Chapter Nine March
“I’m not going to sugarcoat this,” Benns said to the team.
Nick had taken a knee on the ice, mostly for a break.
The rest of the team stood, and everyone on the bench crowded around.
“Taking a timeout in the first period to settle the team isn’t a good sign.
It’s not something I want to do, but we need a minute to step back and think. ”
Nick looked up at the scoreboard.
Option One: they rallied and held their ground. They might not score, but it’d (hopefully) be less embarrassing. If they were lucky and the other team crapped out, they might pull off the W.
Option Two: they continued to hemorrhage goals. They got their asses kicked and felt like crap, and it potentially spiraled into a losing season.
It was smart to take the timeout now to regroup because Option Two sounded awful. It might not be “disband the team and start over” bad, but it was bad enough to make morale so low that some people would look for other teams.
Like the people on the team who were already too good to be playing D4. Those people might see it as time to cut their losses and move on.
Without meaning to, he glanced toward Brady. He looked like he was a million miles away, staring blankly at the ice in front of him.
“I know it’s a short bench tonight,” Benns said as though apologizing for a third of the team not showing up, as if he had any control over it, “but we’re being sloppy. That’s something we can control even if we’re tired. Does anyone have any other suggestions? Something to get us fired up?”
Gail caught Nick’s eye and mouthed Fix it!
Nick’s heart lurched. Shit, shit, shit, what could he do?
“We’re short on forwards,” he blurted out. He could feel everyone’s eyes on him; as futile as it was, he willed himself to not blush. “But we’ve got enough D to rotate through two lines. Maybe move Br—Jens up to our line to fill in for Young Greg?”
It was a good thing Brady was already sitting on the bench, or he might have fallen over.
Benns looked around, mentally counting the defenseman.
“We do have five, so it does make sense to take one off…” he said reluctantly.
His eyes darted between Nick and Brady. Apparently Gail wasn’t the only one who’d noticed something, even if Benns was too polite to say anything.
“It would give us two full lines on the front and back ends. Jensie, you okay with that?”
Brady looked over at Nick, something akin to terror on his face. Nick offered an encouraging smile. They were still friends even if things had gotten weird for a bit. This was salvageable. Nick wasn’t holding the hotel against him, and maybe this was the olive branch he needed to prove it.
Brady gave a minute nod and turned to Benns. “Yeah, I’m good. Makes sense.”
“All right.” Benns didn’t sound confident. No one else spoke up with another suggestion, so he shrugged. “Let’s line ’em up. Jens, get out there. GG and Nicki, you alternate on the faceoffs. Let’s get some goals.”
The whistle blew, the puck dropped, and as if in slow motion, Nick watched.
In all honesty, he’d expected to win that draw.
Nick was good at faceoffs, he knew this ref’s ticks, and the kid he squared off against had a bad track-record tonight.
He knew his D would be expecting the puck, since Nick was also pretty good at aiming their way.
So in perhaps overeager anticipation, he won it and took off for the blue line. Maybe he’d get the pass.
He had not expected Brady swooping down to grab it before Mags or Lexi could get to it.
It never occurred to him that he’d watch Brady dangling through the other team to get it into the zone.
Luckily, Nick’s own momentum carried him over the line and up to the slot, or he’d never have gotten there fast enough.
The fact that he swung at all when Brady passed the puck was pure reflex; his brain had not caught up with the action.
The puck ending up in the back of the net with two minutes still left in the first? Pure accident.
“Good boy,” Gail praised him when he finished his shift. “Knew you’d figure it out. I’ll almost forgive you for stealing my D partner for the night.”
“It’s one goal,” Nick grumbled. He tried not to be too obvious as he looked over to where Brady sat, well out of earshot. “It’s just luck.”
“It’s good chemistry,” she countered.
“Luck,” he argued. “The chemistry hasn’t been there for weeks.”
“Fine,” she said, though years of experience with Jenna’s “fines” told him this was more about her humoring him than actually agreement. “Then make sure you’re lucky a few more times until the chemistry is back.”
“That’s not how luck works.”
“And don’t expect to keep Jensie as a winger long term. I am not dealing with anyone but him on the backcheck if I can help it. Fuck, I’ll become a forward before I let that happen.”
The second period was better. The team was pumped about not getting shut out, and it helped them keep the other team from scoring. The Jagr Bombs weren’t putting up the points, but 1:5 certainly felt better than 0:5 or 1:6.
