Dropping Gloves

by Catherine Gayle

  He chuckled. “I punch him in the fucking nose and keep doing what I’m doing.”

  “Exactly. But then look at guys like Q and Jonny,” I said. “What happens if someone comes along and tells one of them they’re screwing something up?”

  Danger crossed his arms and leaned back in his seat. “They put their fucking heads down, work ten times harder, and sort their shit out on their own.”

  “And think about punching the guy in the fucking nose,” Q added with a grin.

  “But we’re role players,” Jonny said. “That’s what we do. We don’t get shit handed to us on a silver platter. We work for every fucking thing we get.”

  “You’re never going to convince a guy like Koz to just bury his head and work harder,” Wheels said. “He’s not built that way. He’s been told his whole life that he’s the best there is, so he doesn’t think he needs to change a fucking thing.”

  “That’s my point,” I said. “Koz is built like Burnzie. He knows he’s one of the best in the game. He’s got all the skills in the world and he knows how to use them, and he’s never had anyone tell him he couldn’t have anything he wanted. He works hard when it’s something he wants, but otherwise, you can go fuck yourself, as far as he’s concerned. But Burnzie, what would happen if instead of telling you you’re doing something wrong and need to fix it, they told you what you’re doing right and then asked you to step into a bigger role, but to do that you’d have to improve a few things? What would you do then?”

  “You mean if you stroke my big, fat ego before breaking the news that I’m shit?” He laughed. “Telling me I’m awesome always helps.”

  “Massaging the confidence does wonders for everyone, as long as you don’t go overboard,” Wheels said.

  “Right,” Q said. “So what the hell do you want us to do? Go fawn all over his ass? He’s already had enough of that for this lifetime.”

  I shook my head. “We massage his ego in a different way. We’ve got Wednesday off. No practice. We’ll be in Raleigh, and I know there’s this team-building place. It’s a puzzle-solving escape game. You have to work together to figure out how to get free before you run out of time. I say we do some team bonding.”

  In the game against the Flyers, you could say that we had been the better team for fifty-five minutes of play. We’d been winning face-offs, getting plenty of offensive zone time, making crisp passes, scoring a couple of goals, staying out of the box, and receiving solid goaltending with Nicky in the net.

  But then, with just under five minutes to go, Koz tried to make a fancy pass up the middle of the ice to Ghost instead of skating it out of our defensive zone. Flyers captain Claude Giroux cut off the pass, and then he was off to the races. Levi tried to defend him, but he lost an edge when he tried to dig in. Levi fell and couldn’t get back up in time to be of any use. His partner, Ilya Demidov, was out of position. Demi couldn’t get back in time. Koz got caught flat-footed in neutral ice and wasn’t even thinking about backchecking, and Giroux pulled Nicky out of position before roofing the puck with a sick backhander.

  We were still up by a goal. No cause for panic.

  Once he got off the ice, Levi went down the tunnel with Drywall Tierney, our head equipment manager, to get the edge on his skate fixed. Bergy sent me, RJ, and Luddy out for the next face-off, along with Burnzie and Cole Paxton on defense.

  “Let’s lock this shit down,” Burnzie said as we got into position.

  The puck dropped, and RJ lost the face-off to Sean Couturier like he had been all fucking night long.

  I busted my ass getting back into defensive positioning, with Burnzie directing traffic. The Flyers dumped the puck into the zone, and I headed in to help Colesy dig it out of the corner. I finally got it free, but Couturier snagged it away from me, and when I tried to steal it back again, my stick got loose. I ended up high-sticking him right in the nose.

  Blood started gushing right away. Double minor. I was going to be in the fucking box for nearly all the time left on the clock. Well, I would be if I was lucky. I’d get released early if they scored on either of the ensuing power plays, so at this point, the best scenario I could hope for was being released at the end of my penalty.

  I didn’t even attempt to argue with the ref over the call. No fucking point. I skated to the box and took a seat, and hoped the boys could bail me out of this one.

