Chapter 2
Chapter Two
AIDAN
Aidan
Just moved back into my place in the city. Want to grab a drink tonight?
After shooting off the text to one of my few close friends, Ronan McCabe, I set my phone down and look around at the piles of boxes stacked in my living room.
A year ago, I broke my hand in a bar fight I wasn’t even trying to be part of.
When it became clear that I’d be out for the whole season, I rented out my place in the city and moved back to the beach town south of Boston where I spent most of my childhood.
But “coming home” felt a lot more like showing up in a place I’d outgrown long ago.
I’ve never been great about “staying in touch,” except with my childhood best friend, Liam.
And since I’ve played for three different NHL teams over the years, I’ve lived all over the country.
Each time I move, I start over. I don’t know why I like to leave the past in the past, but I do.
I barely even see my stepdad, who is my only family, now that he lives in Miami.
I’ve unpacked four boxes, collapsed the cardboard, and taken it down to the dumpster behind my brownstone before McCabe replies to my text.
McCabe
Oh wow, you’re alive? Nice to hear from you after a year.
Okay, so maybe I’m really not good at keeping in touch.
Aidan
Sorry, you know I’m shit with replying to texts.
McCabe
How are you with reading them? Because if you’ve read any of the messages I sent you over the past eleven months, you’d know that I’ve got a baby and can’t just run out for a drink. And I assume you know that AJ and I are together? She moved in this summer.
I know both of these things, of course, in the same way you know things you’ve only heard about—superficially and without much detail.
Should I have driven back into the city and met McCabe’s baby? Yeah, probably. But I was in constant pain and not good company.
Should I have reached out when the news broke that he and AJ were dating? Or when the Rebels lost the Stanley Cup? Or when I knew I’d be returning to play this season? Yes to any and all of those.
Aidan
Okay fine, I’m a shit friend.
You sure AJ can’t stay with Abby, so we can catch up?
I’m proud of myself for at least remembering his baby’s name.
I do follow him on social media, so I’ve seen some photos—most notably the set of photos that he and AJ released right after they went public with their relationship a couple months ago.
Abby was in most of the pictures, but she didn’t at all resemble the newborn photos he sent me last September.
McCabe
The ONLY reason I’m saying yes is because I’m your captain and feel obligated to let you know what you’re walking into at training camp.
Training camp is still two and a half weeks away. I know him well enough to know that this means he thinks I’ll need time to adjust to whatever he’s about to tell me.
“Don’t give me that grumpy-ass look,” I say as McCabe slides into the opposite side of the booth at The Neon Cactus, a bar in Beacon Hill where he suggested we meet.
I’ve never been here, but with its shellacked wooden walls littered with neon signs and old posters, not to mention the Christmas lights strung around the perimeter of the room, it has a certain old Boston charm to it.
He’s about to reply when a waitress walks up. “Hey, Sandy,” he says.
She nods, seemingly unaffected by the fact that Boston’s star hockey player knows who she is. “McCabe.”
“You know what you want?” he asks, turning his head toward me.
“What do you have on tap?” I ask Sandy.
She looks like she’s barely restraining herself from rolling her eyes. “About forty kinds of tequila.”
My brows scrunch together at her reply. “You don’t have any beer on tap?”
“It’s a tequila bar,” McCabe says, sounding pissed off that I don’t know this. He always sounds pissed off, though. “You want beer, you can have it in a can.”
“Uhh . . .” I pause, and then throw out the name of the first beer that comes to mind because I’m unusually flustered by how foreign this all is .
. . me at a new bar with my best friend who I haven’t talked to in nearly a year, who’s conversing with the waitress like he’s here all the time, and now ordering a margarita instead of a beer.
Once Sandy leaves, McCabe levels me with a stare. “Nice of you to grace me with your presence after going dark for a year.”
How can I explain that this last year was the hardest of my life?
That one surgery after another left me in constant pain, that I was unwilling to take any of the hard drugs they offered me after the way my own father succumbed to his addiction to painkillers which finally killed him?
That moving “home” was the worst decision I could have made, that not having hockey in my life for the first time ever almost killed me?
“Yeah, sorry about that.”
“What the fuck happened?” McCabe grits out the question through his clenched jaw. The way he looks even more annoyed than usual has me wondering, for the first time, if my not being around this past year was hard on him.
We’re both pretty quiet guys, both kind of gruff in a way that can easily trespass into asshole territory if we’re not careful.
We both played for other teams before coming to the Rebels, and while he was here for a bit before me, our similar personalities had us ending up as friends by default.
I respect the hell out of the guy and what he can do on the ice, but sitting here now, I realize that maybe I never really knew him that well off the ice.
“I got hurt. You had a baby.” I shrug. “We were both busy.”
“What the fuck were you busy doing for the last year?”
“Besides the three surgeries, the constant physical therapy, and being in a shit ton of pain the whole time?” I ask, crossing my arms over my chest as I lean back in the booth.
His gaze focuses on the raised scar across the back of my left hand.
It’s not as swollen as it once was, but the surgeon told me it’s unlikely it will ever fully fade. “Not much.”
Just wallowing in my own self-pity for the first half of the year, and clawing my way out of it in the second half. The only things that got me through it were needing to be there for Liam when tragedy struck his family, and knowing that returning to the Rebels was what lay on the other side.
“You couldn’t have returned a single one of my texts?”
“I wasn’t in a good headspace,” I say, and he tilts his chin as his eyes narrow in on me.
“Are you now?”
Is that concern I hear in his voice? “I’m good.”
“What changed?”
I don’t really want to get into it, so I say, “I got cleared to play for the season.”
McCabe doesn’t look like he wants to let that go. “Are you sure you’re good now? Because if you’re not, there are options—”
“I’m fine,” I say as Sandy slides a turquoise can of beer in front of me.
