Empty Net

by Avon Gale

  “I want to make this clear, Isaac,” Misha said. “You are not going to hit him again.”

  “Especially if I’m not there to see it,” muttered Coach Ashford.

  “Max.” Misha sighed and aimed a warning glance at Coach Ashford. “Don’t encourage him.” He pointed his fork at Isaac. “I mean it, Isaac. Like him or not, he’s your teammate.”

  “You heard what he said. He started it.” Isaac scowled and pushed his food around on his plate. He had no idea what it was, but he was on his third helping of it. He ate way better there than he had living with Hux, that was for sure.

  “Yes. I heard him. I was there.” Misha sighed. “I don’t know what Belsey is thinking. I know we needed a backup since Lathrop retired, but surely there was someone else. Anyone else.”

  “Really? Considering why he hired us, you’re confused why Jack Belsey went for the most dramatic answer he could think of to our need for a goalie?” Coach Ashford snorted and took a drink of his iced tea—Isaac’s only contribution to their meals besides his charming company.

  “Belsey should be a boxing promoter,” Isaac said. “Or a Marvel-comics villain.”

  Misha gave him a pointed look. “I’m still waiting for you to tell me you won’t hit him anymore.”

  Isaac made a face and took a bite of his dinner. “I don’t think I can promise that, Misha. You heard that guy. The first thing out of his mouth was a gay slur. Seems maybe I should punch him harder.”

  Coach Ashford made a choked, suspiciously like-a-laugh sound and hurriedly forked up a bite of his own as Misha turned his formidable glare on him. “Promise me, Isaac.”

  Isaac sighed as dramatically as possible, but finally gave a sullen “I promise” that seemed to placate his coach. Probably because, as he well knew, Isaac would keep his word. Even as enjoyable as punching Laurent St. Savoy had been, it wasn’t worth Misha’s disapproval. And he was probably right. Hitting your own teammates was generally frowned upon.

  After dinner Isaac did the dishes like he usually did. He liked doing them, even if he’d never admit it, because it made him feel like part of the household. Like part of the family.

  Back when he’d lived at home, he’d always been responsible for emptying the dishwasher. And sometimes, as he put the dishes away in Misha’s neat, orderly kitchen, he remembered the comfortable, suburban home he grew up in and the sound of his parents watching television in the living room as he went about his chores.

  Guess they had learned to do it themselves. Isaac was their only child, unless they’d adopted another one after he left. A better one. A straight one. Goddammit. Isaac was sick of people making a big deal about him being gay.

  After he was finished, Isaac took himself over to his best friend’s house. Matt Huxley, who had been Isaac’s roommate until last season, lived in Coach Ashford’s old apartment. He roomed with another teammate and friend, Shawn Murphy. Isaac also drove Coach Ashford’s old Jeep, which he was planning to buy. Coach Ashford let him drive it, and Isaac paid insurance and gas money, just like he would have done at home if he’d been allowed to live there long enough to have his own car. It probably should have bothered him that he was essentially being treated like he was seventeen, even though he was twenty-five. But considering what he’d been doing at seventeen, he couldn’t complain.

  “So,” Murph said immediately as Isaac grabbed a beer and flopped down on the sofa next to him. “Where are we going to hide the body?”

  Isaac tried not to make a face at Hux’s beverage of choice, Natural Light. Ugh. That was another good thing about living with Coach Samarin. Isaac ate better food and drank better alcohol. “Dunno. But I can’t hit him. Promised Coach.”

  “I told you nothing good would come from you living there,” Hux said. He was six foot-two and all muscles, and he got in a lot of fights on Isaac’s behalf on the ice. Off of it he was a sweetheart of a guy who liked to drink beer and read comic books. At the same time. There was a graphic novel on his lap. “Stupid asshole, St. Savoy. I can’t believe that jerk is a Spitfire.”

  “What kind of a name is that, anyway?” Murph asked. Murph was a defenseman—and a good one—but if he’d ever read a book in his life that wasn’t about hockey, Isaac hadn’t seen it. He looked about as Irish as you’d expect from a guy named Shawn Murphy. He was as tall and broad as Hux, but without any tattoos. He said he was keeping his body a temple, but he was really just afraid of needles.

