19. Tate
Ididn’t want to move into the hockey house. But there’s an empty room, and the team and my parents ganged up on me behind my back. So now that I’ve been discharged from the hospital—as of a few minutes ago, I”m free.
Or, at least would be, if I wasn’t being held captive in my parents SUV on the way to the team house.
I growl again, but they ignore me. The doctors at the hospital tell me that I could talk if I wanted. Apparently having my jaw wired shut doesn’t stop me from being able to talk. Gave it a shot last night after visiting hours ended, and my parents were all but kicked out of the building, but it’s not for me.
Grinding out words around screwed-shut teeth isn’t my idea of fun. I’ll use text, or a white board, or gesturing and grunting to get my point across to the guys.
Ares says Bacon, the therapy pig and our team mascot, is already on site ready for cuddles. I’m not sure I’d inflict my bad mood on the poor potbellied pig, but we’ll see.
Leaning my head against the window of the car, I close my eyes and enjoy the cool breeze wafting back through the car from Mom’s open window. Since I got hit in the face all I’ve felt is a fizzing anger under my skin, not at anyone in particular, just at my situation in general.
Going to the hockey house isn’t something I’m looking forward to, either. The pity on my teammates’ faces will make my simmering ire bubble over into all-out rage. And I don’t exactly want to sit around not doing shit while my teammates are on the ice, doing what I love, what I want to do, while I watch them through a fucking screen.
Another growl. I think I’m going to spend the next three months grumbling and snarling at people.
It’s a short ride to the house, and when we get there, I half expect banners and balloons on the lawn. Those assholes are extra like that. But relief floods my veins to see no one has taken their life in their hands and made a sign.
I’d have smacked them with it.
Ugh. My face hurts.
They gave me painkillers to take home with me, but I don’t want to be high as fuck the whole time either. It’s a balance between what throbbing agony I can tolerate versus spending hours asleep and drooling because I’m drugged up.
Once I’m settled, I’ll tell everyone to fuck off and leave me alone so I can sleep and then knock myself out.
I don’t know how this happened to me. And the more I think about it, the worse I feel. Wishing someone else on the team, or the opposition’s team, caught the shot to their jaw makes me feel like shit. No one in particular at least, but I wish it wasn’t me.
Of course I wish it hadn’t happened to anyone. But since it did, I wish it wasn’t me.
Swiping an angry hand at the tears trickling down my swollen, painful face, I check that Mom isn’t staring at me in the rearview. She’s staring out the window, lost in her own thoughts. Probably steeped in worry and regret that she ever let me learn to skate. It’s just what she’s like, reverse engineering a situation until she can pinpoint the exact decision she made to make it all her fault.
Guilt sloshes in my stomach so I reach forward and grip her shoulder. She turns to look at me, her eyes red-rimmed, and gives me a soft smile.
It takes them a good twenty minutes to get my shit in from the car, the bed made with fresh linens, and for some of the guys to make loud overtures about how they’re hungry and can’t cook, for Mom to hit the kitchen.
Thankfully, these assholes have cleaned before we arrived, and there’s groceries in the fridge, but apparently not what she wants.
She settles me on the couch and sends Apollo to the store with a list. I try to nap while she gets my teammates to reluctantly help her out with various things in the kitchen. It helps that Dad’s with her, they’re kind of stoked to talk shop with a former pro hockey player and pepper him with all kinds of questions.
When I wake up again, she’s whipped up a couple of pans of her baked ziti, enough for everyone to eat today, and probably for a few days to come, too.
Not only that, but she’s made a couple of hot dishes and the house smells amazing. It’s not long before a giant smoothie appears beside me, too.
When I take the glass from him, Apollo sits next to me on the couch, holding his hands up in surrender. “No sympathy,” he declares with resolve. “Almost lost my balls to Edith when I offered her sympathy after the accident. I learned my lesson.”
I didn’t understand at the time, but now I’m the one with the injury, I can relate to Edith and her recovery journey.
“Only support, recovery, and juice, soups, and smoothies on demand.” He jerks his chin at the glass I’m holding.
“We got an industrial juicer, blender, and food processor.”
My angry heart threatens to thaw just a little.
“We’ve got you, Amigo. We’ll get you back on the ice before you know it.”
Blinking back tears, I nod and make the American Sign Language sign for thank you by touching my open hand to my chin and moving my hand away from my face. Who knew watching our old teammate Raffi Shaw teach his kid Wyatt sign language would come in handy?
“Drink up. We’re going to need to look at your nutrition plan to make sure you don’t turn into skin and bone. Your mom has already told us that thirty four times since she arrived.” He chuckles. “Considering the amount of food she just made for the whole house, I can see why she’s worried about you losing body mass. She’s a feeder.”
I nod. She is. She loves to cook and take care of people. If it wasn’t weird as fuck, she’d move in for the next three months and cook three square meals a day for everyone without batting an eyelid.
She’d make us all clean up after ourselves, of course, and make us help out as sous chefs with the food prep but she’s happiest when she’s making pans of food for large groups of people. Thanksgiving is her favorite time of year, and mine too.
By the time she leaves, the whole team is in high spirits, well-fed, and the house is cleaner than it’s probably ever been.
Mom sheds a tear when she leaves, but Artemis and Scott reassure her that they’ll take good care of me, keep me full of smoothies, and distract me from the fact I’m currently incapacitated with a fucked up face.
Both Mom and Dad hug me tenderly, tentatively, like they’re afraid they might break me if they hug me too hard. Truth is, I’m already breaking, and their hugs squish the fractured pieces of me back together, just enough to keep me going for a while longer.
