23. Jack
23
JACK
O ver the next two weeks, the juju was strong with Griffin and me. We did whatever we could to keep that good luck streak going. Whether that entailed giving each other handjobs in the Summers Rink parking lot, or blowing Griffin in my apartment garage, or having Griffin push me against a tree in the woods behind Summers Rink as he ate me raw.
Nobody could say we weren’t focused on winning.
And it was working. Over the next two Sundays, the Blades and the Comebacks won their respective games. I felt myself come back into my own on the ice. I was quicker and nimbler on my skates. I was nailing shots that I couldn’t make to save my life a month ago. The confidence that had eluded me when I joined the team had finally made itself known. I could proudly say that I belonged on the ice.
Even better than that, I was having a fucking blast. I tried to keep my angry game face on during games, but I’d catch myself smiling constantly. There was no overbearing dad or coach breathing down my neck. I was playing hockey because I wanted to and finding joy.
Pressure was building, though, as more people came to our games and buzzed about the Sourwood Cup on social media. Around town, I got a few nods of support, too.
The good juju was working on Griffin, too. I hung back and watched his game last week in stunned silence. I pray to God that I could be that nimble at his age. He was a bolt of thunder on the ice. Who could guess that he hadn’t played in decades? It really was like riding a bike. My admiration for his skill was twinged with fear that I’d actually lose to him in the Sourwood Cup. Griffin had gotten his groove back. I really shouldn’t be helping my opponent. But I can’t stop.
On the ice, my mind was clear. My whole world was the game. But off the ice, I couldn’t stop thinking about Griffin and when I could see him next. When I could taste him, touch him, smell him, hear him. When I could laugh with him.
“Deep breath.” Miller sits on the floor of his yoga studio sitting cross-legged, his eyes closed. “And exhale.”
All the Blades exhale on cue, a loud whoosh echoing in Miller’s studio.
“If there is a mental barnacle clinging to your mind, now is the time to gently pluck it off and cast it back peacefully into the sea.”
“Aren’t barnacles technically parasites?” asks Fuentes.
“Be gone, barnacle,” Miller says, and I can’t tell whether or not that was meant for Fuentes.
I shut my eyes and try to cast out thoughts of Griffin. I don’t need to think about Griffin. I only need to suck him off.
That gets me wondering why we haven’t had sex yet. I tried initiating it in my garage the other day, but he declined and wanted to stick with blow jobs. Some guys are very strict when it comes to the good juju. Perhaps Griffin believes that having full-on sex will scramble the good luck pattern we’ve established. Good juju is more fragile than a wine glass.
Fuck, I shouldn’t be thinking this much about Griffin and sex and sex with Griffin. Our time together is simply a means of improving our game. People I get close to have a tendency of turning their backs on me. I won’t be adding Griffin to that list.
“And inhale peace and calm.” Miller sucks in a breath. I follow accordingly. “And exhale stress and anger. Good.”
I take two more cleansing breaths and find some degree of peace, if only for a second before Woody, our goalie, lets one rip.
“My bad,” he says.
Miller holds back his anger long enough to put his hands together and wish us namaste.
“You ready?” Fuentes asks me when the class breaks.
“For this Sunday? We have it in the bag.” We’re facing the Overbites, a team made up of jolly dentists and orthodontists who hand out free toothpaste samples during intermission. The real win for them is improving Sourwood’s oral hygiene.
“For next Sunday.” A split-second of panic flashes across Fuentes’s big, brown eyes.
“I’m totally ready.”
“So are they,” says Miller. “At their game last week, the Comebacks shut out another team thanks to Griffin Harper.”
Whatever Zen Miller had is gone with the mention of the Comebacks.
“Griffin just hit a little hot streak. They haven’t played us. And when they do, we won’t make them forget,” I say.
“Whatever you’ve been doing, keep doing it. You’re on a hot streak, too.” Fuentes rolls up his yoga map.
“Oh, I will definitely keep doing it.” I hold my rolled up yoga mat over my hardening cock.
* * *
I spend my Friday night at home going down a YouTube rabbit hole of 1990s NHL hockey games. I stand over my sink and eat ramen with one hand while holding my phone in the other. There are countless better ways to position myself, but I’m too sucked in to move.
An email notification dings on my phone, throwing me from my algorithm-induced haze. It’s from Darlene at the airport. Considering it’s being sent on a Friday evening, I can only guess what she wanted to tell me.