  Thirty seconds into the penalty kill, Cody “Harry” Williams took a shot to the head and hit the ice like a fucking bag of bricks. He was able to skate off with the trainers on his own power, but they had to take him back to the quiet room for evaluation because of concussion protocol. That meant we were down to five defensemen.

  Play resumed. Levi was one of our D out there. A shot headed his way, and he got his foot over to block it. Instead of hitting the plastic protective piece, it knocked the blade clear off his skate. He couldn’t do anything but hop around on one foot. They cleared the puck, and Demi put an arm under his shoulder to help skate him off to the bench, but he had to go get his skate fixed. That would probably take longer than the rest of the game.

  A new set of penalty killers went over the boards, but the Flyers brought off a tic-tac-toe play that ended with the puck in the back of our net and Nicky flat on his face with a hand on the back of his thigh, like he’d pulled his groin.

  It was a tie game, and I was still stuck in the box for another two minutes of penalty time. I could only sit there and hope the boys held out long enough to get us to overtime.

  They helped Nicky off the ice so he could be seen to by the trainers. Bobby went in along with fresh penalty killers. The puck dropped, the Flyers controlled it, and my team was scrambling.

  Colesy went after the puck carrier, who turned at the last second, which led to Colesy slamming him hard into the boards. The ref put up his arm and blew his whistle, and then Colesy was joining me in the box for boarding even though it wouldn’t have been boarding if the Flyers player hadn’t turned his fucking back.

  Needless to say, Colesy and Bergy and everyone on our fucking bench were livid. Bergy climbed up onto the players’ bench and was screaming obscenities at the refs. Both Webs and Wheels were physically restraining him, keeping him from jumping out onto the ice. I’d never seen him lose his shit like that. Not in person, at least. Back when he’d been a player, he went wild more than a few times, but he’d retired before I ever got into the league.

  Colesy was still trying to argue his case when the linesman skated him over to join me, but it was no use. They’d made the call, and they were sticking with it. Now we had to deal with nearly a full two minutes of five-on-three penalty killing, and we were down to only three defensemen and our backup goalie, who hadn’t been granted a chance to warm up before being thrown to the wolves.

  “It’ll be all right,” I said when Colesy flopped down next to me. “They’re going to fucking get us out of this mess, and then we’ll get to overtime, and it’ll be all right.” I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince him of that or me, but it didn’t matter. Neither of us believed a fucking word out of my mouth right now.

  RJ didn’t usually kill penalties, but he was our best guy on the dot, so he usually went out for a five-on-three kill. Sure enough, that was who Bergy sent out. We watched helplessly as Giroux beat RJ on the face-off, and the Flyers set up their power play. A few sharp passes pulled Jens and Burnzie both out of position, and a slapper from the point went in the net. The fans in the building were going wild as I made the eighty-foot skate of shame across to the bench.

  It felt like we were finding new ways to lose every game instead of finally figuring out how to win.

  Webs thumped me on the back of the head. “Game’s not over, Babs. Keep your head in it.”

  It might not officially be over, but it might as well be.

  True to their word, the WAGs had hardly left me alone at all other than overnight when the only thing I was doing was sleeping, anyway. Monday had been miserable, made worse because both
Jamie and Dad had to leave with the team. By the time I’d awakened today, though, the worst of the nausea was gone, and Mom was at my door with breakfast.

  Every two hours throughout the day, someone new showed up to be with me. Jessica brought some work with her from Light the Lamp. While she was over, Sara called me wanting to talk about girls’ names that started with the letter C, so she could stick with the theme that was running in Jonny’s family. Julianne brought over a stack of movies and told me to pick whichever one I was in the mood for. Mia had dropped her kids off with Brie for a playdate, and she had her camera with her when she arrived. Come on, she’d said, outside with you. You need some fresh air, and I want to shoot you in your garden. No amount of arguing had been able to convince her I was better off staying cooped up in the house, and by the time we’d come back in, I was, admittedly, starting to feel a little better.

