3. Jack
3
JACK
O f the many coaches I’ve had in my life, a lot of their advice tended to overlap. There’re only so many ways to tell young gentlemen to never give up, work hard, and believe in themselves. As I shuttled from one team to the next over my career, it became a soup of inspirational advice. But I do remember one coach who put his advice rather succinctly.
If you want it, go and get it. And if you don’t want it, then get the hell off the ice.
Simplicity. I like it.
Little did he know that I’d mostly use his advice for getting some ass.
When I wanted a guy, I went and got him. I saw. I conquered. I came. And then I left, usually in the wee hours of the morning before he could invite me out to breakfast.
Tonight, I saw this burly guy with a beard and a solid body that was either a block of muscle or fat. I didn’t care which. I just wanted to feel its weight on top of me.
And if you want something, go and get it.
“A drink?” he asks, still squatting under the air dryer. He probably thinks he looks like an idiot. I can’t stop ogling his thighs in this position and wondering what it’d feel like to be crushed between them.
And we haven’t even gotten to that eye patch, which makes him instantly ten times hotter. Did he get it in a knife fight? Fixing a car? Building a house? Whatever the reason, he can be my butt pirate any day of the week.
“You’ve been checking me out all night. I might as well get a free drink out of it.” I lean against the bathroom door and watch his eyes–er, eye–flit around for an answer. The man’s not as suave as I expected, but I can work with that. I can power bottom my way through this encounter.
I hold out my hand and pull him to standing. He’s taller than me, built like one of those sequoia trees in California that you can drive through. His forearms are like cannons made of muscle and fur. His hands are rough, calloused, and damn near enveloping mine.
“Jack,” I say.
“Griffin,” he says back, finding his footing.
Griffin. I like it. Good name. A name I’d be happy to scream out over and over as I’m getting railed.
“How about that drink? Unless you’re still drying off?” I ask.
He lets out a deep, grumbly laugh that seems to relax him.
A few minutes later, we’re sitting at the bar half-watching the hockey game on TV. Griffin is being the responsible one nursing his beer, while I’m going at a more accelerated pace. I don’t want to stretch this out too much. One drink and then it’s party time in the backseat of his car. I have work in the morning.
“How’s the beer?” I nod at his glass while I’m almost done with mine.
“Good,” he replies with a husky grunt that I feel in between my legs. Why the fuck did I ever waste my time hooking up with my contemporaries? Older men are where it’s at, clearly. Gimme those sweet, sweet daddy issues.
“So do you just hang out here picking up guys?” He licks foam off his top lip, sending my mind off in tantalizing scenarios.
“No. I have other bars for that. I came in here because I needed a drink. You were the pleasant surprise.”
Red pools at the top of his cheeks. He turns his attention to the game. He shakes his head. The way he intently watches, as if terrified to pull his eyes from the TV, makes me believe he’s nervous more than anything.
“Are you married?” I ask. “Because I didn’t see a ring.”
“What? No.”
I study him to make sure he’s telling the truth. I may be a slut, but I’m not a homewrecker.
“I’m divorced,” he says.
His attention returns to the TV. Is he nervous or just an asshole? Griffin doesn’t give much away.
“So here’s the thing, Griffin. When you grab a drink with someone, it’s typical to actually talk to them.”
“Sorry. I’m kinda…Sorry. I have trouble talking to cute guys.” He gives me a sheepish smile, his beard creasing to make room. There’s something oddly wholesome about it. “And it’s a good game. Although Denko is passing for shit tonight.”
It’s something I noticed, too, while I was drinking alone and watching the game. The center has had multiple passes nearly get scooped up by the other team. He’s being sloppy, something a casual viewer wouldn’t necessarily pick up on necessarily.
I flag down the bartender for a refill.
“You still play?” Griffin asks me.
“What?”
“Hockey.”
I do a double take. Usually I have to fake a recovering sports injury to tip guys off that I played. “How could you tell?”
“You have a look to you.” His gaze lingers on me. Must be a look he likes.
I thank the bartender when he returns with my drink. “Has being in the NHL permanently altered my DNA or something?”
Nobody can resist a pro athlete. Not women. Not gay men. Hell, I could probably pull my fair share of straight dudes, too.
“You’re in the NHL?” His reaction is adorable, as if he’s twelve and just met his hero.
“I was. I retired.” I snort a laugh. “Retired,” I say with air quotes.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-four. Not a fan of early bird specials. Yet.”
“Fuck. Were you really in the NHL?”
“I really was. Four whole years.”
“Why’d you stop?”
I find myself without a witty reply. Guys don’t tend to ask me that. They’re too bowled over by me playing in the NHL at all. “One too many concussions.”
Griffin nods, instantly getting it.
“I’m glad I was able to play professionally.”
“Who did you play for?”
“The Beavers.”
“You miss the Pacific Northwest?”
I seesaw my head. “Depends on the weather.”
“How’d you wind up back here?” Griffin’s eye lights up with questions.
“I’m from the area. I love it here. My condo at the Bellmore has a sweet view of the river. And I wanted to be close to family. They’re my rock.” I’m proud of myself for getting that out without throwing up in my mouth.
“You live at the Bellmore. Fancy.” Griffin raises his eyebrows, his left one peeking up from the eye patch.
“It’s all right. I like its security. Some fans can be a little too passionate.”
“What’s your full name?” Griffin takes out his phone. He has to hold it at his right side to see, which I find adorable.
