-

  Capri’s Pizza was a hole in the wall. But it was the good kind — with oak paneling everywhere, and old wooden tables that had been varnished a few thousand times. There were names carved into every visible surface, and the smell of slightly stale beer hung in the air.

  Harkness College — even the dodgier parts — gave off the aura of having been around for centuries. Because it had. I loved that about the place. I’d only been here for a week, but I already appreciated its fortitude. I liked knowing that I was just one tiny cog in the wheels of its long history. It made all my troubles feel smaller.