  Sometimes Isaac wondered if Shawn and Matt were secretly having sex every time Isaac left their apartment. They probably weren’t. Neither of them had a problem with Isaac being gay, and Shawn had even kissed him once at a party to impress a girl, but they both seemed about as straight as they came. The kiss was the opposite of impressive, at least to Isaac, but the girl had liked it and was now Murph’s steady girlfriend.

  Being gay had never bothered Isaac as much as it seemed to bother everyone else on his behalf. One of his favorite things about Hux and Murph was how they simply adjusted their chick talk to dick talk in order to make him feel involved in conversations. It was endearing, even if it was offensive to both genders.

  “I think he’s French-Canadian,” Isaac said. “That’s why his name’s French… ish.”

  “Fuck him,” Hux said gruffly. He pointed at Isaac with his beer. “Not literally, Drake. Got that?”

  “Isaac wouldn’t fuck that guy,” Murph started, then stopped and scowled at Isaac. “I guess he’s probably your type, though, huh? ’Cause he’s pretty.”

  Isaac couldn’t argue with that one, but he did take exception to the idea that he’d mess around with St. Dickhead. “Uh, no thanks. Remember how mad I got about the spitting?”

  “Right. You want ’em to swallow.” Murph winked.

  “Who doesn’t?” said Hux, and they all raised their cans of beer.

  The banter was juvenile. But seeing as how Isaac’s parents had tossed him out of his house and thrown him to the proverbial wolves without any apparent remorse when he was seventeen, he couldn’t help but feel grateful that he’d ended up on a team with guys who wanted him to feel like he belonged.

  “Wonder why he’s so pissed off about it?” Isaac said, catching a controller that Hux threw to him. It was always a toss-up between Grand Theft Auto and NHL video games, and they had picked the former.

  “About spitting?”

  Isaac leaned over and hit Murph in the head with the controller. “No, moron. I meant why does St. Savoy care that I’m gay? Why does that bother straight guys so much, anyway?”

  Murph and Hux exchanged a look. “We don’t know, man. We don’t care,” Hux said, shrugging.

  “Maybe he’s gay and hates himself,” Murph piped up. “I mean. That’s like, classic. Isn’t it?”

  Isaac and Hux stared at Murph. “Is it?” Hux asked as if he’d never seen his roommate before.

  “Well, I mean. When I found out Drake was gay, I looked online about how to, y’know, be friends with a gay guy, and—”

  “You what?” Isaac fell back against the cushions, not sure if he wanted to laugh or punch Murph. Misha hadn’t said anything about not hitting him. “Jesus. You’re friends with me like you’re friends with Hux.”

  “I know that, but….” Murph looked embarrassed. “I just wanted to make sure I didn’t make you mad or anything.”

  Isaac shook his head and gave a rueful laugh. “So wait. What did this website say? How are you supposed to be friends with me, straight boy?”

  “He’s not that straight if he kissed you,” Hux pointed out.

  “I just did it ’cause Erin was into it, and I wanted her to go out with me.” Murph shot Isaac an apologetic glance. “No offense.”

  Isaac lifted his beer. “None taken. You weren’t that good at it, and you’re not pretty enough for me anyway.”

  “Whatever. I’m a stud, and you know it. Anyway, I read a thing. About how people who are bullies about that shit, maybe it’s because they’re gay too, and they hate themselves.”<
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  “I hate to point this out, but a lot of people call me a fag on the ice.” Isaac rolled his eyes. “Hockey players are not that original, and it’s not like it’s a secret.”

  “You just make sure you tell me who they are, bro,” Hux said, slamming a fist into his palm. “Hard to talk without any teeth.”

  Isaac had lucked out in the friend department.

  “Yeah. But they don’t spit on you,” Murph said and then scowled darkly. “I wish I could have hit him for that. Hard.”

  Hux scowled. “You and me both, Murph. Coach Ashford wouldn’t let me on the ice. ’Course, we all thought Coach was gonna hit that asshole himself.”

  The guys usually called Coach Ashford by his last name, but Misha was usually just Coach.

  “I wonder what Penis St. Dickhead—”

  Isaac immediately choked on his beer at Hux’s inventive nickname for Denis St. Savoy.