It’s from a microbrewery on the South Shore, and I’m pretty sure I still have a six-pack of them in my fridge at the beach.
Then she sets McCabe’s margarita in front of him.
It’s in a rocks glass, with half a jalapeno and a slice of lime wedged into the ice. What the fuck kind of drink is that?
“Thanks,” McCabe says as she turns to leave.
“So, there were things you wanted to tell me about the team?” I ask as he takes a sip of his drink.
Setting it down, he looks back at me and says, “Yeah. There have been a lot of changes, and a lot of talk about where you might fit into it all now that you’re coming back. I’m not going to sugar coat it . . .”
I swallow and nod that he should continue.
I’m not used to getting a talking-to by my team captain, nor am I used to McCabe taking on this role.
For the past few years before I was injured, he was kind of resentful of being captain.
It was always our goalie and unofficial captain, Colt, who’d sit you down and have “the conversation.”
“. . . you’re kind of an asshole, and that’s not the vibe of the team.”
“Wow.” I don’t say anything else just to see what he says next.
“Some of the new guys—Jenkins, Reid, and Hartmann, specifically—have brought a different energy to the team. Wilcott’s done a great job building camaraderie among the players,” he says, and that sounds exactly like something our coach would focus on.
He’s the fatherly type, the kind you want to play well for because you don’t want to disappoint him. “AJ’s focused on another Stanley Cup—”
I cough out a laugh and say, “Among other things.”
It’s the kind of thing that would have made McCabe laugh a year ago, as much as he is actually capable of laughing.
“Not fucking funny, man.” The words are tense, his tone harsh, and I know I just crossed a line I shouldn’t have.
“She and I have our personal and professional boundaries firmly in place. But if you so much as say one disrespectful thing about her, I will absolutely go apeshit on your ass. As your captain, of course.”
“I have nothing disrespectful to say about her.” I hold my hands up so he’ll calm the fuck down.
In fact, AJ is the only one in the entire Rebels organization who I felt actually cared that I was gone.
She checked in with me regularly, sent me take-out gift cards when I had each surgery, had our team doctor, Olivia D’Angelis, make a house call to check on me once I was done with my final round of PT, then made sure I came in and got cleared by the athletic trainers and Dr. D once my surgeon cleared me to play.
“Good. Keep it that way.”
“Tell me about the new guys,” I say, hoping to glean a bit more about what I’m walking into at training camp. I’m really looking forward to getting back on the ice with my team. I just have to get through my stepdad’s wedding in Bermuda first.
“I mean, you know who they all are. Drew Jenkins replaced Piatza when he retired, and has settled into being the Center on our first line.” There were rumors of Jenkins “replacing” me as the team’s unofficial enforcer when I went onto injured reserve, but he’s hardly spent any time in the penalty box this season, unlike when he played for Colorado.
“Zach Reid is the chillest guy in the world,” McCabe continues, referencing a new defender who was traded from Philadelphia.
“He alternates between the first and second line defense, depending on where Wilcott needs him. And Luke Hartmann . . .” He pauses, letting out a gruff laugh. “He’s still a bit green—”
“Yeah, I watched Game 7.” Like the rest of the world, I saw him choke when Colt got injured in the third period. The whole team played like shit that period, but there’s no question that it was Hartmann who lost us the Cup, which is all kinds of awkward since his family owns the team.
“We’re over that and focused on this season,” McCabe says, the warning tone in his voice telling me that this isn’t something to bring up, especially with Hartmann.
“Anyway, Hartmann’s actually a really great player and an even better teammate, once you get used to the whole golden retriever shtick. ”
“Golden retriever?”
“He’s like the most loyal guy ever and is always trying to make sure everyone else is okay. You know, the opposite of you.” He says it like he’s joking, but it’s the kind of joke that hits too close to home.
My hand flexes around the beer can I’d just picked up, and the air is filled with the sound of crinkling metal.
This isn’t the “welcome back” I’d been hoping for, even though I know it might be the one I deserve after the way I disappeared for a year.
The phone calls and texts I didn’t return have obviously not been forgotten.
“The thing is,” he says calmly, “this isn’t the same team you left, and I want to make sure you don’t try to make waves when you come back.”
“The only waves I’ll be making are on the ice,” I tell him.
“About that . . .” He glances down into his drink before he looks back up at me. “It looks like you’ll be starting on the second line.”
“The fuck?” I should be grateful AJ’s even bringing me straight back to the team rather than sending me to our AHL affiliate, but this still stings.
“Walsh moved up to the first line to take your place,” he says, like I haven’t watched every single game this season and don’t know this. “And it looks like Coach wants to keep the line together. You know, since we made it all the way to Game 7 that way.”
I try to relax my jaw, because I’m clenching my teeth together so hard I’m going to give myself a headache. I knew this was a possibility. Strategically, it makes sense. Why would Coach mess with a good thing? But I know, with every fiber of my being, that I belong on the first line.
“The good thing,” McCabe continues, “is that the second line is also really strong, and putting you on it means we’ll basically have the equivalent of two first lines.”
“Look at you with the rose-colored glasses,” I say. If McCabe was on the second line—no matter how good it is—he’d be pissed as hell. Just like I am.
“What can I say? I’m a bit more of an optimist now. We should have won the Cup last season. You coming back gives us an even better shot at it this year. I have a good feeling about this.”
I’d like to have a good feeling about this season too. Instead, now I feel like I have to prove myself all over again, over a decade after going pro. And the worst part is, at thirty-three, I’m not sure if I have it in me to claw my way back to the first line again.
“And, even though you’re a dick for disappearing for the past year,” McCabe says, “I’m glad you’re back.”