I slip up to my room when the guys disperse after my folks leave. Apollo tries to come with me but I shake my meds bottles at him and point to my face. It’s on fire. Actually, it’d probably be less painful if I set my jaw on fire.
Who knew your pharmacist should have liquid forms of almost all medications, including heavy duty pain meds, on hand? Not me. At least not until I needed it, and now I’m very grateful for liquid face-numbing-juice.
When I settle into the unsettled quiet of my new surroundings, I let the pain I’ve bottled up for the last couple days leak out my eyeballs.
I can’t even lie face-down on the bed and cry into my pillow. Sitting upright, the tears stream down my face. On one side, they’re absorbed by my dressings, and on the other, my shirt picks them up as they drip off my chin.
How can I be anything but a hockey player? How can I exist when I’m not on the ice? What am I without hockey?
I guess I’m going to be forced to find out.
There’s probably a strength somewhere buried deep inside me that I can tune into. I wasn’t born the best hockey player in the world, I busted my ass to get to where I’m at.
Wasn’t a draft pick, or even on anyone’s radar. When I turned sixteen, I shot up a few inches, hit six foot, and skated every fucking day until I could score more than the average person on a hockey team.
I just wanted to play hockey. Did so well in my first year of Bantam hockey in my early teens that I was named captain in my second year.
Scouts liked what they saw.
But I wasn’t fast-tracked, no one paid me special attention—despite the fact I was the son of an NHL player—and I only started to take working out and eating properly, seriously, right before I turned eighteen.
I earned my place on every team I’ve played on, the hard way, through sheer grit, determination, working every damn day until my legs burned so much that sometimes I thought they’d stop working.
My rise to the hockey elite was less than conventional. And now I’m approaching my prime, readying myself to face the NHL, the universe comes and slapshots me in the face—literally.
It would almost be laughable if it wasn’t so fucking tragic.
Throbbing head, throbbing jaw, throbbing face, exhausted body, exhausted mind, I lie staring at the ceiling. When my phone vibrates, lighting up beside me on the bed, I almost flip it over, or throw it at the wall.
As ungrateful as it sounds, I’m so tired of all the ‘get well soon’ messages that have appeared on my screen since my accident. They’re just a painful reminder that I’m on the bench for the next few months. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, and right now, it’s stuck in the back of my throat.
The name on the screen catches my attention. Pitstop. It makes me smile, then wince. Everything fucking hurts.
Pitstop: Satan, rumor has it that you’ve fled the dorms, and you’re taking refuge with your hockey buds for the foreseeable future. Admit it, just say I’ve won in our war. I won, and you ran away because you couldn’t handle my superior prank skills.
The urge to grin is overwhelming, but I have to keep my face stoic, or the pain intensifies.
Me: Never, She Devil. Just a brief interlude before I go back to driving you crazy.
Me: Though I have to admit, plastic wrapping my car was next level.
Pitstop: You feeling up to guests?
I’m almost tempted to say yes. But I’m in so much pain, and I’m angry and feeling so fucking sorry for myself I’m afraid I’d take the bad mood out on her. The disappointment that stews in my stomach at not seeing her today is kind of pathetic.
Maybe I could do with her cheering me up. She’s already seen my face and didn’t run away screaming, so she can clearly stomach the horror. But I still can’t bring myself to let her come over. What if one of the other guys makes a move on her? Or even flirts? The mood I’m in, I’d impale him on a fucking hockey stick.
It’s not a good look when you’re busted for murdering chosen family.
Me: Rain check?
Pitstop: Sure thing. Do you need anything? Is there anything I can do?
Me: Is this your distress signal? Are you under attack by an alien race?
Pitstop: LOL! No. I just know you’re over there feeling sorry for yourself, and that ego of yours is probably preventing rational thought right now.
She’s not wrong. But I also don’t like that she’s right, either.
Me: You can’t mock the infirm, Pitstop. It’s not nice.
Her reply takes a long moment, I almost think she’s truly insulted until the screen flashes with a new message from her.
Pitstop: What about sucking off the infirm?
I blink like the words on the screen don’t mean what I think they mean. Is she actually propositioning me right now? Can’t be the meds, I haven’t taken them yet.
Me: You offering me a blowjob, Pitstop?
Please say yes. Please say yes.
Pitstop: What if I am?
Me: Well. I’d wonder if you’re planning to bite off my cock to distract me from the pain in my face.
Pitstop: Not gonna lie, the thought crossed my mind.
It’s hard not to laugh when she’s just so freakin’ sassy.
Me: You’re making it really hard to say no. But I’m exhausted, in agony, and I’d really rather not fall into a medically induced sleep with my cock in your mouth. You’d definitely dismember my member then.
Pitstop: That’s correct. Plus, you’d give me a complex.
Me: Fair. Do you have any books in arm’s reach?
Pitstop: I have Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief.
Me: I love that series. Any chance you want to read me a bedtime story?
Part of me expects her to laugh, or make fun of me, but her name flashes on my screen as she calls me, and another sliver of the bitterness in my heart gets chipped away.
“Alright, Satan.”
I’ve barely answered the phone, and she’s already talking.
“Settle in. If you haven’t taken your meds, do that. If you have, lie back, close your eyes, and let me tell you a story. Okay?”
I love it when she’s bossy.
A grunt is the only answer I give her. I pause to take my meds, cautiously sip some water to get the taste out of my mouth.
“I’ll let you away with grunting at me today. But you’re going to have to give in and talk to me if you want me to read to you again tomorrow.”