3. Xander
THREE
Xander
Four minutes and eight seconds.
We’d lost games one, two and three, and now this was the amount of time we had to turn this train wreck of a series around.
How we’d gotten ourselves into this situation was still up for speculation.
Many sports writers cited fatigue and injuries, and that was no lie.
Every Boston Rebel was exhausted and hurt.
Some bloggers called out the coaching staff for egregious errors with shuffling lines.
Many thought we were suffering from the curse that befell any team that touched the Prince of Wales trophy.
Which might have some merit. I cop to being a superstitious hockey player.
Although Brady had touched it the previous two years we’d won the Cup so yeah, maybe not. Who knows.
A few members of the press had called into question my ability to play a man’s game like hockey since I was, in their words, not straight.
My coming out was still causing some ripples.
Nothing huge now, that had taken place right after the surprise announcement, but I was still a curiosity to some it seemed.
If only I had been able to be my true self at nineteen as Austin Rowe had.
No hoopla, just moving gently into public life with his boyfriend.
There had been barely an eyebrow raised which was fantastic.
We had come a long way for sure, but there was still work to be done.
Hopefully coming out would go the way of the rotary phone and VHS tapes soon and we could all just live and love as we damn pleased.
But until those days arrived, we had to deal with bigoted people and ignorant reporters making sly—and not so sly at times—digs about a gay man’s masculinity.
Those I ignored, or tried to, but they stung like a blocked slapshot to the groin.
No matter what the reason turned out to be for our fall from grace, we were now looking at four minutes to get our asses in gear and save the series.
We did not want to go home to Boston after suffering a sweep in the Stanley Cup Finals.
We could not go home after a sweep. We would not go home after a sweep.
I took another swig of water to cleanse the taste of lactic acid from my mouth.
I looked at the massive crowd packed into the Grantsman Arena here in downtown Los Angeles and dug deep into the well to try to find something to say to the team during this brief TV timeout.
Anything to invigorate them. There was no time to start a fight, and to do so at this juncture, with the score sitting at 1-0, would have been suicidal.
I carried enough shit for being out. I didn’t need the shame of a penalty for a stupid mistake to add to the veiled and sometimes not-so-veiled digs.
“Okay, guys, we got this!” I shouted to be heard over the roaring hometown fans.
Brady, our captain and my defensive partner, was in a world of hurt and too gassed to speak.
Yet, here he was, shoulder iced, playing hockey.
Usually, it would be him talking us up, but he had all he could do not to puke judging by the pallor of his skin and the papercut set to his lips.
As one of the two alternate captains, I stepped up.
“Four minutes. You know how many goals we can score in four minutes? A shitload, that’s how many.
We just need one break, a bit of puck luck, to turn this around.
We win here tonight, and we go back home.
Then we take it to this bunch of pretty boy movie stars! ”
The men rallied around the pep talk with as much enthusiasm as they could muster.
Coach barked at us to stay tight in the corners and focus on winning faceoffs.
My line nodded, put in our mouthguards, and skated back out to take the faceoff.
Brady and I hung back, letting Eli and the wingers roll in tight.
Eli and I exchanged a look, both of us whispering “I’ll bring the chainsaw” to the other.
It was an old ritual of ours that started back when we were kids and obsessed with the old Tango & Cash movie with Sly Stallone and Kurt Russell.
That line, we felt at the age of eight, was every fucking thing and summarized how kickass we really were.
I stood next to a big bruiser of a D-man from LA who’d ridden me and Brady hard all night long.
Eli won the faceoff, shuttling the puck back to Brady, who then hustled his ass down the ice.
I was in hot pursuit, my legs burning with fatigue, when the man I was supposed to be covering broke free and knocked Brady off the puck.
And I mean he checked our captain so hard Rowe yelped in pain.
His shout lost amid the cheers of the fans, as the man I’d dropped fired the puck behind the net.
