Gross Misconduct (The Comebacks #1)

1. Griffin

1

GRIFFIN

I ’m in the middle of fixing the engine on a client’s Cessna plane when my boss alerts me that I’m being arrested.

As far as I know, I haven’t committed any crimes. I haven’t run any red lights or robbed a bank. I’m the most average of average joes. I stand up from my workstation and rub the grease off my hands.

“The po-po’s waiting for you,” he says. His pale, bald forehead creases with concern. Since I’m taller than him at six four, he has trouble meeting my eyes. Today, he won’t even try.

“Did they say why?”

He shakes his head no. “You better go in and see what they want. I can have Corrado finish up with the Cessna.”

My stomach feels leaden. Annabelle and June flash in my mind, their sweet, angelic faces crumpling to tears when they find out their daddy’s going away. But for what? What did I do?

I walk past my boss to the exit. I adjust my eye patch over my left eye. Hopefully, the patch either garners me sympathy or makes me intimidating to the officer. Both could work in my favor.

I venture through the cavernous space of the hangar to the narrow corridor of offices. I’m glad I never got a job that required me to sit in such a soul-killing setting. Although, now that I’m on the verge of getting arrested, perhaps it would’ve been the smart move. Guys who wear ties and sit in cubicles didn’t go to jail, or if they did, it would be to one of those Club Med-style jails with tennis courts.

I exhale a deep breath and shake myself out before I turn the knob to my boss’s office. The cop stands next to his desk, all business, all scowl, his uniform navy and crisp. He’s more slender than I would imagine a cop to be.

I’m a large guy, although my midsection has the inevitable gut of middle age. Guys subconsciously step aside when I venture down a sidewalk. I’ve got a few inches vertically and horizontally on this cop, yet that doesn’t stop me from gulping back a nervous lump.

“Officer,” I say. I wonder if I should try to shake his hand.

“Griffin Harper?” His voice is eerily monotone, as if he’s the Terminator or something.

“Yes?”

“Sit down.” He points to the chair across the desk, not the special ergonomic chair my boss got last year.

I do as he says, my heart thumping in my ears. My mom taught me to tread lightly when dealing with cops. “What is this about?”

“You’re under arrest.”

“For what?”

“For not joining the Comebacks. You’re a bad boy, Griffin.”

Before I can question why an officer of the law called me, a forty-four-year-old man, a bad boy, he throws on a pair of reflective aviator sunglasses and takes out his phone.

“And you need to be punished.” His surly stare instantly switches to a sneaky smile as he presses something on his phone.

The opening chords of the *NSYNC song “I Want You Back” fill the office. I can’t remember what I ate for breakfast yesterday, but my teenage lizard brain refuses to forget the shitty songs popular in my youth.

My arresting officer begins shaking his hips, thrusting his junk in my direction. He mouths along to the song and does some choreographed moves. His hand accidentally smacks against the office wall, and he lets out an expletive under his breath but soldiers on.

He pushes apart my legs and shimmies between them, sliding to the ground and springing back up. He drags his tongue across his teeth in a failing effort to turn me on.

The officer, if we’re still calling him that, spins around and grinds his ass against my junk before I scoot the hell back and out of the chair. I stand as far apart from him as this tiny office will allow. Through the window, I catch my boss and a gaggle of female coworkers ogling from the hall.

“What the fuck is going on?” I think now’s a good enough time as any to curse at an officer.

“I’m Officer Jasper here to tell you that the Wolf Pack wants you back,” he says, slightly out of breath as he continues to dance.

My eyes travel to the Jasper the Stripping Telegram Artist logo imprinted on his phone case.

“And if you don’t show up tonight, then you’re under arrest.”

At that, he rips off his pants and throws them in my face.

* * *

I stroll into Summers Rink that night ready to kick ass and take names.

The massive facility has a dated quality to it with graying walls, a digital scoreboard made of bright red dots, and the same old banners advertising the same small businesses hanging on the walls. State of the art, Summers Rink is not.

But like your childhood home, it’s easy to find its flaws charming.

There are two rinks in the facility. On one is a free skate zone ranging from kids trying figure skating loops down to those hugging the wall to keep their balance. On the other rink, I find a familiar group of guys way past their prime trying to play hockey.

I charge up to them. We all played together at South Rock High School decades ago, back when we were unstoppable. That might as well have been a completely different life. The only thing that’s unstoppable is the march of time. As soon as they see me, Hank Rush signals to someone above the scoreboard.

“I Want You Back” blares through the sound system. The guys try to harmonize on the chorus, but it’s a patchwork of missed cues and garbled lyrics. I put my fingers in my ears toward the end.

“You fuckers,” I say.

“Griffdog!” Hank yells.

“We got your attention.” Bill Crandell skates up to me with my former teammates close behind. They take off their helmets. Sweat beads on their rugged faces.

“I thought I was actually getting arrested.”

“It was Hank’s idea,” Bill says. Corporate life has forced him to keep his beard and hair neatly trimmed, but no job is straightlaced enough to take the goon out of the man.

