Chapter 18 Miss Your Stupid Beard
Eighteen
Miss Your Stupid Beard
Beck
February
Three games in a row. Three starts in a row. And not just starts—wins. My save percentage has climbed back above .920, which in goalie math translates to “Holy shit, I might actually have a career.”
Coach Tanner pulls me aside after practice. “Keep this up, James, and we might have to have a conversation about what’s next for your career.”
It’s wild. Meanwhile, Hennie, our usual number one, just grins and slaps my back as we head to the showers. “About time, rookie. Was getting tired of carrying this team on my back.”
That’s Hennie for you—zen master in goalie pads. The guy could probably stop pucks while meditating. When I was struggling earlier this season, he never once made me feel like shit about it. Just kept doing his thing, letting me figure out mine.
“You’re not worried?” I ask, because I would be. Hell, I’m worried, and it’s my hot streak.
“Worried about what?” He strips off his gear with the casual efficiency of someone who’s been doing this for fifteen years. “Good goalies make each other better. Besides, you think I want to play seventy-two games a year at my age? My knees are held together with duct tape and spite.”
Right. This is why I like Hennie. Most goalies are territorial psychopaths who’d shank you for looking at their crease wrong. Hennie’s just happy when the team wins, especially if he can drink a Corona afterward. The man loves his Mexican beer.
In other words, I should be floating on cloud nine. Three wins, Coach talking about starter minutes, and my confidence finally crawling out of whatever hole it’s been hiding in for months.
Instead, I’m staring at my phone in the parking lot, reading the same three-word text for the hundredth time.
Forest
Way to go.
That’s it. That’s his entire response to me telling him I had back-to-back shutouts and might actually have figured out how to stop a hockey puck again.
Way to go. Like I’m some kid who finally managed to tie his shoes.
I mean, what did I expect? A parade? Dirty texts about what he wants to do to celebrate?
Actually, yeah, that second one would’ve been nice. Because Forest has been spectacularly unavailable lately. And I’m starting to take it personally.
We’ve had more sex these past couple weeks. Once on the sofa. Once in his bed, and then in his shower.
But we aren’t so great at planning it. One of us (okay, it’s usually me) just texts “you free?” and if the answer is yes, we end up naked and sweaty and pretending it’s no big deal.
It is, though—for me. For Forest… not so much. When we’re together, he’s all in. I’m treated to a few hours of his full-blast attention. Those brown eyes and that strong body and that rich laugh. It’s intoxicating.
But in the morning, I always leave the second he starts looking antsy. I know I’m supposed to. But it always leaves me with an emotional hangover. Because, inevitably, Forest drops off the face of the earth for a while afterward.
Then the cycle starts again—me wondering if it’s too soon to text him. Spending hours thinking about him and scouring the internet for exactly the right hockey meme to make him smile. I’ll take photos on my road trips and then agonize over whether he wants to hear from me or not.
Sometimes he replies, and we’ll have a half hour of chatter. I live for those times. The other day I’d mentioned that I didn’t understand the phrase under the weather, because aren’t we all just under the weather, except for a couple of astronauts up at the ISS?
And then he’d said he’d never understood why people say the whole nine yards “when everyone knows that in football, nine yards doesn’t get you shit.”
Another time I’d sent him a screen shot of a sporty edition of that “Connections” puzzle in The New York Times, and he called me to discuss. We sat up too late talking about everything and nothing, and I went to bed happier than ever.
But those moments are the exception, not the rule. Most of the time he doesn’t return my messages for hours. And when he does, it’s with a word or two, or a thumbs-up.
There's something uniquely soul crushing about a thumbs-up emoji.
It should come with a warning label: May cause existential crisis in people who overthink digital communication.
It's approval without engagement, acknowledgment without investment. It’s the conversational equivalent of a polite golf clap—technically positive, but somehow more devastating than complete silence.
This week has been especially dire. Feeling reckless, I let my feelings fly.
I stopped 37 pucks last night and only had one minor existential crisis between periods, which is personal growth.
Also, you haven’t said anything filthy to me in days and I’m starting to wilt like one of those plants that needs misting.
Hope your night’s good. Mine would be better if you were in it.
PS: Miss your stupid beard.
He doesn’t manage to reply for another couple of hours, after I’ve spent a lot of time doing laundry and driving to the grocery store and anxiously checking my phone for a response.