  “—said to Coach. You ever find out?”

  “No. Sorry. We don’t discuss our secrets during our gay sleepovers. Hux, you just blew up that car we were supposed to steal. We did this mission last week, remember?”

  “Why are we doing it again, then?”

  “You like the half-dressed girls in the hot tub at the end,” Murph offered helpfully.

  Isaac laughed, and the conversation went back to explosives and shouting at each other to stop failing and successfully complete the heist. They didn’t talk about St. Savoy, but Isaac felt a strange feeling of unease as he headed home. Laurent was going to change things, and he hated that. He couldn’t imagine what having him in the locker room was going to do to the team.

  The house was quiet when he got in, and he braved a quick dart into the kitchen to get some water. That had backfired more than once, when he thought his coaches were asleep and was treated to the unmistakable auditory evidence that they weren’t. Another time Isaac discovered Misha getting water in the kitchen after he’d obviously fucked Coach Ashford. Misha had been sweaty and not wearing a shirt.

  Misha was an attractive man, even if he was way too old for Isaac to consider hot. He wasn’t Isaac’s type at all, but he’d had no idea that his coach had such impressive abs or all the tattoos. Isaac had stared blatantly, because fondness for pretty boys or not, those were hot.

  But Isaac was safe, because it was quiet and no sex noises or half-dressed Russians interrupted his quest for a glass of water and a snack—he knew where Coach Ashford kept the Twinkies.

  If it hadn’t been for the part where he decked his new backup goalie, whom he hated, Isaac would have been having a pretty great week.

  At least he had two weeks before practice started. Two weeks to play video games with Hux and Murph, empty the dishwasher, eat some Twinkies, and pretend Laurent St. Savoy was just a bad memory.

  Chapter Three

  ON THE first day of camp, the room fell into a hostile silence the moment Laurent walked in. He could feel his new teammates’ icy stares as he made his way to his locker.

  Someone had written St. Dickhead on his nameplate. Cute.

  Hazing the new guy happened in every locker room, but Laurent knew it was more than that. It was a statement that said “we hate you” and “we liked watching you fail in the conference finals.” In addition to the new nameplate, someone had posted a picture of him from the end of the game in Asheville, when the Ravens were swept by the Storm. The words “spit on this” were inked in red over his face.

  His first time on the ice with his new team went about as well as he expected. During goalie drills he found himself on the receiving end of more than a few snow showers, and when the coaches weren’t looking, a few of his new teammates pretended to spit on him. Laurent was good at not reacting, so he just kept his mouth shut and tried to do his job.

  Matt Huxley, the team’s enforcer, took a shot that came close to hitting Laurent in the face—and earned himself a whistle and a stern talking-to from the coaches. Laurent saw him fist-bump Shawn Murphy when he didn’t think anyone would notice. Those two were Drake’s best friends, and Laurent supposed he couldn’t blame them for wanting to make him suffer for that incident last season.

  He thought about apologizing for it, but he didn’t. No one wanted to hear it anyway.

  No one spoke a word to him when practice was over. Laurent could hear Drake, talking and laughing like Laurent wasn’t there. It made him angry, but he didn’t know why. He didn’t want anyone to like him. And at least when practice was over, he could go back to his apartment. That was the best thing about living in Spartanburg, and it was worth the intensity of his new teammates’ dislike.

  Laurent’s apartment was one of two located on the top floor of a partially renovated Victorian-style house. The owner, Mrs. Bowen, lived downstairs. She was old, hard of hearing, and couldn’t say any part of Laurent’s name. But she gave him a hot plate and let him move in a week before he had his housing allowance, which was the nicest thing anyone had done for Laurent—ever, probably.

  The apartment itself was a furnished studio with a surprisingly large bed, a bay window that let in way too much light in the morning, and creaky floors. It had a radiator for heat and a window-unit AC, a bathroom with a sink that dripped, and an honest-to-God claw-foot tub with a shower. It had clearly been a large bedroom with an en suite bath before it was converted into an apartment.

  The kitchenette was definitely out of place, but it had a fridge, a microwave, and now the hot plate. Mrs. Bowen had offered to let him use her oven, but Laurent doubted that would ever be necessary.