“Jasper’s good. I hired him to go to Des’s last chemotherapy session in a doctor’s coat and bedazzled thong.” Hank gives me a thumbs up, his goofy smile unchanged from high school. With his thinner but still shaggy blond hair and noticeable gut, he looks like Jesus’s deadbeat brother. Hank has always been on the huskier side, perfect for protecting the goal.

“Thank you for that. His rhinestone-covered junk will haunt me forever.” Des rolls his piercing eyes, a slight smile on his full lips, as if he’s perpetually in the middle of a photo shoot. Even in his forties, Max Desmond is still a pretty boy.

“Hank’s idea actually worked,” Bill says. “You’re here.”

“I’m here to tell you guys it was a shitty idea.”

“A shitty idea that worked,” Hank calls out.

“You’ve been trying to get me to join the Comebacks since January, and it hasn’t worked. Take the hint.”

“You could’ve told us this via text.” Hank crosses his arms, a sense of vindication coming over him.

“Admit it, man. You’re curious. Marcy says you still come for free skate, sometimes even playing around with a stick,” Bill says. Marcy Summers took over the rink from her parents in the late 1980s and has been running it ever since. She knows everything that goes on here and apparently will back channel it to my old teammates.

“You love hockey. You’re still a goon at heart.” Des cocks an eyebrow at me.

I take a sharp inhale of the rink. There’s a common misconception that water, and by extension ice, has no smell. Perhaps that’s true on a scientific level, but for people who spend their life on the ice, it smells fresh, sharp, a bit bitter. For some of us, as much as we want to ignore the feeling, it can smell like home.

“My hockey days are behind me,” I tell them.

“Bullshit,” Des scoffs.

“It’s fun, Griff. It’s a beer league. We practice, we play, we go out to celebrate whether we win or lose,” says Tanner Chance, the only hockey player I know who is too sweet to trash talk. There’s a permanent weariness behind his kind eyes, but if I were raising four kids on my own, I’d be exhausted all the time, too.

“We can’t do it without you, especially now that Mitch is out for the season.” Bill sighs at the news.

“Shit. Is he okay?” I ask.

Bill seesaws his head. “He threw out his back. Sneezing.”

The guys and I burst into laughter at poor Mitch’s expense, the sound bouncing off the rink’s walls. We weren’t that far away from one big sneeze making us immobile. The magic of burgeoning middle age.

“We could do it without you, but we don’t want to,” Des says. “Honestly, it hasn’t felt the same without you on the ice. Like it used to be. When we were on fire.”

“That was in the twentieth century,” I say, which makes it sound eons ago. It was only the late nineties when we played together. And weren’t the seventies only thirty years ago? I wish. My girls will sometimes ask me questions about life at the turn of the century, and I realize they’re not referring to the 1900s, like they should.

“We still got it.” Bill wraps his knuckles on the boards. Time may’ve passed, but he still cuts an imposing figure in his hockey gear. I’m sure I would, too, but I push that idea out of my head. “I know you still got it, Griff. You were ferocious out there, a fucking animal. We need our defenseman back.”

“You’re forgetting one important part.” I don’t have to gesture. Bill’s already glancing up at my left eye. Quiet descends over my former teammates.

“You made an incredible recovery.” Bill softens his tone slightly. “If you’re able to drive, you’re able to play.”

“It’s not that simple,” I say.

He shrugs, as if maybe it could be. Bill only saw what happened on the ice that day. He only heard about the surgeries and the pain and the blinding headaches that came with the injury. He never had to worry if he’d ever get his vision back. He didn’t feel the anger or heartache of his future going down the drain thanks to one moment on the ice.

“I’ll pass. My hockey days are behind me,” I say firmly. “No more stripping telegrams or homing pigeons or shit like that, okay?”

I step back from the rink before the smell of the ice and the familiar warmth of the lights make me change my mind.

Bill nods, knowing not to push. “Yeah, I get it. I’m just saying, we miss you out here, Griff.” He looks over his shoulder, and the guys nod in agreement.

“Why don’t you come grab a drink with us?” Tanner asks, his eyes shining with their patented kindness. “Just as buddies. No ulterior motive.”

“It’s been forever since we’ve all hung out. Stupid life shit getting in the way.” The fluorescent light bounces off Hank’s pale skin making him look almost translucent.

“One drink,” I say, fully aware of their intentions. But Hank is right. It has been a while since we’ve all hung out. Nobody tells you how lonely the busyness of adulthood can be. The tug of their camaraderie is hard to resist.

The guys cheer. I can’t help but feel a spark of warmth at their reaction, but I don’t let it show.

“I mean it. One damn drink.”

Bill turns back to the guys. “One. Drink,” he repeats firmly. “If any of you try to make Griffin Harper drink a second drink, so help me I will beat. Your. Ass. I’m looking at you, Des.” Bill swivels back to me. “Are we good?”

I shoot him my best fuck-you sneer. I may not be on the team, but that doesn’t stop me from getting shit like any other player.

I love it.

But I’m not suiting up again.