Friend Locked (Salt Lake Pumas)

by Camellia Tate

  Friend Locked

  © 2020 Camellia Tate. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Chapter One

  Felix

  Coming back to the Salt Lake Pumas’ training camp after the summer off was always exciting. It brought everyone together after a whole summer of not seeing each other. Well, mostly. Some of us did meet up, whether for training or other stuff, but then there were other guys who we didn’t see from the moment the season finished until the end of summer when people started trickling back into Salt Lake.

  I’d come back a week early because my best friend Jessie had been coming back so I figured I might as well drive us both. With four dogs, I’d had to get a bigger car but at least Jessie never complained that it was too full of dogs. No such thing, of course.

  Since Pammy, and Edgar had joined Jace and Damson, I was pretty much always covered in dog hair, but they were totally worth it. The dogs, too, were excited about being back, especially now that they’d spent a week sniffing the house and making sure that everything was where they’d left it.

  Promising to see them as soon as I could, I left Pammy in charge. She was a good dog to leave in charge, because she very rarely tried to get the others in trouble.

  “Yeah, it was a great summer.” I nodded in answer to Chase’s question. “One of the red pandas had two cubs in June, so we spent a lot of the summer looking after them and making sure they’re doing alright. They’re about ready to leave the den, do you want to see some pictures?”

  My parents owned a zoo in Rio Rancho so my phone was, of course, filled with pictures of red panda cubs.

  “Obviously,” Chase answered. He wasn’t the most animal-loving member of the Pumas, but hardly anyone would turn down the opportunity to see panda cubs!

  Alfie came over, too, jostling between me and Chase so he could get a look at my phone. “Oh. I thought you said they were pandas?” he asked. “That looks more like a bear.”

  Chase chuckled. “A panda is a bear, genius.”

  “Right,” I snorted. “And these are not bears or pandas,” I shook my head. “I didn’t say ‘panda’, I said red panda. Different animal. God, I need to give you a presentation or something.” Both Chase and Alfie looked equally confused, so I closed the picture to Google what an adult red panda looked like.

  “That looks even less like a panda!” Alfie exclaimed.

  “What are you children doing?” Luke, our captain, asked as he walked over to where we were all crowding around my phone.

  From behind us, I heard Will laugh. “They’re arguing over whether a red panda is a panda or a bear. Vital NHL business, that!” He laughed and I gave a groan. It might not be vital NHL business but I couldn’t let Chase and Alfie go on not knowing what a red panda was!

  “It’s more like a raccoon. They’re just called red pandas,” I explained scrolling through the pictures.

  “Well, I don’t know how I was supposed to know that,” Alfie argued. “It’s not my fault my parents didn’t have a zoo for me to grow up in.”

  I hadn’t actually lived in the zoo, but Alfie’s point was still clear. I had a way better understanding of animals than anyone else on my team. Even Will, who’d adopted a dog of his own recently, wasn’t as much of an expert as I was.

  “They’re still cute,” Chase offered, making room for Luke to have a look. “Did looking after fake baby pandas make you wish your dogs had puppies?”

  “Well, it definitely--” I started but before I could get another word out, Luke was interrupting.

  “No, no, no.” He was shaking his head. “No one is going to be putting ideas in Felix’s head about puppies!” he insisted. “Felix has four dogs. I’m sure we can all agree that is a lot of dogs.” I shrugged, but didn’t object. There weren’t really any other people I knew with that many dogs.

  If Luke had let me finish, I would have said that as much as I liked puppies, I preferred to get rescues. Giving a dog a home when they didn’t have one was more important to me than having a little cute puppy. Besides, all my dogs were seen to, so they weren’t going to produce any puppies.

  “Anyway...” Will cleared his throat. “Are we going out on the ice or are we just talking about dogs and pandas?”

  “We all know what Felix would prefer!” Alfie joked and I swatted him with my jersey before pulling it over my head.

  Standing up, I shook my head. “I like skating just fine, thank you very much.”

  The thrill of getting back on the ice was already running through me. I’d skated over the summer, of course. We all did, because we needed to keep in shape and keep our skills sharp. But skating alone never felt as exciting as getting out on the ice with my team.

  Ross joined me, banging his elbow into my side in a way that expressed welcome, at least among us hockey players.

  “So do all the baby pandas mean no summer romance?” he chirped. “You’re one of the last ones left I can expect to get any gossip out of!”

  A lot of our team-mates were in committed relationships; I could see where Ross was coming from.

  Unfortunately for Ross’ gossip-eager heart, I had nothing to offer. It had been a while since I’d last been in a relationship. Hell, it had even been a while since I’d been on a date. But dating wasn’t something that had ever much interested me. Women were nice and all, sure, but it just was so much effort to get to know someone, to establish a connection with them, only for it all to fizzle out eventually.

  I’d rather focus on hockey and my dogs.

  “No summer romances for me,” I shrugged. “Only stories about adorable baby animals. And not-baby animals, if you want to hear about our elderly sloth?” I offered but Will was already waving his hand to stop me.

