8. Jack
8
JACK
B y day, Dominick Miller helps people find serenity as a yoga instructor. Yet on the ice, he is one angry, aggressive motherfucker. I’m glad I play as his teammate and not his opponent.
“Imagine your lungs filling all the way up with air. Breathe in peace and serenity. And then exhale, letting out all the impurities tainting your mind and spirit.” Miller sits cross-legged at the front of the yoga studio, his back perfectly straight. His tight athleisure shorts leave little to the imagination, forcing me to stare at a smudge on the mirror.
“Take this moment to connect with yourself. The balance that you seek on your skates will only come from within.”
I turn to Fuentes, who does the jerk off motion in response. The room quiets with peaceful silence which is broken a second later by our teammate Ian ripping ass.
“It’s okay,” Miller says, not missing a beat. “That is a normal bodily function. It means your body is dispelling negative energy.”
“Well, in that case,” Ian says before ripping off another one.
We all crack up, laughter bouncing off the mirrored walls. Miller clenches his lips and clings to his Zen, though the protruding vein in his neck tells us we’re skating on thin ice.
“And now we get into cat-cow pose,” he says. He instructs us to get on all fours, alternating between arching our back and making it go concave.
“Yo, which one is the cat and which one is the cow?” Fuentes asks.
“It doesn’t matter,” Miller says.
Cat-cow is one of the silliest names for an exercise, but damn if it doesn’t stretch out my back and relieve the tension. I can feel my spine extending.
“Hey, I can’t give you a ride to work tomorrow. I’m taking my mom out for her birthday.” Fuentes loves coming up with secret activities for his family for birthdays and anniversaries. Last year, he took his mom on a hot air balloon ride. They’re super close, a foreign concept in my family.
“It’s okay. I forgot to tell you, I quit my job.”
“What?” Fuentes gasps, his hands almost slipping out from under him.
Miller shushes him. “Calm thoughts. Calm thoughts.”
“I couldn’t stay there. It was a very toxic work environment.” Everything with me and Dad is toxic. “Don’t worry. I have rent covered this month, and I’ll have a new job to take care of rent next month.”
“Awesome.” Fuentes gives me a thumbs up, but his heart doesn’t seem in it. “What kind of job are you looking for?”
“Yoga is meant to be a silent conversation with your spirit,” Miller says.
I shrug my shoulders at Fuentes’s question. “Whoever will hire me.”
“Come on, man,” he says, sounding disappointed. “Is there anything you want to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t want to hop from job to job, only focused on making rent. Don’t you have, like, ambition to do something?”
Sometimes I forget that Fuentes isn’t just a good friend and a fun hang. He’s a smart businessman. His point stings, but it gets me thinking…and the thinking leads to a dead end. My only ambition growing up was to make it to the NHL. That’s what I trained for day and night. That’s the only thing Dad said I could be. I don’t know if I can be anything else except for a hockey player.
“Fuentes, you’re fucking up my Zen,” Miller says, his hands curled into fists. He takes an abnormally deep breath and exhales. “And Gross, you should be paying attention. You definitely need calm after that last practice.”
Is getting judged by your yogi part of class? Miller has us get into warrior pose on our feet. I find it deeply ironic that yoga is about being Zen, yet one of the most popular poses is called warrior.
“The fuck you talking about?” I ask.
“Yeah, what was that about?” Fuentes asks me. “You looked like you wanted to rip the Comebacks player a new asshole.”
Maybe it’s because that player didn’t want to do anything with mine. When I saw Griffin’s face at practice, he had the same patronizing expression that he wore on the roof when he cast me aside after leading me on. I look around and find my other teammates eyeing me.
“Excuse me for sticking up for our practice time, for being competitive, for wanting to win! We can’t let ourselves lose to a team called the Comebacks for fuck’s sakes.” I would never hear the end of it from Dad, his resigned satisfaction that he was right—he raised a loser. “Can we go back to stretching?”
I signal for Miller to get on with it. He instructs us to get on our stomachs and move into the cobra position. Again, another yoga position named after a snake that can either kill you with venom or crush you to death.
* * *
The next morning, I take a break from filling out job applications online and run over to Summers Rink. I needed to sign one last form. So many waivers to sign since there’re so many ways to mangle your body in this sport.
The administrative wing is through a door next to the snack bar. The smell of popcorn fills my nose as I head down the hall to Marcy Summers’s office.
I stop just before her door. Griffin’s grumbly voice echoes in the hall. I shift a touch closer for optimal eavesdropping.
“Jack Gross needs to be disqualified,” he says.
What the fuck? I knew Griffin wasn’t interested in me, but his words are filled with animosity. I guess he didn’t like being shown off on his own turf.
“And why is that?” she asks in her thick New York accent. She has the tough, no-nonsense attitude a woman needs in a male-dominated field. Not to mention all the hyper-competitive parents trying to “do right” by their perfect angel children.
“He’s a ringer,” Griffin spits out. “He doesn’t belong here.”
“Goodbye, Griffin. Tell your cutie patootie kids I say hi.”
I crack a smile. At least someone in that room has my back.
“Marcy, he was a professional hockey player for several years.”
“Was. He’s not anymore. So long as a player isn’t currently playing in a professional capacity, they’re eligible to play in this league.”
“He has no business playing in an extracurricular, amateur league.”
“You make the rules now?”
“This is a fun, laid-back league, and I don’t think it’s fair to the other players to be thrown in with a pro.”
“No hockey league with you in it is fun and laid back,” she says.
Go Marcy! I mime a silent cheer in the hall.
“He’s unsportsmanlike and obnoxious. Look, I don’t want to be a tattletale, but did you hear how he acted the other day? He refused for his team to leave the ice so we could practice. We don’t want that kind of attitude in the league.”