Forest
You’re right, okay? I’m sorry. Just really tied up.
I hope he doesn’t mean literally. And now I feel stupid that I complained, and uncertain what I should say next.
He’s probably going to avoid me now. I can feel it through the phone, right here in the cereal aisle of King Soopers.
Like a superpower I never wanted—the ability to detect emotional distance via text message.
Very useful for a guy who’s already an expert at reading too much into everything.
My phone buzzes with a new message, and for a pathetic second my heart jumps. But it’s just my roommate.
Rigsy
Dude where are you? Alien Genocide awaits. Martinez is coming over, too.
Right. Our Monday night gaming session. We’re never on the road on a Monday night, so this has become our sacred tradition. I add a case of beer to my shopping cart, check out, and then drive home.
Our little rental house looks exactly like every other rental house in Loveland—beige siding, dying lawn, and a front porch that’s one strong wind away from collapsing. But it’s cheap, and it’s five minutes from the rink, and Rigsy doesn’t leave dirty dishes in the sink for weeks at a time.
Well, not usually.
“Becks!” he calls when I walk in. “Perfect timing. I just hit level forty-seven and unlocked the plasma rifle. We’re about to make some alien bastards very unhappy.”
I drop my gear bag and put away my groceries. Then I grab a controller, settling onto our IKEA couch that’s held together by prayers and hockey tape. The living room smells like the protein shakes Rigsy lives on and that vanilla candle his mom bought us for Christmas.
For twenty minutes, we blast our way through digital alien hordes, and I almost forget about three-word text messages and hot bartenders who apparently think I’m some kind of communicable disease.
Almost.
“Dude,” Rigsy says during a loading screen, “you’re not bringing your usual finesse to this alien genocide. What’s up?”
I pause, controller in my lap. “It’s just pixels on a screen. Don’t you ever get frustrated by how meaningless it all is?”
He stares at me like I just suggested we take up competitive knitting. “Bro, it’s a video game. Of course it’s meaningless. That’s the point.”
“Right. But don’t you get frustrated? Like, with real stuff?”
“Well, yeah. That’s what sex is for.” He grins and elbows me. “Speaking of which, I thought you had something good going on. Wasn’t that why you were sneaking around like a teenager with a fake ID?”
My chest tightens. “I thought I did too.”
“Ah.” Rigsy’s face goes serious, which is weird because I’ve never seen him be serious about anything except protein powder and his bench-press max. “Want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
“Cool. Want to blow up more aliens instead?”
“’Kay.”
But my heart’s not in it. When Martinez shows up, I hand off my controller with no remorse.
“Hey,” Martinez says as I’m sneaking out of the room. “Some of the guys are hitting up Mulligan’s tomorrow night. You should come.”
I shake my head automatically. “I don’t like that place.”
“Then let’s go to your bar instead. The one you disappear to every week. We can be flexible.”
I freeze.
Martinez doesn’t notice. “Not flexible like a goalie, I mean. Dude, that would be weird.” He laughs at his own joke.
But I’m spiraling. “I, uh, go to that bar to get away from it all,” I say, maybe a little too quickly.
Rigsy pulls his head out of the refrigerator. “Get this—Beck’s hookup is a bartender. Explains why he goes to a bar without a wingman. He doesn’t want us cutting in on his action.”
“That’s exactly right,” I mumble.
Martinez’s eyes light up with understanding. “Oh buddy, it all makes so much sense now. Bartenders are hot, am I right? Their titties bounce when they shake up the drinks.” He mimes a shaker motion. “You don’t want us cramping your style.”
I nod and make some noncommittal noise, hating myself for the omission but not willing to fix it. Coming out to my teammates feels pointless when I don’t even have a boyfriend.
“Respect, man,” Martinez says, his voice following me down the corridor. “Keep your territory marked.”
If only they knew my “territory” consisted of getting spectacular sex a few times and then being ghosted like I’m some kind of stage-five clinger.
My phone sits silent on the coffee table, mocking me with its lack of notifications.
Way to go, I think bitterly. Way to fucking go.
Maybe I am a stage five clinger, because I can’t help but wonder what Forest is up to now.
But then I have an idea. So I pull out my phone and google “Stickhandlers Hockey Denver.”