I feel like Mom’s pressure cooker the time she forgot about her rice and the lid exploded, showering the room. A mess of suppressed, unmet need, blowing its top.
As 27 knocks my skates again, I spin, slam a shoulder into him and barrel on with the puck toward the goal. My entire focus narrows on the net. I fly up the ice, deking, weaving, knowing my footwork’s faster than the defender can keep up with, knowing this goal is mine.
I dump it off to Tyler, speeding past the Wild’s last man back and pick up the puck when Tyler fakes and flicks it to me. As I bear down on the goalie, the puck glued to my stick, then pull back to shoot, my foot gives from under me thanks to Number 27’s stick, which hooks my skate and trips me.
I’m falling, heading straight for a face plant, but somehow, I still manage to get my shot off. My gaze follows the puck waffling through the air, dipping low. Just as I crash to the ice, it sneaks past the goalie’s pads and lands with a thwack, safe inside the net.
Goooooaaaaallll!
“You lucky bastard!” Tyler yells, hoisting me up. “Three minutes left, and you pulled that off!”
Rob’s lit up with pride, smacking my helmet and bumping my chest like always. “That was amazing.”
When I skate by, 27 shoves me. I freeze, hold his eyes, then begin to skate past, but he puts up his arm again and shoves me once more.
“That’s it,” Tyler snaps, yanking off a glove. “He’s so fucking overdue—”
Rob stills Tyler’s hand. “Ren can fight his own battles. And if he doesn’t want to, they’re not yours.”
Number 27 spits out his mouth guard, and grins nastily, revealing four missing teeth. “He’s too pussy to fight his own battles. Is he your bitch, Johnson? Gotta protect your—”
Tyler launches at him, but I manage to get in between them. “He’s not worth it,” I tell Tyler, shoving his glove into his stomach and spinning him away. “Get out of here. Cool off.”
I glare over my shoulder at the guy, straighten my helmet, then turn and start to skate away. “Mammering rough-hewn eunuch,” I mutter.
Rob snorts in hysterical laughter, skating next to me.
“What did you fucking call me?” 27 yells, shoving me from behind.
The ref skates in, turning 27 away.
Tyler howls in laughter as I grab his arm and drag him with me, skating toward the boards to switch for the last shift. All we have to do is keep the lead I just bought us for the next three minutes and avoid a penalty. Then we win the series and advance to the next round of the playoffs.
Rob skates past me, still struggling to contain his laughter. “Best thing I’ve ever heard on the ice.”
I grin, spinning my mouth guard around, feeling the relief of another goal and telling off that jerk. I’m almost to the boards when I lock eyes with Frankie, who’s scowling again. Dropping my mouth guard, I give her a bright smile. Suddenly her eyes widen, her hands waving in alarm. I turn to look over my shoulder, and spin deftly, just in time to slip 27’s right hook. Hurtling past me, he flies into the boards and crumples to the ice.
When I turn back Frankie’s eyes are wide, her mouth open.
“See,” I tell her, swinging over the boards and onto the bench. “Told you I’d be careful.”
16
Frankie
Playlist: “Lovely,” Billie Eilish, Khalid
After the game, Ren begged off dinner with the team. Rob implied it was because of a massive headache, but I have a suspicion Ren’s absence has a lot more to do with what happened when 27 launched himself at Ren and ate ice instead of landing a blow.
I shouldn’t be doing this, but I am. I walk the soft carpeted hallway of the hotel, straight toward Ren’s room. He’s always booked right by me, and it’s maddening. Every time I hear him turn on the shower, opening and shutting his hotel dresser drawers—because Ren’s that guy who unpacks his suitcase tidily for a two-night stay—I have to try not to picture him walking around his room, gloriously naked, with that Viking sledgehammer between his legs, which I’m now shockingly acquainted with after the yoga and shower-towel debacles.
Knocking softly, I wait. Ren opens the door and squints at me. He’s holding a massive ice pack to his head and looks unsteady on his feet.
“How was I supposed to know the guy only has one nut?” Ren mutters.
I shrug. “You couldn’t have known. Just a bad coincidence. Not like he didn’t deserve it, though.”
Turning, Ren leaves the door open and backtracks to his bed, dropping on it with a groan. “It was just an off-the-cuff Renaissance swear. Just a bunch of old words thrown together.”
“One of which was eunuch,” I say pointedly.
Ren lifts his palm like, so what? “I’ve cursed hockey players using worse Shakespeare than that for ten years now, and never once has it created a problem.” Ren sighs, sounding exhausted. “I have to get my frustration off my chest somehow. I don’t fight. I don’t take the bait. I don’t say nasty things about their mother or call them homophobic slurs. Elizabethan oaths are how I hold on to a little shred of dignity.”
Now that’s something you don’t hear every day. I have the ridiculous urge to squish his cheeks together and kiss Ren breathless for the adorkable things that fall out of that mouth. Instead, I settle for shutting the door behind me and carefully lowering myself to the edge of his bed.
“Well.” I pat his hand. “I can tell you feel bad about calling a guy with one nut a eunuch, but he’s an asshole guy with one nut. He was coming after you, bullying you, Ren. You just stuck up for yourself, and you didn’t even mean to land such a pointed blow.”
Ren shifts the ice pack on his forehead and doesn’t say anything.
“Can I ask you something?”
He pivots his head on the pillow and meets my eyes. “Yes.”
“What made you decide to play a professional sport that is arguably the most tolerant—celebratory, even—of hostility and aggression, when you’re clearly a nonviolent person?”
“There’s so much more to the game than that,” he says, almost as if to himself. “I love the beauty of it. Grace and coordination, the team effort of hockey. I just choose not to embrace its most vicious aspects.”
“And you feel like you stooped to his level tonight.”
“I didn’t mean to,” he says quietly. “I was relieved he didn’t smash my face, again, but I felt awful when I watched him slam into the boards, then fall on the ice. I know he brought it on himself, I understand that in some sense of karmic justice he deserved that, but…”
Ren sighs heavily, eyes closed. “I don’t know. It was like high school all over again. I felt weirdly vindicated and guilty. Does that make sense?”
I nod. “Yes. I get why you needed to skip dinner.”
“Oh, I was coming to dinner. I’m starving. I wasn’t that torn up about it. But then I started this headache.”
“Have you been getting headaches a lot?”
He swallows and presses the ice pack harder onto his forehead. “They started a few weeks ago. Amy says it’s what sometimes happens after a couple concussions. So, nice life development.”