Wicked Winters: A Collection of Winter Tales

by Lucy Smoke

  1

  Christian

  Tuesday 28th November – 27 days until Christmas

  "C'mon man, get up. Everyone's probably already over at the old change rooms," I stated, dragging the blanket off Vinnie's sleeping form.

  At least he put some boxers on before crashing.

  The guy was lying face down, hugging his pillow. His black hair was sticking up all over the place, a sight people very rarely saw since Vinnie was always dressed to impress the ladies.

  Not that I can talk.

  Groaning, he cracked one eyelid and looked up at me with an unfocused green eye. "Is she gone?" he asked, his voice scratchy from sleep.

  "Yeah, I just saw her out. You shouldn't have let her stay, man. She'll get the wrong idea," I told him as I walked over to his window and snapped the curtains open, flooding the room with morning light.

  He rolled over and threw his right arm over his face, trying to block the light out. "Nah, bro, not her. She just wanted her scores; she’s a Puck Bunny. Dude, close the curtains. I'm up, I swear. Give me like five, and I'll meet you in the kitchen."

  Yeah, no. Don’t believe you at all. Leaving them open, I headed back down the hallway towards the kitchen.

  I smiled as I heard Vinnie yell out, "Asshole." Damn right. He needed to get his ass out of bed and ready for training. We all had to impress the scouts this season since we were graduating at the end of the year and needed to be picked up by a NHL team, preferably the same one.

  I passed mine and Justin’s rooms, which were on the other side of the hallway to Vinnie’s, and headed towards the kitchen of our off-campus apartment. My parents had gotten me the apartment in my junior year as part of our agreement. I had to major in business, and they would support my lifestyle.

  What was left unsaid was that once I graduated, I would then be required to go into the family business. Fat chance that was going to happen though. I didn’t want to sit behind a desk for the rest of my life, going over sales figures for paper and online distribution. Pro hockey - that was my dream. Not paper cuts and glasses. I’d leave that to my older brother, thanks. And if that dream was going to happen, that meant heading to every team training session, as well as using the gym we had in the apartment building, every day.

  The hallway opened into the open plan living space of the apartment, which ran parallel to the hallway. On the right was the lounge room with the seventy-inch flat screen that was hooked up to several gaming systems and our surround sound system. That was literally the first thing I’d purchased when I’d arrived. There was nothing better than watching a close game of hockey, football, or anything really, with all of the sounds of the stadium and the fans flowing through the room, all within the comfortable confines of your apartment.

  The rest of the room was styled by my mother’s interior decorator. It was your typical built-in-the-last-five-years contemporary bachelor pad layout. An L shaped, extra wide dark grey lounge with a heavy wooden coffee table. Polished floorboards, cream walls, furnished with black, floating shelves on the far wall covered in stuff the interior decorator thought looked good like shiny pineapple jars and signed sporting memorabilia. Dust collectors mainly. At the far end of the room, floor to ceiling windows overlooked the city of Boston. If you stood right up against the windows and looked out to the left, you could see the historical buildings that made up Boston College. Go Eagles.

  Heading to my left into the kitchen, I found Justin’s hulking form making a protein shake at the breakfast island. The guy was huge, taller than my six foot one by three inches and as wide as our goalkeeper with his pads on. His closely cropped hair cut was borderline military. The closed off expression he wore - almost permanently - didn’t make him the most approachable guy in the world, but I knew better. Justin was a teddy bear if he liked you.

  The huge bucket of protein powder was open, along with several smaller pots. He poured milk into the last shaker situated on the digital scale. He already had my shake lined up, same with Vinnie’s, all that was left was to mix it all together.

  “Thanks, man.” I pulled out one of the stools on the opposite side of the bench, picked up my shake, capped it, and gave it a vigorous mix. The metal spring inside clinked around as it mixed all the goodness together.