Our goalie, Renco, moved left to plant his skate to the pipe, but the puck had already been passed to the LA captain who split the defenders, then fired a wrist short to send the puck into the top shelf of the net.
The red light flared to life. And my team collapsed in on itself.
I fished the puck out of the net and skated back to the bench, the weight of a defeat now weighing heavily on every Rebel.
Our captain left the bench with the trainer then, and that sucked out whatever spark might have remained in us.
The rest of the game was an exercise in futility.
We continued to scrabble around like midget players instead of professionals.
The LA goalie stood on his head, as he’d done throughout the first three games, and when the final countdown came and the confetti fell from the rafters, we all lowered our heads in shame.
Eli and I looked at each other after the misery of the loss eased a bit. I could see the pain of our defeat in his eyes, and I was sure he saw the same in mine.
How would we ever face the fans back home in Boston?
Shit, how would we face ourselves? Those were questions for later though.
Right now, we had a handshake line to endure.
Moving along with Eli right behind me, as always, following Brady who was white as a sheet, we congratulated each LA player, clapped them on the shoulder, and told them how well they’d played.
Then we moved off the ice to the away locker room to let the new champs bask in their well-earned glory.
“I wasn’t expecting it to go top shelf,” Renco repeated for the tenth time. “I thought he was going five hole.”
“We let you down,” Brady murmured, “let them get too close.”
“Damn fucking top fucking shelf,” Renco snapped, and then subsided back into his wide cubby.
Coach Franks made a nice speech. I made a speech. Brady came limping in with his arm in a sling, and he made a speech. But all the speeches in the world couldn’t cure the blues we were all feeling. Only time could do that.
A week later I stood in the back yard of Eli’s fancy home out in Sharon, a suburb of Boston, drink in hand, wishing I’d just stayed home.
Attending the end of the season shindig was mandatory, even after the hellacious week we’d just endured.
It was a way of wrapping the season and celebrating the successes we had achieved.
We’d made it to the finals. We’d gone further than all the other teams in the league save one.
We should take those as wins. It wasn’t our time to win the cup and there was always next year.
It still feels like the worst thing.
I sipped my rum and Coke and watched the younger players making fools of themselves in and around Eli’s inground pool, seeing how easily they’d all bounced back after the loss.
Was it just the ones like me, coming up on thirty, who wondered if we’d ever see another Cup run?
There was change coming on this team, we were close to cap space and trades could happen over the summer.
Nobody was really safe, but that was hockey.
For now, I needed to concentrate on being with the team, so I sat in the shade and people watched.
Some of the family guys arrived, wives and kids in tow, but it wasn’t them that caught my attention.
Trailing behind them was the one man I was hoping wouldn’t attend.
Mason Kingsley, younger brother of my best friend, Eli, and temptation dressed in shorts and a tank to show off his toned arms.
Back when Eli and I were mischievous rink rats in St. Cloud, Mason was the quintessential annoying younger brother.
A pest, a nuisance, always underfoot. As a younger brother myself, I was well aware of all the tricks of the trade.
We doled out a lot of abuse to Mason back then, as kids will, but he never gave up no matter how many times we ditched him.
Next day there he would be, eager and wiggly like a beagle puppy anticipating playtime.
Mason had grown up into a young man with a charming personality, a smile that could melt the coldest heart, and a love of children and helping others.
He’d finally filled out the gangly frame he’d stumbled around in during his teenage years and was now a lanky, well-made man with hazel eyes that twinkled when he talked to me and a dimple that made conversing with him more and more difficult the older he became.
He waved at me and smiled. I waved back, but that was it.
He ended up on the other side of the pool chatting with Becca, his coworker and best friend.
It was for the best that he didn’t come anywhere near me because ever since I’d held the press conference, it seemed I’d lost the ability to speak to him without tripping over my tongue.
I’d spent so long pretending, that when the pretense fell, it left me exposed and needy, and it was Mason who kept filling my thoughts.