JEREMIAH
Chapter playlist:
American Girl — Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Coach Badaszek stands at the boards, arms crossed, waiting for us to notice him, which, in my opinion, is worse than yelling.
“Two.” He holds up two fingers, like we might’ve lost count. “Two losses in a row. Somebody tell me what that is.”
Nobody answers. Answering is how you end up doing suicides until your legs file for divorce from your body.
“That is a habit forming,” Badaszek says. “And I did not fly to Washington, DC to watch you people practice bad habits.”
Tyson Lane skates up next to me, chest still heaving from the last drill. He doesn’t look at Badaszek when he mutters, “Man really said ‘you people’ like we’re a book club that keeps forgetting to read the book.”
Accurate, I think, and keep my face very still, because Badaszek’s eyes are doing a slow sweep of the group like a jailer’s spotlight looking for escapees.
He checks on Colt first. Something about gap control. Then Levi, for losing the same draw twice. By the time he gets to me, I’m braced for it, but all he says is, “Precio. Faster hands, slower mouth. Both this time.”
“Yes, Coach.”
“Both,” he says again, like I might’ve missed it the first time, and heads off toward the net to torment Josh instead.
He’s rough on us for the next twenty minutes, but it’s the kind of rough that comes with a softer side. He’ll ream a guy out mid-drill and then find him alone by his stall an hour later to make sure everything is all right at home. It’s tough love.
We run the breakout drill until my lungs feel like they’ve been marinating in battery acid.
But somewhere around the fourth rep, it clicks.
Twiles hits me with a stretch pass I don't even have to look for, and I one-time it to Dash, and Dash buries it top shelf so clean that even Badaszek almost smiles.
“There,” he says. “That. Do that Sunday and we won’t have this conversation again.”
Tyson gathers us at center ice before we break for water, and for a guy who once told a reporter his favorite color is “clear,” he gives a genuinely solid speech.
Something about how West doesn’t get to lose two in a row and call it a slump.
If we lose two in a row, it will be the last time it happens.
“Game 4, we need to be on point,” he says. “Every shift. I’m not asking for perfect. I’m asking for accountable.”
We all bang our sticks on the ice.
At the water break, I make the mistake of checking my phone.
I don’t even do it smoothly. I fumble it out of my bag, and the second the screen lights up, my whole face does something involuntary and, according to my teammates, deeply embarrassing.
“There it is,” Bryce says, barely even looking up from his own phone. “The Zesty smile.”
“I don’t have a Zesty smile.”
“Uh-huh.” Colt leans over my shoulder, and I angle the phone away like that’ll help. “Is it a woman? It’s always a woman.”
“It’s nobody.”
“It is definitely a woman,” Kingston says.
Across the bench, Jake’s got his own dumb smile going, aimed at the stands instead of a phone, because Izzy’s up there next to the team staff in a jacket that’s a size too big to be anyone else’s. Neal elbows him. “You gonna keep pretending that’s just ‘PR stuff,’ man?”
“It’s complicated,” Jake says.
Bryce is still glued to his own phone, grinning at whatever’s on the screen. That, I’m fairly certain, is because of a woman.
I saw the newspaper stacked by the front doors on the way in, some enterprising photographer’s shot of him and Hadley outside the arena last night, her looking at him like he just solved world hunger, him grinning like the team didn’t just lose 6–3.
WHO IS brYCE CHAMBERS'S MYSTERY WOMAN, the headline wanted to know, like it was a scandal and not just two people standing near each other with goofy expressions on their faces. Well, Bryce has a goofy face, anyway. He always has a goofy face, to be honest.
I’ve got no room to give any of them grief. Not with my own screen lit up like a shrine.
I still remember typing that first text, three nights ago, standing at the window in my suite an hour after she gave me her number and walked away. I’d changed her contact name to “Dangerous” because that seemed appropriate. And that phone of hers. Where do you get a flip phone these days?
Me: Can your phone even get texts?
Dangerous: rude. also yes. also this took me 45 seconds 2 type on a number pad so u better appreciate it
Me: I appreciate it deeply.
Dangerous: good
Me: Might be the most effort anyone’s put into texting me all year.
Dangerous: don’t get used to it Zesty
I’d grinned at that phone in the dark like a complete lunatic.
Thursday I told myself I wasn’t going to text her first. Thursday I texted her first anyway, and somewhere in there I stopped pretending I had any self-control left where she’s concerned.
Me: Still owe you that guitar lesson.
Dangerous: u say that like i forgot
Me: Did you forget?
Dangerous: no. i never forget. im like an elephant
Me: Solid mascot choice.
Dangerous: u say that now but just u wait
Me: Oooh, cryptic.
And just because I couldn’t stop myself, I texted again that afternoon.
Me: Pizza topping. One word. Go.