  Justin gave me a nod in acknowledgement, the strings of his charcoal hoodie swinging with the movement. Neither of us really said much as we finished our drinks. I hated these things, but the trainer I’d hired for all of us a year back insisted on them, as well as a meal plan. If it helped get me into the NHL, then I’d drink twenty of the frigging things a day. We all needed to give our best this week since the scouts would be at the game tomorrow night; the first one since Thanksgiving break.

  Vinnie and Justin were my best friends. We’d met freshman year, pretty much on our first training day on the rink, all of us selected to play for Boston College straight out of high school. Both of them were here on athletic scholarship, while my parents paid for my tuition as a part of our deal. After a few weeks of living alone in my apartment, I’d invited Vinnie to move in with me since he lived with his family and commuted into campus every day. His Italian mother hadn’t been too happy with my offer until I’d given her a spare key so she could come by whenever she liked.

  I grinned at the memory of the first time she’d turned up unannounced. I’d just gotten out of the shower thinking I was home alone, so I’d walked from the bathroom to my room. She’d been in Vinnie’s room making his bed and tidying up. When she’d seen me walking past buck ass naked, she’d screamed a few swear words in Italian and scared the shit out of me. I’d frozen in the hallway, apologizing, cupping my junk, while she stood covering her eyes. At that moment exact moment, Vinnie had come home and demanded to know why I was flashing his mom.

  Once I’d gotten clothes on and we’d explained the situation, Vinnie had spent a good few minutes laughing his head off. From that moment on he’d declared us family, something about his mother having seen my balls and his balls. At the time I’d just smiled nervously, wondering if my new roommate was a little crazy.

  Justin took a little longer to move in. His scholarship provided a dorm room, so for the first semester he’d stayed on campus. When he’d come home from winter break, he’d taken up my open offer of the third bedroom. Vinnie and I had tiptoed around the big guy for the first few weeks, unsure of how to treat him. To be honest, we were a little intimidated. In the first couple of games of the season, he’d inflicted some serious injuries to opposing players with textbook body checks. The whole team was a little standoffish around him; his giant silent demeanor didn’t make him an easy conversationalist.

  One night, Vinnie and I had been playing NBA Live on the flat screen when Justin had asked if he could join in. He’d ended up heckling and ribbing us like we had been friends for years. Vinnie and I had been shocked initially, but once we’d gotten used to it, we’d realized that he clicked with us. He was just the strong and silent type, only speaking when he actually had something to say.

  I finished rinsing out my cup when Vinnie made it into the kitchen.He snatched up his own drink, gave it a quick shake and started draining it. Shaking my head, I turned off the tap and dried my hands. Grabbing the keys to my SUV from the pile of crap that always seemed to accumulate at the end of the bench, I turned to Vinnie. “Finish it in the car, Vin.”

  He looked at me over the edge of his shake, one eyebrow raised in challenge, as he continued to drink it all in one drag. He was done in a few mouthfuls and wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. “Na, bro, all done.” While the cocky bastard stood there with a smirk on his face, I really just wanted to hit him.

  Instead, I shook my head and walked off towards the front door. I wasn’t going to let him irritate me today. If he wanted to make himself sick with a hangover and protein high, that was his issue. I wasn’t his momma.

  We headed out to the elevator and down to the secure underground garage of our apartment building. Finding my b
lack Escalade was easy enough since it was always parked in the back-corner spot right next to Vinnie’s two-wheeler, black Ducati death trap and Justin’s blue Impreza. I jumped into the driver’s seat; Justin rode shotgun and Vinnie climbed into the back. He reclined with his legs up along the back leather seat with his sunglasses pulled down over his eyes and arms folded over his chest.

  The drive into the college was quick and quiet, everyone either still tired or hungover; I looked at Vinnie for that last one. Cruising through the quiet campus streets of Boston college, we pulled up outside of the stadium. I parked the car with the rest of the teams’ cars, lining us all up bumper to bumper along the curb as usual. It looked like we were the last ones to arrive.

  Crap, Davidson was going to be pissed.