Dear Jack, while we all loved meeting with you, unfortunately…
I exit out of the email and return to YouTube. Oddly enough, I don’t have a reaction to the news. There’s no crestfallen dip in my chest. It feels more like I dodged a bullet. I shove another forkful of ramen in my mouth and decide to get serious.
I click open my web browser and navigate to a job board website. I scroll down endless open opportunities and upload my resume machine gun style. This is what I’m supposed to do, right? Keep applying until someone bites. It feels like there’s not much choice involved with a job hunt, which there should be since I’ll be spending forty hours each week there. I wish I had some direction here, some secret talent that I could leverage. I hate feeling so lost. Hopefully, the universe has a clearer idea for my future.
After sending untold numbers of resumes into the ether, most of which will never be acknowledged, someone buzzes my apartment. My dick immediately assumes it’s Griffin and gets hard.
“Hey sexy,” I say into the intercom, deciding to have a little bit of fun this evening.
“It’s Dad.”
Awkward. His voice is the ultimate boner killer.
“Are you expecting someone?” he asks.
“Just being stupid. One second.” I bang my head against my front door as penance for my dumb move. Then I buzz Dad up.
He comes with a box in hand. I recognize it from when I sifted through my old bedroom for the lucky bracelet.
“I figured you should have this. I should’ve asked you what you wanted to keep from your old room before I packed it up.” He can’t make full eye contact with me, like he feels just as awkward as I do. Dad only came to my apartment once and looked around in disgust. He probably remembered the swanky high-rise I used to live in with a walk-in closet as big as this whole studio.
“Thanks.” I take the box from him. Inside are medals and trophies from my hockey days. Framed clippings. It’s a sad, cluttered shrine to a guy I used to be, the one who was going to finish what his dad started.
“There’s a lot of great stuff in there. Your first hockey jersey from your peewee days. A letter you wrote to yourself in crayon about how you were going to be MVP when you got older.” Dad smiles warmly at the box, unable to resist the pull of memories.
“I remember that.” In fifth grade, we had to write a letter to our future selves. I wrote about being a pro hockey player who drives a flying car. Half-right isn’t bad. I flip open the letter. “How has my handwriting gotten worse?”
“And your bobblehead collection. I didn’t throw those out.”
“All three of them?” I wanted to be one of those kids who collected things, but it rarely lasted past a few items. I either got bored or forgot about it when hockey started up.
Dad laughs as I pull out the bobbleheads of the players from my favorite team. I idolized them growing up, until they passed me over in the draft. I keep eyeing Dad, the warm and fuzzy moment between us feeling like an alien experience. It’s odd not having him scowl in withering disappointment.
I ride the moment rather than question it. I dig farther in the box and pull out an old picture from my first game. Mom and Dad flank me, proud as can be.
“There were some old pictures in the bottom of your old closet. Thought you might, I don’t know…you might want them.”
Mom is beaming, her smile taunting me.
“Why did she leave?” I ask.
Dad sighs. “We got married way too young. I was barely twenty, and she was nineteen. We’d only been dating a few months when she got knocked up, but her parents were strict Catholic.”
I snort. “I figured it was a shotgun wedding.” Their expressions in their wedding photo read more as panic than romantic bliss.
“In a way, I don’t blame her for leaving. She held out hope that my shoulder would improve, and I could play again.” He shrugs, defeated. “This is not the life she wanted.”
I’ve thought about trying to find her, but I couldn’t bear meeting her only to get rejected again.
I toss the picture back in the box and cover it with my old uniform. I don’t have the strength to rip it up, and I hate myself for that.
How could a mother beam at her son and then leave? People are complex, and they contain contradictions, but it’s something I’ve never been able to square. In hockey, defense is the most important position, more important than offense. Same goes for life, I guess.
“You don’t need to bring over Mom’s stuff.”
“You looked good in your hockey gear. I thought you might…well, it’s up to you what you do with it.”
“She didn’t want me, so I don’t want her. Easy as that.” I close the box and place it on the floor next to my couch, one of the few places of free space. “You really came all the way over here to drop off a box?”
“I haven’t seen you in a bit.” Dad stands by the door, hands in his pockets, looking a little too innocent. “I’ve been hearing about that big game. The Sourwood Cup.”
I roll my eyes. Is this thing the Stanley Cup finals? Never underestimate people’s desire to root for something.
