Chapter 3 Skylar
THREE
SKYLAR
When Skylar got to the point in a game where he broke his stick over his knee, there was little doubt he’d be an intolerable person to be around for the rest of the night.
He knew this about himself. His teammates knew it about him.
Beck knew it. No one tried to calm him down or talk him out of his feelings as he left the arena that night, the sting of their loss sharp between his eyes.
It was embarrassing how badly he’d fucked up that night.
Few things were more embarrassing as a defenseman than turning the puck over right in front of your goalie to set up the other team for a goal.
Telling himself that at least he hadn’t scored an own goal was cold comfort when the sour spike of shame he was feeling about his turnover was fresh.
Plus, Maxim Novikov had been called up that morning, and Skylar was still fuming with indignation. He should have been the one to get called up, not eighteen-year-old Novikov.
He was in a rotten mood when he got to the bar.
He’d picked a dive bar that Beck had taken him to in the East Village before the season started for real, and he remembered the bartender he’d flirted with.
Trevor? Tyler? T-something. He was cute.
There was nothing better at the end of a bad day than flirting with someone cute.
He wanted some attention unrelated to hockey.
It was late enough that the post-game coverage had wrapped up a while ago, and the TVs in Heathens, the hell-decorated dive bar, were tuned to an assortment of sports aggregate channels, NHL Network, and a handful of ESPNs.
The lights were low, and the bar’s small size gave it a certain coziness that Skylar loved.
When he went out with his teammates, they ended up at club-y bars that somehow were too dark and too bright at the same time. And loud as fuck.
A Pride flag hung on one wall, and in the corner, there was even a collection of hats, mittens, and coats for folks who couldn’t afford to buy what they needed that season.
Skylar made a mental note to bring something next time.
Fifteen years of photos of the youth hockey team Heathens sponsored were up on the wall by the coat tree.
The cute bartender he had been thinking about was nowhere to be found.
There was a girl with nicely curled shoulder-length purple hair and a man who looked like he was taking time away from chopping down trees.
He wasn’t cute the way Trevor-or-Tyler was.
He was a little older, with a perfectly short beard and hair that was messy in a sexy way.
He was fucking handsome. And Skylar was well aware of his predisposition to older guys.
“What can I getcha?” the purple-haired woman asked him. She looked like she could eat him alive, and if Skylar was into women, he’d be into her.
“Whatever your favorite IPA on tap is,” Skylar said, and she grabbed a glass, poured him a pint, and tossed a coaster onto the bar before setting the glass down.
Skylar handed over his credit card to open a tab and took a sip.
It tasted like beer. Some of his teammates could talk a lot more in depth about flavor notes; he just knew he liked hoppy stuff.
He pulled his phone out to scroll Instagram for a while as he sipped, trying to let the distractions of the bar fill up the empty spaces in his brain that let his negative thoughts clank together.
When he got down to the last sips of his beer, the bearded bartender showed up again.
He had an honest-to-God towel slung over his shoulder, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and Skylar had to ask him to repeat himself because he had been too focused on thinking about what that beard would feel like between his thighs to take in his words.
“I asked if you wanted another.”
“Yeah,” Skylar agreed, leaning forward on the bar, bracing himself on his forearms. He couldn’t help the little flutter of his eyelashes as he picked his beer up to drain the last sip.
“What were you having?”
“I don’t know. I asked Purple Hair for her favorite IPA.”
The bartender took his glass, loaded it into a dishwasher rack, and poured another drink into a fresh one.
When Skylar took a sip, it was the exact beer as before.
Impressive. He made a show of looking at the menu to keep the bartender close.
The chalkboard ran the full length of the bar.
They had a lot on tap, and a lot of drinks with names that would be considered cutesy if they weren’t more on the gruff/manly side of things. And then in the bottom corner…pizza.
“Can I get a pepperoni pizza too?” Had he already had his post-game meal? Yes. Was he still hungry? Also yes.
“It’ll be about fifteen minutes before it’s ready. And it’s just a frozen pizza. We don’t have a kitchen.”
Skylar could see pretty clearly that they didn’t have a kitchen, but he figured this was the speech of a man who had served frozen pizza to many disappointed bar-goers. “I love frozen pizza.”
He got a nod from the bartender before he went to grab a frozen pizza from the back and put it into a metal rectangle with a handle protruding from the front.
Now that Skylar knew he had to wait fifteen minutes, he was starving. The waves of grumpiness came back with his hunger pangs as he remembered the turnover he fumbled.
Hot bartender made a cocktail for someone and then made his way back to the end of the bar where Skylar was sitting, depositing a container of pretzels in front of him. “On the house. You look like you need it.”
Skylar raised an eyebrow at him. “I had a bad game.”
“What do you play?”
Skylar looked around the bar. There was Iowa Stars merchandise all over the place—pennants and jerseys and photos. “Hockey.”
“College?”
“AHL. Pro.”
“Oh, you’re a pro, then,” the bartender teased. He didn’t trip over himself to apologize for not knowing who Skylar was.
“Are you a fake fan, or something?”
“I’m not a fan at all. Are you a big deal?”
“Top prospect,” Skylar clarified. “I should be up in the show already.”
“I’ll bet.”
“What’s your name?” Skylar asked. If he was going to get sassed by a stranger about his hockey, he wanted to know his name.
The bartender pointed at his name tag.
“All right, Adam. I see you don’t understand sports at all, but maybe you should start. I can make you a hockey fan.”