  Sure enough, when we walked through the doors of the men’s old change rooms the whole team was already sitting on the bench seats that outlined three of the four edges of the room. Behind the benches were old school open wooden cubbies, with peeling name tags that had yellowed with age. The threadbare carpet still held the musty smell of perpetually wet fabric due to the lack of air conditioning in this area of the stadium since it wasn’t supposed to be used any more.

  “Nice of you boys to finally join us,” stated Cameron Davidson, our captain and one of our first-string defensemen. He stood in his usual position up front by a white board. Davidson was heavy set, with the type of frame that would be muscular but never cut. He was a good captain on the ice, but that was the only good thing I had to say about him. He was my height and quick with his stick, but had an uninteresting face with a nose that had been broken a couple of times, hazel eyes and mousy brown hair.

  “Yeah, late night, but we’re here so let’s just start, yeah?” Justin grumbled as he moved to sit in our usual spots. He leaned back across the gap between the bench and the cubbies until his shoulder blades rested against one of the vertical joins between them, arms folded over his chest, legs splayed out in front of him, with an expression that said “I’m bored” and “Hurry the fuck up” at the same time.

  Justin was literally one of the biggest mother-fuckers I had ever met. He towered over most of the team and weighed in over every single one of us at two hundred and thirty pounds. I had seen him bench almost that the same amount, so I had no idea why Davidson antagonized him over shit like this. We were here, participating.

  Davidson stared back at Justin for a second while Vinnie and I sat on either side of him. I slouched forward slightly, hands gripping the edge of the bench and tucking my feet under myself. Vinnie had straddled the bench and then reclined back, arms folded under his head. Once we were seated, Davidson turned to the whiteboard at his side. Well, what looked like a whiteboard, until you flipped it around, then its primary reason for existence was displayed showing the reason we were all required to sit in this dank room.

  The Puck Games Scoreboard.

  Damned crudest thing I had ever heard of, but participation was mandatory for the entire team and was a tradition that spanned decades. The only way to get out of participating was if you declared yourself as a Whip, A.K.A. had gotten a girlfriend. Then you were exempt from putting any Puck Potential’s names on the board. Any poor girl’s name that did appear on the board declared the girl available for the whole team to go after. It was like the green light to bang her with no strings attached.

  The rules of the Puck Games were simple:

  Rule # 1: She must be at least a 7 out of 10 on the hotness scale

  Rule # 2: No take backs. You fuck her, you Puck her.

  Rule # 3: Teammates cannot go after another's Puck Potential.

  Rule # 4: Once a Puck is on the board, she's fair game.

  Like a dartboard, the scoreboard had two dark wooden doors that covered the information from prying eyes. Once they were opened, you could see that the board was actually black instead of white, and someone had gone to the trouble of putting a dark wooden frame on it, the design giving it an admittedly elegant edge. There was an emblem at the top, an eagle with an actual puck in its mouth, and then below that was a gold grid, fifteen rows deep and twenty columns wide. The first column was labeled Pucks, with the rest having the initials of all the guys on the team. The inside of the left door had the rules of the Puck Games with the current list of Whips – only two right now – below it. The right door had a history of the Puck Queens since 2000, basically the girl who had scored the highest last season.

  Under the Pucks heading was a list of names, all girls from our college who were in the running to be crowned Puck Queen, which in my opinion wasn’t something any girl wanted to be called. But hey, these girls knew what they were getting themselves into when they got with the hockey team. Most of us didn’t want a girlfriend, not if we planned to go pro; especially since we didn’t know where we would end up if we did get drafted.

  Right now, I had two numbers below my initials, a seven and a six, both of which I had written up in the first couple of weeks of the season. I only participated enough so that I didn’t get hazed by the team for not getting some numbers on the board. I’d learned that the hard way in my freshman year. Participation was mandatory, no exceptions.

  I wasn’t going to turn a girl down if she threw herself at me, which was what those two had done, but I wasn’t going to actively hunt them down either, not like the majority of the team did. I was kind of over the whole thing, to be honest, but since I had no plans to declare myself a Whip, I had to participate in the Puck Games or deal with the consequences. I wasn't looking to do that anytime soon, not with graduation only one semester away.

