23. Benji
Benji
“He really got his stick in the way of that one.”
A collective cheer goes up around the living room as we all raise our glasses, taking large gulps.
We’re watching our professional team, the Minnesota Chill, as they play against the Colorado Summits, critiquing the plays and chirping nonsense at the TV as we nurse our last beers before a long five days on the road.
We like to keep tabs on where we see our futures heading.
Most of us already have a two-way contract with the Minnesota Chill, since the Leopards are the AHL team they’re tied to, but some of us have a one-way contract, and there’s always a chance to get traded.
So while we keep a closer eye on the Chill, there’s always a chance players from the other teams may soon become our linemates.
Normally, that’s where our focus is when we watch these games, but all it took was a few short days for Lyssa and her friend to make their impact. Now we can’t unhear the double entendres in everything the announcers say.
I smirk into my glass, then frown. What had been shaping up to be an amazing weekend had turned sour overnight, and I’m not sure what I did wrong.
Clearly, saying her name had been a misstep – but it led to the answers I’ve been desperate to have for weeks.
I slowed things down, gave her reassurances.
I promised she’d be okay with me. Had sleeping next to her scared her off?
Was this strange distance the price of her honesty, or mine?
I wanted to talk to her and understand where her head was at, but she hadn’t given me the chance.
And now… now, we’re about to be shoved on a bus and carted off for the next several days.
I run a hand over my face, groaning inwardly.
This girl is a flight risk, and the last thing I want is to put this distance between us, when what we have is so fragile and new.
Well, whatever this thing is…just another bullet point to add on our ever-growing list of things to discuss.
Jordie, ever observant, notices my silent suffering. “Anything you wanna talk about, buddy?”
The room goes quiet as the others eye me up, and I shift uncomfortably.
These guys can’t be bothered to shut up and listen when the rideshare outside the bar is leaving in two minutes, but sure, the second Jordie murmurs something interesting that involves my sex life, they’re all ears? Fucking figures.
“Is it Lisa?” Highcloud asks, and I bite the inside of my cheek at the use of her fake name. She clearly chose a pseudonym that would be as close to her old nickname as she could find. Lyssa.
“Yeah, she kind of ignored you that whole flight home.” Grant eyes me up. “Didn’t you spend the night with her?”
If the guys weren’t fully invested already, they are now. Nils even reaches for the remote, turning the volume down on the TV. Well, so much for our drinking game.
Even so, I stand up and fetch another beer, tugging at my chain as I go.
I take my time rummaging in the fridge, considering what to say.
I make my way back to the living room, but opt to stand, shifting on my feet.
Finally, I clear my throat. “Yeah, we fell asleep together, but we didn’t sleep together. ”
“So you two didn’t do…anything?” Grant raises a brow at me.
“I mean, we started to.” I take a sip of my beer, turning the words over in my head again before I voice them. “But we stopped. She’s been through some shit in the past.”
Sympathetic murmurs ripple across the room. “Bad ex?” Nils asks.
“The worst,” I reply, flexing my jaw.
“I’m sorry, dude,” Jordie says. “She told you about it?”
I nod, and a flicker of surprise ripples across Jordie’s face.
He knows how hard it’s been for me to get information on Lyssa, so he knows how huge this is for me.
How long I’ve been vying for these details to make it make sense; make her make sense.
Then, I see the moment it registers, and guilt floods his expression.
I can tell he’s putting two and two together – the fact she put so much distance between them when they hung out, the way she reacted to the fight in the bar.
I give him a tight smile, hoping he understands it’s behind us.
Levi’s brow furrows in confusion. “So…that’s it? It’s done?”
“I don’t know.” I huff. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. We talked, and I thought we were cool. But then she kicked me out of bed and hasn’t spoken to me since.”
The guys exchange weighted looks, and I hate the silent message it conveys. I can practically hear them screaming that it’s a lost cause. I set my beer down and begin to pace.