I push the phone down. “It’s kinda rude to Wikipedia a guy you’re flirting with while he’s sitting next to you.”
“Sorry. You’re right.” He puts his phone down as blush reddens his cheeks for a moment. “What position did you play?”
“You want to know my positions, you’re gonna have to buy us another round.”
He lets out another grumbly laugh, and I can tell it comes from a deep, genuine place inside him. The kind of laugh one doesn’t deploy during small talk.
Griffin stares at the wall of bottles, his jaw getting tight for a moment. “Fuck. You played in the NHL.”
“It was pretty sweet, I won’t lie.” My stomach twists in a cruel knot. Some lies are easier than others. I put my hand over it to chill.
“That’s…nice. Really nice.” There’s a melancholy dip in his voice, a gray cloud passing over his excitement. “You lived the dream.”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t minimize it. You worked damn hard since you were a kid to make it into the NHL. You should be proud, Jack.”
The passion in his voice jars me a little. Griffin isn’t one for surface level conversation I’m noticing; his genuine aura is refreshing.
I regale him with a few stories about my time playing in the NHL, only sharing the fun, cool moments, the things that people want to hear about. If one wants to get laid, one does not bring up the downsides of being a pro athlete. I rub my leg against his, touch his thick arm repeatedly during my stories. I need to keep this plane on course.
But I also find myself talking more than I want, something I do when I’m excited. Typically, I engage in some small talk, bump some uglies, and call it a night. There isn’t much excitement in a sure thing. Most guys aren’t a mystery, or at least not one worth solving. There’s something about Griffin, his nervousness mixed with his guardedness, that makes me keep wanting to peel back layers.
“What’s your story?” I ask, eager for more clues to this puzzle. “You obviously know the game. Were you in the minors?”
“I played in high school.”
“How long ago was that?”
He thinks it over. “Late nineties. I’ll let you do the math.”
I try to calculate how old that makes him. Math was never my strong suit. I’d take out my phone to use the calculator, but that’s even ruder than Wikipedia. He’s gotta be in his forties, which only turns me on more.
“Were you the star forward?” I ask, half mockingly.
“Defenseman, but a star.” He gives a faint chuckle. “I thought I was going to make it. So did my coach, my teammates, my mom. College and NHL scouts were fighting over the chance to talk to me.” He stares into his drink. “But one bad collision changed everything. This other player and I were going for the puck. At the last minute, he jams his stick out to stop me. The end of it busts through my face shield and straight into my eye.”
I gasp, which I know isn’t the respectful reaction, but shock overtakes me as I imagine the scene. Guilt immediately takes over me.
“I’m sorry.”
He waves it off. He’s probably used to it. “On the way to the game that day, my face shield had gotten cracked because a box in my car’s trunk fell on it. That made it vulnerable enough…”
My dad once said freak accidents are just a lot of little accidents piled on top of each other. The circumstances that led to that collision are one in a million, yet one in a million occurrences happen all the time.
“But that other player, he came at me with his stick. You don’t do that.” His face gets red thinking about his opponent, and I don’t blame him. “I’ll spare you the gory details involved with reattaching my eye. But after that, the scouts didn’t want to fight over me. Go figure.” He sips his beer. “My mom didn’t have the money to send me to college, and I didn’t have the grades to get a scholarship. All I wanted was to play in the NHL. I loved it. Aside from my kids, I didn’t know you could love something that much, like it turns your chest into an overinflated balloon always on the verge of popping. I was going to be a hot draft pick, buy my mom a nice house, and give her the life she deserved, show her that all her sacrifice and hard work so I could play hockey would pay off. Fuck, I’m sorry.” He rubs his forehead, letting out an embarrassed chuckle. “I’m killing the mood. You don’t want a sob story.”
I find that I do. It’s genuine and honest, a sharp change among my hookups. It makes it really hard to treat this guy as the one-night stand he’s supposed to be. My heart beats in my ears, even though my heart isn’t supposed to be anywhere near this interaction.
“It’s okay.” I put a hand on his shoulder, even though I really want to give him a hug. “It sucks.”
“It is what it is. Can’t change the past. It was a long time ago.” He waves it off, like it’s well in the past. Or he wishes it were.
“And I know all about wanting to make your parents proud. My dad was the proverbial sports parent. If I won a game, he loved me. If I didn’t, he wanted nothing to do with me. He didn’t even try to hide it. He didn’t buy into that whole ‘I love you no matter what’ thing that parents are supposed to do.”
What the fuck am I doing? Telling him about my shitty relationship with my dad, something I don’t even talk about with my friends. It’s not flirting material. Something about Griffin makes me want to open up, like I want to match his vulnerability. He’s quickly turning me into an unlocked safe, waiting to be yanked open and robbed.
“That’s fucked up. I’m sorry,” Griffin says. “He must love that you went pro.”
“Didn’t work like I thought.” I bit my lip, leaving it at that because I should not be sharing this shit with a hot stranger. “Do you still get along with your mom?”
“She passed almost twenty years ago.”
“And your dad?”
“Heart attack when I was ten.”
“Fuck.” My math skills are decent enough to know he was an orphan by thirty. Griffin is quickly turning from a bull I want to ride to a floppy eared dog I want to nurse back to health.
“To hockey?” I hold up my glass.
“Cheers.” Griffin snorts as he clinks it.
“Hey. Do you want to go somewhere?” I put my hand on his leg, inching up. “I have a view for you.”