  “Okay, so we only have two slots left. Does anyone have any Pucks to declare?” Davidson called out.

  Damian Walker smirked from across the room, straddling the bench. “Yeah, I got a new Puck: Stephanie Harris. Got her number when we were at the café by the library before Thanksgiving, then sealed it last night. She was a solid seven in bed,” he boasted as he leaned forward and high fived Edwards.

  Dickhead.

  “Anyone else?” Davidson asked as he turned his back on the room to write on the board. Whoever that Stephanie girl was, she was about to be hit with a shitload of attention from the hockey team. I hoped she knew what she’d gotten herself into.

  “Yeah, Tori Schaefer,” Vinnie said as he sat up and moved his aviators to his head, pushing them into place in his faux mohawk.

  Nodding, Davidson found her name on the board and followed it out to Vinnie’s initials. “Score?”

  “Eight,” Vinnie, Justin, and I all stated at the same time.

  For a split second, there was silence in the old change rooms. Then the noise level ratcheted up to party volume with wolf whistles, cat calls, and a bunch of questions.

  After writing the number eight on Tori’s line under each of our names, Davidson turned around and eyeballed us. “So, what did you guys do, all three at once or tag team?”

  The room went silent, waiting for our answer. I felt like I was an animal in an exhibit at the zoo the way they all stared at us.

  Vinnie grinned, playing it up. “Tag team. I picked her up at The Sports Bar, took her back to our place, and just as we were getting into it, she whispers to me…” Vinnie changed his voice to attempt a husky girly voice. “’So, your roommates are hockey players too, right?’ And I was all like, yeah baby they are, want me to call my boys in here and you can knock a few off in one night? The chick looked me straight in the eye and was like, ‘Yeah, that’d be great.’ So, being a good bro, I called them in.” There were hoots and hollers from all around the room at that.

  I shook my head at the story from last night. Not that it was any excuse, but I wouldn’t have participated in that if I hadn’t already copped crap for not adding any scores since the first week of the season. I’d been in a dry spell since I hadn’t been willing to be the reason another girl had gotten her name on the board – if she was already up there then that was a different issue. Last night was the first time we had ever sh
ared a girl. Interesting experience, especially watching her as Vinnie and Justin had changed over, Vinnie finishing off from behind while she’d started to blow Justin. Just the memory had me adjusting in my seat uncomfortably.

  And Vinnie, well he was just being Vinnie, showboating as always. The Eagles fans loved him for it. Ever since we’d met freshman year, Vinnie had been a skirt chaser. He had the act down perfect: sweet Italian guy, scholarship athlete, always nicely dressed with a single silver diamond stud in his left ear lobe.

  Girls loved him. They all tried to make him love them, but they ended up heart broken when they realized that Vinnie wasn’t interested in being tied down. He loved the game too much, just like me. But I did have to hand it to him, he was always straight with them. He told them upfront that he was only looking for no-strings, and he wouldn’t change for them. It really was their own fault if they got hurt; he never lied to them, after all.

  I looked over at Justin, who had pulled his hood up over his head and had his eyes closed like all of this was boring. With his arms crossed over his chest he gave off the impression he was already done with this shit. I have absolutely no idea why he chose to participate last night. I did hope, however, that he was finally getting over his break up with Vanessa last year.

  That chick had done a serious number on him. She’d been his high school sweetheart, keeping her talons locked into him when he left on scholarship, knowing he’d make it big. Justin had had scouts watching him since junior league, his formidable size being evident even back then. She’d kept him true to her with I love you’s and late-night video calls. But the whole time he’d been at college building a future for them, she’d been fucking his best friend back home. He’d gone home early for last summer break, only to find them together in her bed. He ended up vacationing with me at my parents’ place in the Hamptons for the summer, just us two hanging out, surfing and relaxing. Vinnie joined us a few weeks later.