  “We do have to skate today, Cote, can’t spend all day looking at animal pictures on your phone.”

  I felt that we definitely had time for both, but whatever.

  “We’re going to have a good season,” Luke announced. Then he grinned. Every season was good, as far as I was concerned. Just getting to play professional hockey with these men, knowing that my best friend was in the crowd cheering me on, guaranteed that it would be good.

  Of course, I’d love us to make it to the Stanley Cup final. We’d done well recently, moving from strength to strength.

  “We all know each other’s strengths and weaknesses,” Luke carried on. “And we’ve built a strong team here!” It had been a while since we’d had anyone new, which meant that we had a lot of familiarity with each other’s styles of play.

  Luke went on to talk about playing together, about supporting each other. It was a good pep talk. When he was done, most of the guys clapped him on the back on their way to the ice. Skating out felt like coming home and, in many ways, it was. This had been my home ice for almost a decade; I was going to make damn sure I played my best hockey on it.

  That was what I reminded myself when we were coming off the ice, too. Everyone had gone hard, our coach pushing us to remember just how soon we were going to go out and play our first game. We might not be ready today but we all knew we would be ready.

  AUGUST 16TH, 2004

  The summer had been fine. Nothing more than that. I, of course, had spent most of it skating. Mom and dad had sent me to a hockey camp, which was awesome, but did make me feel w
eird about not being home. Especially when the giraffe in my parents’ zoo had a calf. That was more exciting than just fine.

  Of course, so was hockey.

  Now that I was 10, I was going to start a new team. That was very cool. The new school year came with all kinds of new things. Not just for hockey, either. Our class was getting mixed with another, so the first day of school meant meeting a lot of new people!

  Making friends had never been hard for me or anything, but that didn’t stop the low bubbling anxiety swirling in my stomach at the idea of making friends with so many new kids!

  “We’ll play a quick game for everyone to find where they’ll sit for the year,” Mr. Lawrence announced to a group of groans. It almost made me laugh, the way we could all agree that a game to get to figure out where to sit was not the sort of fun we wanted.

  Still, he went ahead. It wasn’t a hard game and it was pretty difficult to lose. All we had to do was line up in order of our birthdays. Quickly, I was swept off into the ‘summer’ category of kids by the window. “July?” I asked, being moved aside in favor of August, until finally, I got to stand next to a blonde girl.

  “Hi,” I offered. “Um, my birthday’s on the 30th of July?”

  Her eyes widened. They were almost exactly the same color as the freckles across her nose.

  “Really?” she asked, turning to face me. “My birthday’s on the 30th of July! I’ve never met anyone born on the same day as me before.”

  She smiled, and I smiled back. It was pretty exciting! Nobody had ever shared my birthday before, either. “Did you just turn ten, too?”

  “Yeah!” I nodded energetically. Obviously, I knew people shared my birthday, I’d even played across from some guys who shared the same birthday, but they’d not also been the same age. We were like twins. But also not. “That’s really cool!” I decided.

  It occurred to me then that it would be difficult for us to arrange in a line if we both had the same birthday. “How do we do this? Do you want to be first?” I asked. “My name’s Felix, by the way. We can do it alphabetically?” Unless her name was like Felica or something.

  She thought for a minute, leaning to one side and then the other. “Dad says ‘ladies first’, sometimes,” she told me. I nodded; I’d heard my dad say the same thing. “But alphabetically sounds more fair,” she added, before I could move so she would be first in the line.

  “F comes before J, so you should go first.” I would have argued, but she had said that alphabetical was the fairest option. “My name’s Jessie,” she added, nudging me with her hand so I would stand more in line with her.

  I shifted, keeping my head turned so I could talk to her. “Do you have brothers and sisters?”

  The question made me nod, always happy to talk about my siblings. “Both! I have an older sister, her name’s Paisley, and a younger brother, his name’s Harley,” I explained. “I didn’t get an ‘ey’ name, but sometimes mom calls me ‘Felixey’ just as a joke.” Which I always hated, of course!

  “What about you? Do you have any brothers or sisters? And pets? We have a lot of dogs and cats,” I explained. “As pets. My parents also have a zoo, so, in a way, those are all our animals, too.” Kind of. I knew that wasn’t quite how that worked, but who else could say they had a pet tapir?

  “Wow! Your parents own a zoo?” I nodded, my grin getting even wider. I was used to kids finding that exciting. Often, I had to tell them that I didn’t actually get to play with the animals. Not the dangerous ones, anyway.

  But Jessie didn’t ask if I got to play with the lions. “My dad just owns a business. That’s way less fun.” I wasn’t sure it would be polite to laugh, until Jessie did.

  “I’ve got an older and a younger sibling, too,” she added. “Mitch is older, he plays hockey. And Hannah’s younger. She and mom do gardening.”

  Tilting her head, Jessie asked, “What do you do?”

  “Hockey! I do hockey, too!” I told Jessie happily. “Who does Mitch play for? How long has he done it? Maybe I’ve played against him, how much older is he?” I pelted Jessie with questions until I realized that was probably a bit much. My mom always said I got really carried away with hockey.