  Just before the game started, Soupy showed up with a pair of crutches under his arms and a takeout dinner bag hanging from one hand. Mia excused herself to shower before going to pick up her kids, and Soupy brought me a disposable tray of my favorite Chinese food and some plastic ware. “Rachel informed me that since I am currently of no use to her in terms of taking care of the twins by myself and she already has to send them to daycare while she works,” he said, “I get to be on Katie-sitting duty for the game. I figured you wouldn’t mind watching with me.”

  “I don’t mind. How did you know I would want General Tso’s chicken?” Not to mention the brown rice that I always got.

  “Called your mom to ask.” He dutifully washed his hands and took a seat on the opposite side of the room before digging into his own meal.

  A few minutes later, Mia was done showering and cleaning up, and she left promising she’d see me again tomorrow. So here we were, Soupy and I watching the Storm fall apart in the third period over the brownies he’d made me swear I wouldn’t tell Rachel about.

  “Babs looks like he’s about to implode,” Soupy said as Jamie skated from the penalty box to the bench after the Flyers had taken the lead in the game.

  The Storm were still killing a penalty, too, and there was only a minute and forty-three seconds left on the clock. Not much time for them to do anything in terms of tying the game and taking it to overtime, and it was a game they should have won handily based on the early play.

  “He’s got a lot going on,” I said feebly. Soupy knew that perfectly well, but I guess I’d just felt the need to defend him.

  “He needs to channel it. Bergy needs to send him out there and let him bang some bodies.” Apparently, Bergy agreed with Soupy even though he was all the way on the other side of the country.

  It seemed that Jamie didn’t get the memo about banging bodies. Instead, he kept bumping the puck out of the zone and chasing after it, trying for a short-handed goal. After the third time he did that, the other Storm players followed him, and the goalie headed to the bench for an extra attacker. The clock kept ticking down, and Colesy was released from the penalty box. He skated straight to the bench so Luddy could go on to replace him.

  Jamie and the rest of the guys put a furious flurry of shots on the Flyers’ net, but it wasn’t enough. The final horn sounded, and they left the ice with a loss in a game they should have won.

  Jamie was the last guy to leave the ice. The camera zoomed in on him, making his frustration evident even through the distance.

  “Do you think he’ll figure out how to get the guys on board?” I asked. Then I wished I hadn’t. Team dynamics weren’t anything Soupy needed to be talking to me about, whether Jamie had brought them up or not.

  But he surprised me by answering. “I think he’s already figured it out. He just needs to believe in himself enough to really take charge of this team. I think there’s some part of him that still thinks it’s Zee’s team, but hell, even Zee knew for the last year or two that he was just filling in until Babs was ready.”

  “Did he?” I’d never gotten that impression from Zee, but then again, I’d been busy in LA and hadn’t seen everything going on here as closely as I used to.

  “Oh, yeah.” Soupy stretched his legs in front of him, grimacing when he moved the knee that had recently gone under the knife. “He knew. I think all the guys who really paid attention could see how they were grooming Babs to take over. Except Babs, but he’s so damned humble that he doesn’t notice those things.”

  “You think he’s close to believing in himself enough?”

  He narrowed his eyes at me from all the way across the room. “I think having you in his life again is helping with his confidence. In more ways than you could possibly know. He was a fucking wreck the whole time you were gone. Every time you popped up on the gossip shows, he lost his shit for a while.” Soupy leaned forward in his chair all of a sudden, resting his elbows on his knees. “There’s a way you could help him out some more, you know.”

  I knew enough to be suspicious. Soupy didn’t get that kind of look in his eye unless he was being devious. “How?” I asked slowly.

  “Well, you two can’t…you know…for a while.” He waved his hands in a crude gesture that left nothing to the imagination. “But you could call him. No radiation through the phone.”

  Call him. That was one way of putting it. “You mean phone sex?” I didn’t blush all that often these days, but right now I had to be tomato-red.

  “Don’t tell Rachel I mentioned that. Or Babs, either. But sex can fix a lot of problems with a guy’s confidence.” Soupy’s phone buzzed, and he looked down at it. “Finish your brownie. Rachel’s on her way to trade out with me, and I have no intention of letting her know I’ve been eating this.”

