Chapter Four
“What do you think of Barrett?” Harris asked. It was the morning after Troy’s first game with Ottawa, and for both professional and personal reasons, Harris couldn’t stop thinking about him.
Gen glanced up from her computer. Their desks faced each other in their small office. “According to pretty much everyone in the world of hockey, he’s a dick. And he hasn’t proved otherwise yet.”
“Everyone said Rozanov was a dick,” Harris pointed out. “That turned out to be wrong.”
Gen laughed. “Rozanov is a dick. He’s just a fun one. Troy is the not-fun kind.”
Harris frowned as he scrolled through the replies to his latest Instagram post, not really reading them. “I was thinking that maybe...”
Gen squinted at her screen, then clicked her mouse a few times. “What?”
“I don’t know. That he could use a friend right now? He seems...sad.”
That got Gen’s full attention. She leaned back in her chair, eyebrows raised. “You want to be Barrett’s friend? Wait. Never mind. You want to be everybody’s friend.”
“It’s my job!”
“Sort of.” She went back to clicking and squinting. “He’s pretty,” she said casually.
Harris folded his arms protectively across his chest. “He’s not ugly,” he agreed.
Gen’s lips curved up, though she didn’t look away from her computer screen. “Didn’t you tell me last season that you thought he was the hottest player in the league?”
Harris had definitely said that. “I don’t remember.”
“We were playing Marry, Fuck, Kill and you said ‘fuck Troy Barrett’ three times.”
Oh. Right. “I may have had a few beers in me.”
“Mm.”
“His looks have nothing to do with anything, though. I don’t know if he’s just a jerk, or if he’s being a jerk as, like, a defense mechanism or something. Maybe he just needs people to be nice to him.”
Gen snorted. “NHL stars have it so rough. If only someone would adore them.”
“Have you seen any of the replies on our posts? The fans are vicious to him.”
“No. Looking at replies is your job. All I care about is that you use my good photos and not your shitty iPhone ones.”
“The photo of him on the ice during the anthem before his first game here,” Harris continued, ignoring her. “On both Twitter and Instagram there are about a billion nasty replies.”
“Pro or anti–Dallas Kent?”
“Both. But definitely anti–Troy Barrett. This one says ‘Barrett is jealous that Kent won’t fuck him.’ And then they use some slurs that I won’t repeat.”
“Hockey fans are idiots. What else is new?”
Harris didn’t bother defending hockey fans, and instead asked, “I don’t know why Barrett isn’t a hero right now.”
“Yes you do.”
“But he did the right—”
“Men never believe women. Women don’t believe women. Come on, Harris. You know this. What were you expecting to happen? The whole league rallies behind Barrett, and Kent gets kicked out of hockey?”
“That’s what should have happened.”
“No fucking shit. But instead, Barrett probably regrets saying anything. I’ll bet he didn’t even mean to say it! He didn’t have much to say when I mentioned it to him.”
Harris nearly dropped his phone. “You mentioned it to him? When?”
“When I was taking his official photo. I told him it was good, calling Kent out.”
“What did he say?”
“He said that it was complicated, which doesn’t actually mean anything.” She sighed. “I hate that word. It’s not complicated; Kent is a rapist and Barrett called him a rapist.”
A heavy silence filled the room. Gen was always blunt, but she was also usually right.
“Do you think,” Harris asked, “that Troy, like, knew for sure?” It was the question that had been on his mind for days.
“You mean do I think he witnessed his best friend assaulting women and didn’t say anything until now?” Gen shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. I hope not.”
“I hope not too.”
She turned her attention back to her computer. “It’s not my job to like them; it’s my job to make them look good. And Barrett’s pretty face makes my job easy. Hopefully he’s not an accomplice to sexual assault, but if he is, well, he’s not the only player in this league who is, I’m sure.”
Harris chewed his lip. Probably not. For whatever reason, though, he didn’t think Troy was an accomplice. He’d barely met the man, but he wanted to believe Troy was a good person, even if only for professional reasons. Harris liked every member of the Ottawa team, and he didn’t want that to change.
“Okay,” Gen said, pushing back from her desk with a loud rumble of chair wheels against the hard floor. “I have to go take photos of Haas modeling some of the new fan gear.”