  But hockey was amazing, so it was hard not to!

  And Jessie didn’t seem to mind. “He’s fifteen,” she answered. “He plays for the Junior Varsity team.” She hesitated, then shrugged. “Well, he will, as soon as they have try-outs.”

  High school also started this week, I knew, so that made sense.

  “Dad always took us to see his middle school games. I bet they’d let you come with us, if you want?”

  The suggestion of watching hockey obviously appealed to me. “My mom says I love hockey too much,” I informed Jessie. “But I don’t think that’s really true. Or, like, possible.” No one told my mom she loved animals too much. That would obviously be silly!

  “What do you like?” I asked. “You said Mitch likes hockey and Hannah likes gardening, what do you like?”

  Jessie blinked. “Nobody ever asks me that,” she informed me seriously. That was probably a good thing, right? Nobody asked me about hockey as much as I would’ve liked them to!

  “I don’t know. I like things, but not as much as Mitch likes hockey. I like making cupcakes, and I like playing with my friends, and I like reading sometimes. I did horse-riding at camp last year, that was fun. But not more fun than everything else.”

  She shrugged. “Did you always know you liked hockey so much it was almost too much?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded seriously. “I started playing when I was three. Well, I started skating when I was three. Hockey’s just really great,” I informed Jessie. Then, after a small pause, I shrugged. “I mean, for me.” She said she didn’t like anything like how Mitch liked hockey, so, obviously, Jessie didn’t like hockey like how Mitch liked hockey.

  It was okay, though. Even the guys I played hockey with rarely liked hockey as much as I liked it. But it did also seem like a shame not to like anything like that. “Maybe you just haven’t found the right thing,” I informed her seriously. “I can help you find it.” That was easy enough to promise. “Wanna start with animals? I know this zoo...”

  PRESENT DAY

  By the time I was done with showering, getting dressed, and showing Alfie pictures of sloths, it was getting dark outside. Just as I got in my car, my phone rang.

  “Hey, mom,” I greeted, her cheery ‘hello’ ringing through my car’s speakers. “You’ve picked a good time, I’ve just got in the car to go home,” I commented. “The dogs are going to be so annoyed I’m coming home late.” Especially after the summer of having me there at all times.

  “You sound happy,” mom commented. “I shouldn’t be surprised. You always did sound happiest straight after hockey.” That made me laugh, remembering the days mom would have picked me up from the rink to drive me home.

  It had been a long time since that. A lot had changed. But I didn’t feel different, not really. “How was it?” mom asked. “Is everyone well?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded energetically, even though she couldn’t see me. “It’s great to see everyone! And yeah, I think everyone’s well, it’ll take us more than an afternoon to properly catch up.” Which, of course, made sense, since there were a lot of us. Still, I’d already made plans with Chase, Alfie, and Flynn to go out for dinner so we could catch up then.

  As I took a left turn out of the team parking lot, I told my mom about Alfie not knowing what a red panda was, but being very excited by Oscar the Sloth. “So things are getting back to normal pretty fast,” I laughed.

  “Well, I’m glad they’ve got you to educate them,” mom said, her tone affectionate. “The more people know about different animals, the better.” That had always been mom’s opinion: that people needed to know animals existed before they could care about what happened to them. It was why she’d gone into zoo-keeping in the first place.

  She told me all the zoo news. Not that there was much, but th
ere were always things going on, even if I’d only been away for a short time.

  “And how’s Jessie?” she asked, as she always did whenever she called.

  “Jessie’s good,” I confirmed, since we both knew that if she wasn’t, I would have started with that and not some small talk. Mom already knew about our trip back and how the dogs had been well-behaved during the whole long drive, so this was more asking me what Jessie had been up to in the week since we got back.

  Of course, I did actually know the answer. “She’s started rehearsing for the winter show,” I commented. “Do you think you’ll come up for it? I know she’d love you to. Jessie’s mom’s coming, but you’d be welcome, too.” There was no doubt in my mind that Jessie wouldn’t mind me inviting my mom. And besides, Mom loved seeing Jessie dance.

  Sometimes, I was pretty sure, she enjoyed watching Jessie dance more than she enjoyed watching me play hockey.

  “Oh, I’d like that,” Mom agreed, a smile in her voice. “Tell Jessie to send me the dates, I’ll try to find a time that I can come up and see one of your games at the same time.”

  That made me grin. Mom might prefer watching Jessie dance, but she’d never missed a chance to support me, even if hockey wasn’t her favorite thing in the world.

  “Maybe I can get some Christmas shopping done, too. So your dad doesn’t see what I’m buying him!”

  I did laugh, but nodded, before remembering that mom couldn’t actually see me. “Yeah, of course,” I confirmed. “And you can stay at my house! I’m getting the second guest bedroom sorted, finally.”

  For about as long as I had lived there, the second guest bedroom had been a spare room for the dogs to hang out, but as Harley had pointed out, if I wanted to ever be allowed to host Christmas, I’d need more than one spare bedroom.

  “Do you think I could host Christmas this year?” I asked because the thought occurred to me suddenly.