“Well, it’s official,” Grant announces, watching me. I pause, blinking at him, and he clarifies, “You must just suck in bed.”
Highcloud punches him. “That’s a shit joke, even for you.”
It does what I suspect he wanted it to, though, and the guys begin shifting and talking again.
“Maybe she’s just scared,” Jordie offers, as Nils puts in, “She probably just needs some time to think.”
Yeah, that’s what I’m hoping for. I’m glad to hear it’s where their minds went, too. “But if that’s the case, how much time do I give her?” I ask, then hesitate, feeling pathetic as I add, “Do I text her, or let her come to me?”
Everyone exchanges another long look. Jordie shrugs, and Highcloud runs his hand through his hair. Grant excuses himself to get another beer and Levi coughs, I suspect just to break the silence.
I swear to god. This group can learn a new power play after one walkthrough on the white board – with near-indecipherable marker lines, I might add; Coach isn’t known for his stellar handwriting – but the second a girl’s involved, we’re all fucking useless.
Finally, Jordie sighs. “Fuck, man,” he says. “I know you like her and all, but this season is huge for you. And you going after this girl is huge, too. I mean, we’ve all noticed that you haven’t really been hooking up.”
Everyone nods in agreement, and even though nobody looks judgemental, the faces of sympathy are almost worse. I feel my cheeks begin to burn as Levi asks, “Are you sure you don’t want to get back in the saddle with something more, I dunno, simple?”
My head is shaking before I’ve even answered the question aloud. “Nah, man,” I say. “It might not be simple, but it feels…right.”
The team might be useless, but I know one person who can give me the female perspective I desperately need.
I dial my sister’s number, praying I can catch her at an off time. I have about forty minutes to pack and be on the bus, and I want this conversation to happen away from the team, seeing how dismal our last attempt at discussing it went.
I don’t want simple. I want her. I just don’t know how to make it a reality.
“Yeeah-loh? What’s wrong?” My sister’s voice comes through the speaker, and I grin as I shove sweatpants into my duffel.
“What, I can’t just call my sister out of the blue to check in?”
There’s the sound of a bag crinkling, and then crunching. “No,” Gabi replies, her voice muffled as she speaks around a mouthful of what I presume are chips. “If it’s not a text, I have to assume something terrible has happened. That’s the only reason people call each other these days.”
I frown. “That makes no sense.”
“You make no sense.” Her reply is quick and snappy, but I can tell she’s smiling as she speaks again. “Seriously, though, is something up?”
I clear my throat, bracing myself for the conversation. “Yeah.” I exhale deeply. “There’s this girl, and I need your advice.”
The crunching stops, and her voice comes closer, as though she’s tugged the phone against her ear now. “What happened? Are you okay? Is it like–”
“No.” I cut her off, feeling a pang of regret course through me from causing her alarm. “No, no, this is…this is a good one, Gabs.”“Oh,” she says, then: “Oh. Benji, are you in love? What did you do?”
I laugh and shake my head at her immediate accusation.
She’s not wrong, though – she’s seen me through all of my dating years, and I haven’t always been a class act.
I certainly pissed a few women off as I was growing up, fueled by a cockiness at my abilities and my good looks.
By the time I got to this level of professional hockey, the women understood – more or less – that I didn’t want anything serious.
I didn’t know where I’d end up, and I wasn’t ready to settle down.
And then…everything with our brother happened.
And then, she happened.
My mind fixates on the other part of her question. Are you in love? Well, fuck, I can’t even think about that. First I have to get this impossible, complex, beautiful girl to even go out with me. “I don’t know what I did, Gabs,” I say.
She must hear the desperation in my tone, because her own switches from accusatory to soft. “Oh, Benj. Tell me what happened.”
And so I do. I tell her how I fucked up at the beginning – earning a stern hmmm in the process of my explanation – and how, while I was busy figuring out who she really is, I found myself falling for the pieces of her that I could grasp onto, every side of herself that she’s slowly revealed to me.