“That sounds easy,” Harris said. “Haas is adorable.” Luca Haas was a twenty-year-old rookie from Switzerland with blond hair and a baby face that flushed easily. He’d been the number two overall draft pick a couple of years ago, and Ottawa fans were excited to have him on the team this season.
“I’ll bet I can get him to do some really ridiculous poses. Do you think he’d let me dump a bucket of water on him if I told him we needed a wet look?”
Harris laughed, imagining it. Luca was extremely polite and very eager to please. “Be nice to him. He gets enough shit from his teammates.”
“It’s his fault for being so fun to tease.”
Harris was alone in the office for about five minutes before he heard a knock on the door. “Come in.”
The door, which had already been ajar, slowly pushed open, and Harris could not have been more surprised when Troy Barrett walked into the room.
Troy watched as Harris’s smile was replaced by a confused frown when he entered his office.
“Oh,” Harris said. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
Harris stood from where he’d been sitting behind his computer. “This is a surprise.”
“Yeah, um.” Troy rubbed his own neck. He may as well get this over with. “I’m sorry. I was rude last night. You were being nice and I was a dick, as usual.”
Harris raised his eyebrows. “You came all the way here to apologize to me?”
Troy had done exactly that, but now that he was being asked, point-blank, he felt a little silly. “I’m just at the hotel down the road.” Damn. He should have said he needed to be here anyway for something else. That would have been cooler.
Harris’s smile returned. “Apology accepted.”
“Good. Thanks.” Now Troy wasn’t sure what to do. Leave, he supposed.
“Actually,” Harris said before Troy could escape, “I was thinking this morning, about you and social media. I don’t blame you for hating it. I’ve seen how people have been talking about you online. It’s...not nice.”
“I try not to pay attention to any of that.”
“Good plan. But if you wanted to put a different image of yourself out there, I’m very good at my job.”
Troy wasn’t sure what being good at posting shit on Twitter meant, but he was determined to be more open-minded. “I’ll think about it.”
This time he really was going to leave, but Harris stopped him again with another question. “How do you like Ottawa so far?”
Troy’s knee-jerk reaction was to say something bitchy about the dull city he was being forced to call home, or to remind Harris that he lived in a hotel room that was practically attached to the rink, but he managed to be civil. “It’s okay. Haven’t seen much of it.”
“I’ve lived here my whole life, so I can answer any questions.”
Troy had no doubt, even though he barely knew the guy, that if he asked Harris to recommend a restaurant, he would enthusiastically rattle off a hundred options, along with detailed reasons why each were great.
“Have you looked for a place to live yet?” Harris asked.
“No. I’ll do that when we get back from our road trip.”
“Are you thinking downtown, or closer to the rink?”
“Not sure.” To be honest, Troy didn’t care. He was planning on renting something furnished and simple because he had no intention of staying in Ottawa past this season. He would use this year to prove that he was still a valuable asset, then move on to a better team. “Where do you live?”
“The Glebe. Nice little apartment. Nothing fancy.”
Troy had no idea what the fuck the Glebe was. “Cool.”
Harris seemed to take Troy’s one-word response as an invitation to keep talking. “I’ve only lived there for a year and it’s still weird living alone. I grew up in a full house. Forty acres of land and we still had to share a bathroom.”
That sounded awful. “Big family?”
“Two older sisters, Mom, Dad, Grandma before she died, three dogs, a cat, and a ghost.”
Troy decided to ignore that last thing. “Jesus. That’s crowded.” God dammit. No, he couldn’t ignore that last thing. “Ghost?”
“Yep. Grandma used to tell me it’s my great-great-uncle Elroy. He was a quiet guy, and a mostly quiet ghost. Knocks stuff over sometimes.”
That struck Troy as being extremely impossible. For lots of reasons. “You must be glad to be out of there.”
“Oh no, I loved it. The family, I mean. Uncle Elroy I could do without sometimes, but I suppose he’s family too.
I still love going home. I help out a lot when I’m not working here.
Oh jeez, I didn’t even tell you. My family owns an apple orchard.
Fourth generation.” He pointed proudly to a button on his jacket that said Drover Family U-Pick.
“So, you know, let me know if you need any apples.”
Harris’s cheeks looked a little like apples, rosy and plump above the line of his trim beard.
His near-constant smile molded them into round little balls that Troy had a fleeting, confusing desire to bite.
He wouldn’t be surprised if Harris tasted like apples, sweet and wholesome. “I’ll let you know.”