  I laughed. It felt good to laugh, not to mention surprising considering how down in the dumps I’d been leading up to my confinement. “Will she be jealous? It’s not nice to have chocolate and not share.”

  “I’m sharing with you,” he said, shoving another bite of his into his mouth. “But no, she won’t be jealous. She’s got me on a diet.”

  I raised a brow.

  He scowled. “It seems that when you aren’t burning a ton of calories every day, skating and playing hockey and working out in the gym, you can’t eat the same way or you start packing on the pounds.” He nodded toward my paper plate with the half-eaten brownie. “I’d ask you if you were done and if I could have that, but sharing food with you is a big no-no right now. So eat it or I’m going to have nightmares about a brownie gone to waste.”

  I laughed, but I finished my brownie.

  Nicky did have a minor groin pull after last night’s game, so we left him out of the day’s activities so he could get treatment. A goalie from our AHL team would be coming to fill in as backup for Bobby until Nicky was cleared to play again, but he wouldn’t arrive in Raleigh until sometime tonight. Harry’s concussion tests had all come back normal, and he was symptom-free, so he would be taking part in everything.

  I’d filled the guys in on the plans for today after we’d boarded the plane for the flight down to North Carolina. A few of the boys weren’t exactly thrilled to have their day off taken away from them, Koz in particular, but they were just going to have to deal with it.

  When we’d gotten to the hotel, I’d texted Katie to see if she was up, but she hadn’t responded. I knew she needed her rest, and she had left me some messages earlier in the night about how Soupy was over to watch the game with her, but I couldn’t help but be disappointed. I missed her. I missed seeing her smile and hearing her laugh, and I missed the softness of her hand sliding over my skin. In only a few short days, I’d gotten so accustomed to sleeping with the warmth of her body pressed against mine that I had a great deal of difficulty getting to sleep. Coop’s snoring in the other bed didn’t help, either.

  Koz was late coming down for breakfast, and when he showed up, he glared at everyone who dared to look at him. This definitely wasn’t a good start to the day.

  Burnzie cuffed me on the back of the head and sat down next to me. “You sure
this is what you want to do?” he asked, angling his head in Koz’s direction.

  I wasn’t sure at all, but I didn’t think it was a good time to back down. I nodded. “I’m sure.”

  “Well, I hope you’re right.”

  The bus I’d arranged for arrived at the hotel at nine thirty, and we filed out to board it.

  “This is a fucked up way to spend a day off,” Koz said loudly to Levi as he walked past me. “I could still be sleeping.”

  “Or you could be shoveling shit at a farm,” Levi said, snickering. “Pretty sure that’s what he would rather send you to do, and there are plenty of those around.”

  Danger winked at me. “It could still be arranged.”

  Koz didn’t let up with his complaints the whole way to Cipher Escape. We finally pulled up in front of a brick building hidden behind a row of trees. I was glad to get inside just so I wouldn’t have to listen to Koz’s bitching anymore.

  “Right,” I said once we’d all assembled in the parking lot. “We’re going to break up into three teams of seven. I want Koz, 501, and Coop to be the team leaders.”

  A few of the guys made comments under their breath after I’d named the team leaders, but they kept it to a low rumble.

  “It’ll be a schoolyard pick. No choosing linemates, D partners, brothers, roommates, or countrymen to be on the same team, until and unless you have no other options available to you.”

  “What the fuck are we even doing?” Koz demanded. “How do I know who I want to have on my team if I don’t know what the point of this whole fucking mess is?”

  I shrugged. “Pick and then we’ll figure out if you made good choices or not. Coop barely even knows everyone’s names, so this puts you on more even footing.”

  “And if I don’t want to do this?”

  “I’m sure I can arrange for you to go shovel some shit somewhere.”

  “Already found a farmer looking for cheap labor,” Danger called out, holding up his phone. “Can’t get any cheaper than free.”