“Sounds like it’s going to be quite the event. I know I was dismissive of your interest in this league, but I’m glad you signed up. I’ve been hearing you had some great games recently. Just like old times.” His eyes twinkle with distant memories of cheering on his winning son.
“Thanks?” Hearing Dad be supportive is like walking down a dark alley in a horror film waiting for the killer to strike.
“People are talking about it. I saw the paper did a big profile on you and the team. It’s good to hear your name getting talked about again.”
I don’t even remember what I talked to the reporter about. Fingers crossed she made me sound like an intelligent human being.
Dad smiles, more twinkling eyes, more walking down the dark alley. I get the sense of wheels turning in his head. “Because the game has been getting a surprising amount of coverage, especially around you, I decided to be proactive and make some calls.”
“What kind of calls?”
“When players leave professional hockey, where do a lot of them segue into?”
“Shilling for crypto?”
Dad ignores my joke. “Coaching.”
The word is a pit dropping in my stomach.
“A lot of players become coaches. They coach in the NHL, in the minors, and even at the collegiate level. All of your coaches were former players.”
I remember old coaches regaling us with tales from the good ole days of hockey, when you could be really violent on the ice.
“I made some calls to the local colleges around here?—”
“You’re no longer my manager. You can’t represent me.”
“I called as a father looking out for his son.” His warm tone makes me want to vomit. “Hudson University has an assistant coach position open. The head coach remembers you not only from the NHL but from when you played in high school. He was happy to read that you’re still playing.”
I hate to give him the satisfaction of being right, but I do admire the hustle on my behalf. Even though “my behalf” always means “our behalf.” I’m still jobless and moneyless, and coaching sounds more enticing than restocking an office fridge.
“He’s going to be at the Sourwood Cup. If you can kick ass on the ice and bring in a huge victory, it’ll show him you’ve still got the juice.”
The opportunity is enticing, but there’s a weird pang that hits my stomach when I try to imagine myself coaching. It’s like watching a movie and the sound isn’t synched. I can follow along but it’s still off. Part of the fun is that the league is recreational and only a small part of my week. I don’t know if I want to make hockey my full-time job again. As stressful as job hunting can be, there’s something exciting about imagining a new path.
“I’ll think about it,” I say.
“Think about it. Nothing’s going to happen until after the game. Coaching could be a great next step for you.”
There’s something slightly different about his overture this time, as if maybe a small part of this is coming from a genuine place of a dad looking out for his son.
He hands me a business card. “Here’s his information in case you want to talk with him more about the position.”
I secure it to my fridge via a hockey puck magnet pulled from the box of old things.
“Whatever happens, I can’t wait to watch you kick the shit out of Griffin Harper. Hell, I’ve been waiting over twenty-five years for this.” A vengeance-fueled smile twists across his lips.
A pit grows in my stomach, thinking about everything I’ve been doing with Griffin unbeknownst to Dad or anyone else.
“Yeah, it’ll be a good game,” I say.
“You don’t sound as confident as you should. Are you actually worried?”
“Dad, what happened with you and Griffin was ages ago. Maybe let it go.”
And there’s the Dad I know, the one whose engine runs on grievance and anger. His forehead crests into a hard crinkle.
“I wish I could, Jack,” he says, a rare moment of self-awareness. “Your hockey career might not have gone the way you wanted, but you still got to have it. You never had a dream ripped away from you at the last minute by some cocky, bullheaded asshole. He wanted to take me out. He wanted to be the star for the scouts in the audience. He wanted all the attention. If he had it his way, he would’ve knocked me unconscious.” His jaw tightens, the moment forever fresh in his mind. “As you get older, you truly understand that life has no do-overs. You only get one lap around the track. He took that from me. I can never get that life back. I can never get that time back.”
I want to tell him that I understand, but I bite my tongue. Some cans of worms aren’t worth opening. I don’t want to ruin this moment we’re sharing, when for once, it doesn’t feel like we’re enemies.
The game of hockey is unpredictable. I go into every game knowing there’s a chance that we won’t win, no matter how crappy the other team is. Even the Overbites could give us a run for our money this Sunday. Yet Dad’s hopeful, hangdog face gets the better of me.
When Mom left, he was all I had. It created a hardened bond between us that can’t be broken, no matter how toxic. His pride when I’d win a game filled me with a kind of warmth I wasn’t getting anywhere else. The need for Dad’s approval is a drug I can’t stop huffing no matter how bad it is for me.
“Don’t worry, Dad. I promise you we’re going to win.”