The side that held firm on telling me off and met me with ferocious punches in the ring.
The side that wanted to save her local gym, laughed so hard she cried while watching hockey with Andi, that sweet-talks her dog like a human.
“Hold on, she’s got a dog?” Gabi asks. “I already approve.”
I smile as I tell her about Winston, and think back to Lyssa’s face on the plane when she realized she’d have Winston waiting for her when she got home.
I’ve never owned pets, and neither does most of our team.
It’s not that we don’t love them, but we just don’t have the time to look after them.
A few have cats, but my sister has one, and I’ve seen the way it looks at me.
I don’t need to willingly adopt something that’s plotting my death while I sleep.
I even tell my sister about the side of Lyssa that comes from her dark past, that has her flinching away from raised voices and abrupt touches.
I don’t tell Gabi every single detail I was given, but just enough that she understands why Lyssa has been pulling away from me, and why I need to tread carefully.
I throw my toothbrush and toothpaste into my duffel and zip it with a sigh. “And now…I don’t know where we stand. She barely acknowledged me on the flight home, and she hasn’t messaged me since.”
There’s a pause on the other end of the line, and I hear a door slam in the background. Gabi’s voice fades as she turns to greet her wife, then comes back clearly. “All right, Benj. Were you calling for my advice, or just to have someone to talk to?”
This is what I love about my sister. Somewhere along the line, she got fed up with the passive-aggressive, midwestern niceties.
Maybe it’s because she’s the middle child and got sick of being the go-between for my brother and me growing up.
She’s not afraid to ask point-blank what it is that people want from her, and set boundaries if it doesn’t line up with what she’s willing to give.
You know exactly where you stand with her, and while that can be terrifying to some, it makes her the easiest person in the world to talk to, at least for me.
I don’t know why I didn’t call her sooner.
“I really could use your advice,” I say.
“Okay. Well. First off, I think you were a dumbass for how you treated her at first, but you already know you fucked up. But as for how you reacted after she told you the truth…I think you did everything right. I’m proud of you, little brother.
” My heart warms at her praise, and then I immediately roll my eyes as she adds, “I taught you well.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re the best, I know,” I shoot back.
“And you’ll do well to remember it.” The crunching sound is back, and I wait as she chews, likely pondering her next words. “And she didn’t say she doesn’t want to see you anymore, or not to message you? She didn’t look angry?”
I think back to the plane ride, and how she avoided even looking at me. “No, she didn’t say anything like that, and no, just…maybe embarrassed? Definitely not angry. I know her angry face.”
There’s a smile in Gabi’s voice as she answers.
“Then my guess is she’s just processing.
This has to be a lot for her to reconcile with.
You’re her first step back into the real world after what sounds like a horrible relationship.
” She pauses, then lowers her voice. “And if I’m not mistaken, this is your first relationship since everything that happened with Jake, isn’t it? ”
I swallow around the hard lump in my throat. “Yeah.”
Gabi makes a noncommittal noise. “I think you both want the same thing, you’re just going to need to be gentle with each other. Until you or her call it quits, to me, it sounds like the door is still open.”
“So…what should I do?” I ask, feeling my heart lift.
Gabi laughs. “Text her, you idiot! I mean,” she amends, “Don’t like, bombard her with texts. Don’t be that guy. Just shoot her one to know the door is still open on your end, when she’s ready.”
“Okay.” I nod. “Thanks, Gabs.”
“Anytime,” she replies. “Oh, and Benj?”
“Yeah?”
“Text her. Don’t call her. Nobody calls anymore.”
I chuckle, and we say our goodbyes. I sling my duffel over my shoulder and head for the bus, my fingers typing and deleting a text to Lyssa as I go.
Finally, as we board the bus, I decide to stop overthinking it and shoot off the single sentence, praying it’s enough to show her that I’m ready if she is.
Me: Can I take you on a date when I get back?