There were so few players today, Brady and Nick saw a lot of ice time together.
They weren’t quite in their usual groove, but things were clicking more than they had lately.
Actual words didn’t appear to be their forte, but they could still speak hockey.
They could talk via passes and blocks and breakouts to say there really was a good foundation underneath all the mess.
They could still win games.
They could still rebuild their friendship.
It was a passing thought that became a mantra after Nick scored again. It was a garbage goal, one that bounced off his shin guard and in, and it felt amazing.
Okay, it kind of hurt because it hadn’t hit his shin guard clean and it’d been a slapshot from Brady. But the goal felt really good, and knowing that Brady had assisted on both his goals made it even better.
We can still score. We can still win games. We could still win this game.
Of all people, it was Benns who scored next. His strengths were more in the captain, quasi-coach role than on the ice. He was a strong skater but slow, his stickhandling wasn’t great, and he looked down too much to make the good heads-up plays he encouraged in email chains and group chats.
So obviously, the bench went nuts when he scored his first goal in possibly four months.
“BENNSIE!!!”
“OH CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN!!”
And then a group chant of: “Benns! Benns! Benns! Benns!”
“That’s enough,” he said through a grin. “Three to five isn’t anything to celebrate.”
“Watch us,” Lexi said. “Only thing that’d make us go crazier is if Nicki gets the hat— OW!”
Gail looked like she wanted to impale him with her stick. “How dare you say the H-word.”
“What? Hat— STOP HITTING ME!”
“You don’t say that word,” Gail said and poked his helmet to punctuate each word. “Just like you don’t say ‘shutout’ before the end of the game. If you jinx this for us, so help me I will break your stick over your thick head.”
“For us?” Nick interrupted. “Aren’t I the one who’d need to score? Isn’t it my hat trick?”
“I wouldn’t get in the middle of that,” Brady warned. As the game went on and on, his place on the bench had gotten closer and closer to Nick’s; now they were side by side.
To make transitions on and off the ice easier, of course. Being close enough to whisper in his ear was just a side effect.
“Yeah?” Nick asked with an amused smile as though his hands weren’t clamming up in his gloves. Brady was talking to him again, thank fuck.
“She’s feisty. And superstitious. And mean.” Despite his words, Brady looked rather fond of his usual D partner.
“ ’kay. I’ll try not to anger the beast.”
The other players around them shuffled as they got ready for the third period to start. When Gail was safely on the ice, Brady leaned in and whispered, “We gotta get you that hatty.”
Nick gasped loudly. “Y’all hear what Jensie just said!? You hear that flagrant use of the H-word!?”
Brady shouldered him. Hard.
“Injuring the best player of the night!” Nick called out. “Ref! Hey, ref! I need help!”
“Ha fucking ha. Shut up before they believe you.”
There was a familiar feeling bubbling up inside of him—that stupid joy he’d always had to tamp down whenever he was with Brady. It pissed him off. They’d had a chance, and nothing had come of it. This right here—this back-and-forth on the bench?—this was the most it could ever feasibly be.
And yet his heart hadn’t quite gotten the message.
Give it time… before, I held out hope because he seemed interested. Now I know he won’t act on it, even with the perfect opportunity.
It’ll always be a what-if, and I have to come to terms with that if we’re going to move on.
Oh well. Plenty of fish in the sea, he’d get back on the horse someday, yadda yadda yadda. He could text Jenna later if he needed more inspirational quotes. Right now, there was something much more important to focus on.
We can still score. We can still win games.
We can still win this game.
Two goals were enough to make the other team take notice.
Nick was closed out of every opportunity before they’d even really developed.
GG and Brady and occasionally the defensemen were getting him the passes, but he never had anywhere to go.
They’d double-team him to make sure he had zero chance of scoring again.
Not that he necessarily wanted the hat trick. It was kind of the hockey dream to get three goals in a game, like it’d once been a dream to see a hat trick live. He’d lost his favorite Caps hat years ago thanks to Ovi, and now he longed to know that thrill for himself.
Okay, so yes, he wanted it… and that was a very different thing from getting it. This close, and he still didn’t believe it was a thing that could happen to him.
Kind of like him and Brady getting together. Technically plausible, but the universe was against all the pieces actually aligning the way they needed to.