“We?” Marcy shoots back. “The rink was accidentally double-booked. I heard he played you for it, and it didn’t go so well. For you.”
I smile to myself, trying to remember how sharp I was on the ice…and trying to forget how good Griffin looked in his hockey gear.
“He’s just some rich asshole who wants to slum it in our league,” Griffin says with such conviction it shakes me for a moment. Whatever connection I thought we had, I really, really misjudged. “It’s the other teams that I’m worried about. You’re going to have players quit the league if the Blades have such an unfair advantage. Or they’ll resort to finding their own ringers, and the integrity of the league will be ruined.”
“I’ll monitor the situation,” she deadpans. “I’ve known you since you were a teen with bad acne. Watched you on the ice in game after game. You were never one to get intimidated, Griff.”
“I’m not intimidated by him.”
“Are you worried about losing to this guy?”
“I’m not going to lose to him,” he says with absolute conviction.
“Really? Because you did the other morning,” I say.
There are few things that bring me genuine joy in this world. But the pure shock on Griffin’s face as he realizes I heard every word he said about me is definitely one of them.
“Good morning, Marcy! Here’s the signed liability form for you.” I stroll past him and hand her my missing form. She’s everything I envisioned from her voice: big hair, big glasses, a withering stare that could look through the toughest athlete.
“Thanks, sweetie,” she says, likely her nickname for all players under the age of thirty.
I turn to Griffin, still white as a ghost. It’s the first time I get to see him in good lighting. His confident nose, the dignified wrinkles just starting at the corners of his face. Even in this ugly fluorescent lighting, he’s gorgeous. Damn him. His right eye is a vibrant, transfixing shade of green. A spring meadow I could lay in and watch the clouds float by. That is, if he wasn’t being such a prick.
“Griffin, I promise, when I wipe the floor with you in our next game, it won’t be because I’m a professional hockey player. Or a rich asshole. It’s because I’m just a better player than you.” I cock my head and flash him the most fuck-you smile in history.
He turns to Marcy, like she’s a ref that won’t eject me into the penalty box. An amused smile crawls onto her lips.
“What are we going to do about practicing?” Griffin asks Marcy, then flicks his eyes to me. “Because it’s obvious the Blades don’t want to share.”
Marcy types on her computer, a desktop with a fat back monitor that’s almost as old as me. “I can move some things around. How’re Thursday mornings at seven?”
“That’s too late for us. That’s crunch time for getting kids to school,” he says.
“The Blades will take it.” I nod my confirmation to Marcy but don’t look at Griffin.
“Thanks,” he utters.
“We respect our elders. Is that sportsmanlike enough for you?” I shoot him a glare.
I leave Marcy’s office and pass a group of figure skaters practicing triple axels on the ice. I call an Uber, ignoring how much it’s going to cost. The faster I can get away from Griffin, the better. I hate that I still think he’s cute even though he has such a low opinion of me.
“Jack.”
Fuck. Griffin jogs to catch up to me outside. I try to ignore how good his chest and belly look in flannel.
“Where’s your car?” he asks.
“I called an Uber.”
His eyebrows jump. “Nice life,” he says.
I don’t bother correcting him about my financial status.
“Jack,” he begins, then trails off.
“You’re trying to get me thrown out of the league?”
“You’re a ringer!” He clenches his eyes shut then reopens them, calmer. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re a sore loser.”
“And refusing to get off the ice so we could practice? Acting like a total asshole? What do you call that?”
Fire blazes up my neck at the accusation. “I can’t believe you tried to get me ejected. And that you thought it would work.”
“I didn’t expect someone who played professionally would want to join a league like ours. Especially because you didn’t seem in love with the sport the other night.”
I step closer, my scowl shushing him good. “You don’t say another word about the other night, okay?”
I want it wiped from my memory. I want the warm and fuzzy feeling it still gives me to vanish for good. The Uber remains five minutes away. Fuck.
“Look, if we’re going to be in the same league, it’s best that we clear the air,” he says, putting on his best captain voice.
I sit on a bench and cross my arms. “Okay. Clear it.”
Griffin stumbles, his face going white again. “I…I had a great time with you the other night. You’re funny, smart, warm.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Are you giving me a break-up speech?”
“What? No. We were talking and getting along?—”
“Getting along?” That is by far the worst euphemism for flirting I’ve ever heard.
“I didn’t know where you were taking me.”
“Did you think I was kidnapping you?”
“I thought we were going to grab coffee or something,” Griffin says, each word in his excuse another car in this pileup.
“Grab coffee? In the middle of the night?”
“And then suddenly we’re on a rooftop.”
“You make eyes at a guy?—”
“You made eyes at me first,” he objects.
“You have a drink with him. You flirt with him. You leave with him. You go to a quiet, secluded place with him. What did you think was going to happen on that rooftop, Griffin? We were going to play Scrabble and make friendship bracelets? There was really no other time during the evening when you could’ve bailed. You had to wait until I was on my knees like a fool?” I could use some yoga to keep my embarrassment at bay. I hate that I was made a fool, and Griffin won’t even own up to it.
“I’m sorry. I…” Just when I think a real answer is going to come out of his mouth, he clears his throat, as if shoving it back down. “I enjoyed spending time with you, and maybe we can be friends.”
I’m starting to realize that Griffin isn’t the suave, charming guy I thought he was. It’s like he’s never been with a guy. How did he ever find his ex-wife? A mail-order website? Perhaps getting pushed away from his crotch was the best thing that could’ve happened to me.
“I think the friend ship has sailed. And now I find out that you tried to have me tossed from the league?” I laugh again, and I realize that it’s masking anger. “You know what comes next, Griffin?”
“What?”
A smile slashes across my lips. “Payback.”