  It wasn’t his room at home with his king-size bed and soft plush carpeting, but it was his. And best of all, his father wasn’t lurking downstairs like a Leviathan, stewing in his usual discontent and anger until his son gave him a convenient outlet for whatever pissed him off that day. Laurent had never understood where his father’s seemingly endless anger came from. Denis St. Savoy was a famous, hugely successful goalie who’d had a long and celebrated career. What he had to be upset about was a mystery to Laurent.

  Once he’d put his clothes away on the lavender-scented, padded purple hangers Mrs. Bowen had so thoughtfully provided in the closet, he showered, changed, and went to explore the neighborhood.

  That’s when he found Charlie’s Comic Shop.

  Laurent loved comics, and he loved drawing, and hidden under a stack of sweaters he hoped he’d never need to wear was a sketchbook with some of his own artwork. His father had flown into a rage when he found Laurent drawing as a child, and Laurent had hidden his sketchbooks ever since. They were shoved in a bottom drawer in the rickety old dresser, even in his own apartment.

  He spent an hour or so in the comic shop, and he was looking forward to reading a few of his purchases when he got home. But instead he found himself sitting at the small kitchen table with his sketchbook, some freshly sharpened pencils, and his kneaded eraser. And for the next few hours, he lost himself in the quiet scratch of his pencil and the lines taking shape on the page.

  They were sketches of his teammates—there were the defensemen, Matt Huxley and Shawn Murphy, who flanked Drake like bodyguards and shot Laurent nasty glares at every possible moment. He drew Coach Samarin, tall and imposing, who reminded Laurent of the Witch King from the Lord of the Rings movie, and Coach Ashford, all-American and everyone’s best friend, easy with a smile or a word of praise, or a correction when he thought it necessary—or, when he thought no one was looking—a smile of a different sort for Coach Samarin. He drew Isaac Drake, with his lean dancer’s body that looked nothing like a goalie’s. He had a loud voice and a habit of waving his goalie stick around and shouting at practice. Laurent thought he was kind of an asshole to his own teammates, but they seemed used to it and, more surprisingly, to expect and even respect it. Laurent drew his dumb, dyed-blue hair and his stupid Jeep, and that look on his face when Laurent had spat on him.

  And finally Laurent drew himself, all alone in a Spitfire airplane, crashing into the sea.

  Then he rolle
d his eyes at himself, slammed the book closed, and shoved it back in the drawer. Time to read his favorite comic—about a cop with a hellhound for a partner—and concentrate on someone else’s demons for a change.

  THE SPITFIRES started the season a much different team than the last season, or so Laurent understood. Last year they’d had trouble with offense and hadn’t scored a single goal until the sixth game of the season. They started the current season with an opening-night win in front of a respectable crowd, and Laurent watched in grim silence from his place on the bench, his Spitfires ball cap pulled low over his eyes. No one talked to him during the game, but that wasn’t unusual. No one talked to him at all, if they could help it.

  And Laurent wanted to be left alone. He could handle his teammates’ icy silences and his coaches, who couldn’t outright express dislike but managed to convey it anyway. But the Spitfires got along a lot better than the Ravens ever had, and part of Laurent wished things were different and that he could be one of them. The thought that he could have, if only he hadn’t pulled that stunt in the playoffs last year—to earn the approval of a man who would never give it—made him hate himself more than usual. He should have known his father wouldn’t trade him to a team where he might actually enjoy playing hockey.

  “You do your time on a team full of losers, son, and when you’re back, you’ll appreciate it here.”

  His father had made it clear when Laurent left for Spartanburg that it wasn’t a permanent placement. It was a punishment for what he did in the playoffs.

  Not spitting on Isaac Drake, but the other thing—Laurent’s last-ditch effort to escape Denis St. Savoy for good. Of course it had backfired. Denis was never going to let him go.

  Laurent started in net on a Sunday matinee at home against the Ice Dogs. His performance was high in technical skill and low in passion, but the Spitfires won the game and earned their two points, so that was all that should matter. The absence of the traditional “give the goalie head taps after the game” earned a bit of a murmur from the crowd, but the icy silence when his name was announced that afternoon told Laurent that the Spitfire fans hadn’t forgotten him either.