Dangerous: pineapple
Me: I need you to know I respect you less right now.
Dangerous: i need u 2 know i don’t care
Me: This might be a dealbreaker.
Dangerous: ur deeply strange
Yesterday, we lost game three. Badly enough that I didn’t want to talk to anybody, which is exactly when a text from her landed.
Dangerous: heard you guys lost
Wow, she even took the time to write the entire word “you” this time.
Me: Word travels fast for someone with a phone from 1994.
Dangerous: i have my sources. also u okay?
Aaand we’re back to one character words again. I don’t blame her. That phone is a dinosaur.
Me: I will be. Coach is going to make us pay for it in a deeply personal way tomorrow.
Dangerous: want me to threaten him? i know people
Me: You know people?
Dangerous: i know a guy with lots of cousins
Me: Hmmm, wonder who that could be.
Dangerous: eh hes kind of a big goober, dont get jealous
I read that more times than I dare to admit.
Then, later that night, I finally worked up the nerve to send the one I’d been drafting in my head for two days.
Me: I have a surprise for you. For your birthday.
Dangerous: my birthday was a week ago Zesty. u a little late
Me: I’m aware. I’m doing the redo.
Dangerous: the redo
Me: The birthday you actually deserve.
Dangerous: sounds fancy. what is it?
Me: You’ll see. I’m not telling you.
Dangerous: i hate this
Me: You love this.
Dangerous: we shall see
Then, at midnight, when I was lying in bed, refraining from bothering her at a late hour, she texted:
Dangerous: is it weird that today felt long?
Me: No.
Dangerous: ok good because it did and i don’t love admitting that
Me: I’ll allow it. Today felt long here too.
Dangerous: dont get used 2 me being soft. limited time offer
Me: I’m framing this text.
Dangerous: remember that big goober I was telling you about? He’s you.
“Precio.” Badaszek’s voice cuts across the bench, and I nearly drop the phone.
“Phone away. We’ve got twenty more minutes and I’d like your head to be somewhere on the premises.”
“Yes, Coach.”
I put it away. It doesn’t stop the smile.
“Man’s got it bad,” Colt says to nobody, cheerfully, as we skate back out.
“I don’t have it bad.”
“You checked your phone eleven times in the last ten minutes,” Kingston says. “I counted.”
“That’s a sad way to spend your free time, man.”
“Teasing you guys is the highlight of my day,” he says.
Badaszek blows the whistle and we’re back to drills, and nobody’s smiling anymore except me, quietly, on the inside.
By the time we’re done, my legs feel like two sandbags, and my jersey’s stuck to my back in a way that will require industrial-strength detergent. But we ran that last drill clean six times in a row. Even Badaszek, walking off the ice, allows himself a tiny grin.
“Better,” he says, to the group. “Do that tomorrow. Same energy. Less mouth.”
“Yes, Coach,” we all say, and somehow I have a feeling about tomorrow’s game. We’re going to win. I just know it.
In the tunnel, Colt catches up to me, still riding the high of not getting yelled at personally for once. “Hey, Zesty. Few of us are grabbing wings before we crash tonight. You in?”
Four days ago that nickname would’ve made my skin crawl. Now it barely registers, and I don’t mind it anymore.
“Can’t. Rain check?”
“You got something better going on?”
“Something like that.” I peel my gloves off and flex my fingers.
Colt waits half a second for more, doesn’t get it, and shrugs. “Your loss. Brady’s buying, which never happens twice.”
“Tell him thanks anyway.”
He heads for the locker room already texting someone about wing flavors, and I’m cutting through the tunnel when I nearly walk straight into Martín, the facilities attendant here at the Capitol Practice rink.
He’s got a coil of extension cord looped over one shoulder, keys jangling at his hip like always, and something in me just eases at the sight of him. I’ve only been in DC for a few weeks, but I already feel like I know him.
"?Martín!"
"Precio." He grins, gap-toothed and easy-going.
I ask him about his kids.
"?Que tal? ?Y los ninos? ?Cómo están?"
"Bien, gracias a Dios," he says, like the man of few words he is. "Todos bien."
Then he leans in, voice dropping like we're the only two people in the building.
"Todo listo para esta noche." He winks. Everything's set. Tonight.
"?Y la música?" And the music?
"Sí, sí. Ya tengo." He taps his key ring once, like that settles it, and keeps walking before I can ask anything else. "Buena suerte, jefe."
Buena suerte. Hopefully, I won't need luck.
"Gracias, Martín. En serio."
He just waves it off over his shoulder without turning around.
I pull my phone out and type one more text to Erica.
Me: I’ll see you tonight.
I don’t wait for the reply. I already know she’ll reply with something that makes me laugh on the bus back to the hotel like a man with no dignity left to protect. For once, I don’t mind one bit.