Adam smiled, popped a pretzel from Skylar’s paper boat into his mouth, and pulled his phone out. “Who am I becoming a fan of?”
“Skylar Coburn. Defense.”
Adam typed his name into his phone and turned the results around to show him the first headline. Iowa Stars lose game. Coburn’s turnover a disgrace. Okay. Maybe tonight wasn’t the best night to tell someone cute to google him.
“I had a bad night. I’m not a bad player.”
“I’m sure,” Adam said.
Usually when people doubted him, gave him negative feedback, or didn’t believe in him, Skylar bristled.
He wanted people to know better. To know him.
His game. Yeah, he’d had a slow start to his career, but he was on the cusp of skyrocketing.
Instead, what Adam was doing made something in Skylar spark.
Skylar crunched on a pretzel. A kind offering, but it only reminded him how hungry he was. Maybe he should preemptively order another pizza so it would be done by the time he polished off the first one.
No. He needed restraint. Eating two full frozen pizzas in a row wouldn’t scare off another athlete, but this hot barkeeper was probably a normal person and might be horrified.
The pizza oven dinged, and Adam went to slide it onto a tray. “Squares or triangles?”
“The service here is amazing,” Skylar teased. Adam was holding a pizza cutter in one hand and used the other to slide Skylar’s post-post-game meal onto the bar. Without a preference supplied, Adam cut it into squares, then grabbed him a stack of napkins.
“I assume you don’t need a plate.”
“It’s already on a plate.” Skylar shot him what he was sure was his most winning smile and traded his empty glass for yet another beer. Something lighter this time.
The food was a good idea. He couldn’t get Adam to keep lavishing attention on him, but that was okay. Skylar had about ten TVs to look at and a phone with, frankly, way too much social media. It was a feat to stay off Twitter.
Who was he kidding? There might have been a couple of tweets talking about the game and how he played, but it wasn’t like he was a Northern Light. No one cared about the hockey he was playing yet.
Skylar had such poor impulse control for cheese and bread and nearly burned his tongue on molten hot pizza sauce. He nibbled square by square until it became a tolerable temperature while he people-watched.
There were a lot of reasons to be glad that Minnesota drafted him.
As a Canadian, he knew how seriously other Canadians took hockey, and he was relieved not to be in the hottest of the Canadian hockey markets.
Minnesota was reportedly a fun place to play.
Fans took it seriously but not Edmonton seriously, and while he’d dreamed of playing for his home team when he was a kid, he wouldn’t miss winter in Northern Alberta.
Slowly, his pizza disappeared, and he had a few more drinks. He tried to get Adam to talk to him as much as he could. As the night wore on, the bar emptied, until it was just him, Adam, and the woman with purple hair.
Adam came over to him and leaned his forearms on the bar, his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows. His biceps filled out his sleeves appealingly.
“Closing time,” he said, that beautiful, handsome, bearded face looking as exhausted as Skylar felt.
“I get the picture.” He signed his credit card receipt to close out his tab and slipped his card back into his wallet. When he got off the stool, he swayed.
“Are you okay to get home?”
“Oh yeah, I’m four blocks away. Maybe less,” Skylar said. He’d driven there from the arena, but he’d leave his SUV in the lot for the night and hopefully not forget about it. “I can walk.”
“Can you?” Adam asked, the too-cool looks he’d been giving Skylar all night melting into concern.
Skylar took a few steps, and even though he felt like he was walking steadily, Adam sighed, wiping a hand over his eyes. “I’ll walk you home.”
“I got it. I think it’s mostly that my foot is asleep from sitting on it.”
“If you trip over yourself and eat asphalt, which is currently likely, I don’t want that on my conscience.” Adam turned to the purple-haired bartender. “Grace, I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
She raised her matching purple eyebrows at him as she counted down the till, but shrugged.
Adam slipped out from behind the bar and grabbed a coat from the office. Skylar had been sitting on his. The night was crisp but not too windy. Tolerable. Adam stuffed his hands in his coat pockets after locking the front door of the bar behind him.
“Lead the way.”
Skylar led him north on the quiet, empty street, and Adam walked beside him, his face stony.
The light flirting Skylar had been doing all night had been in good fun, but he now thought Adam was annoyed with him.
Skylar was annoyed with himself when he stumbled over his feet and Adam had to steady him.
He wouldn’t have broken any bones. He probably would have been able to catch himself, but Adam sighed again.
“How old are you?” Skylar asked, wondering if his grumpiness was perhaps due to age.
“I’m thirty-five.”
“Do your knees pop when you stand up? Beck is always talking about how his knees pop.”
Finally, a smile. “My knees are pretty good. My lower back is what kills me.”
“Mmm, too much time on your feet,” Skylar assumed.
And then they were in front of his apartment building. He wanted to take a lap around the block now that he was past Adam’s facade again, but he thought Adam might notice his ploy.
“Here?” Adam asked, looking up at the building. It was nothing to write home about. For Iowa, it was fine. Nothing fancy like downtown Minneapolis.
“Home sweet home.” He put on another big, bright smile he was used to getting a certain reaction to. Instead, Adam looked thoroughly unimpressed with him. Skylar touched his bicep. “Thank you,” he said with more sincerity.
“Not a problem,” Adam said.
He turned and walked away before Skylar opened the door to the lobby, but he looked back to make sure he was going to get inside safe.