Chapter 2 — TEO
The coffee at the facility is terrible, and I need everyone to know.
I’ve been in Atlanta five days. Five days is enough to find a running route, a carbonara I have opinions about, and a pour-over place on Piedmont that I intend to build my entire life around. Five days is not enough to fix whatever is happening in the facility break room.
But first: Training Camp Day One, Volume One. I’ve been building this playlist for three weeks because every playlist needs to tell a specific story and this one’s story is new city, new team, let’s go. It opens with a drum fill, brass hit, Janelle Monáe.
I pull my earbuds out and drop my bag at my stall.
MARCHETTI on the plate, new font, new colors, same letters I’ve been reading above my head for four years.
I hang my jacket and start unpacking. Slides, tape, the good pre-wrap from my guy in Montreal because the stuff they usually stock in facilities is garbage and I will not downgrade my wrap.
Jensen is already at his stall, lacing skates with the efficiency of a man who has been doing this for a very long time and does not need to look down. Murray is a couple stalls over, unpacking with the same settled weight. Vets. You can tell by how little effort goes into the process.
My phone goes into the cubby with the volume up because the playlist has found its groove.
“Quiet locker room is a crime against the sport,” I announce to no one who asked. Jensen glances over and gives a nod.
More guys filter in over the next twenty minutes, and I’m matching faces to the group chat.
I’ve been talking to some of these guys for weeks.
I know Jensen posts at odd hours and Murray is trying to find a place for his family and Berger sends multi-paragraph analyses of things nobody asked about.
But the chat is one thing and being in person is another.
The room fills the way every hockey locker room fills.
A couple of faces that aren’t, and I notice them the way I notice the room’s temperature, quick and ambient.
I scan the stalls on both sides of me, reading who’s easy and who’s performing, the math that happens fast when you’re a gay man walking into a room full of hockey players you haven’t met yet.
Four years with my last team taught me that room was safe, but this is a new space and I don’t what it holds.
I’m not nervous. I’m just paying attention.
Thompson finds his stall a few down from mine. Taller than I expected, hair going in three directions. He catches me looking and nods.
“Marchetti?”
“Thommo. In the flesh. You’re taller than I pictured.”
“You’re louder than I pictured.”
“Wait till I’m comfortable.” I grin and hold up my roll of pre-wrap. “You see this? This is the good pre-wrap. I get a special delivery every month from a guy I know. The stuff they stock here is garbage. I’ll get you a roll. I’m serious.”
“I didn’t ask for a roll.”
“You don’t have to. I’m offering. Nonna ships me biscotti every two weeks and my pre-wrap guy ships me tape every month. Between those two supply chains, my life is complete. Happy to share one of them.” I lean over to look at his setup and ask the important question. “You tape toe to heel?”
“Always.”
“Good man. Same. Respect.” I hold up my fist and he bumps it back.
He goes back to unpacking and his shoulders are already loose. Good sign. I pull my practice jersey over my head and my right shoulder catches on the stretch. I adjust the angle and get the jersey on. Rotate the arm once, roll my neck, start taping my stick. Heel to toe.
Berger walks in wiping his forehead with his forearm.
“This humidity is going to kill me,” he announces to no one in particular, dropping his bag. “I’m sweating through my third shirt today.”
Mueller, already seated and lacing his skates with mechanical precision, looks up. “Didn’t you just come from Miami?”
“Yes, but at least there we had the beach and an ocean breeze.” Berger drops into his stall. “This is just hot soup. No beach. No breeze. Just soup.”
“The soup is part of the charm,” I tell him. “Give it a month. You’ll acclimate.”
“I will not acclimate. I will endure. There’s a difference.”
A few guys laugh. Berger looks around, encouraged, and he’s exactly what the group chat promised.
Maybe more. The long messages, the restaurant rankings, the unsolicited weather analyses.
The way he unpacks his stall with a system so precise it looks architectural.
Hangers separated by type. Toiletry bag at a specific angle, adjusted twice.
He catches me watching. “Marchetti. You look like you slept in your car.”
“I look great. I look fantastic. This is what five hours of sleep and a positive attitude looks like.”
“It isn’t.” He studies my stall, where my pre-wrap is sitting on top of my slides on top of my tape. “And that’s horrifying.”
“That’s a system. It’s a load-bearing jenga machine. Don’t touch it.”
“That’s a cry for help. And I say that with warmth.”
I go back to taping my stick. Berger goes back to organizing, muttering about shelf placement. Somebody three stalls down has put on a playlist that’s clashing with mine and I let it go for about forty-five seconds.
“Okay, no.” I look up. “Who’s playing metal over Janelle Monáe right now? I need a name. I’m not mad, we just need to have a conversation.”
Thompson glances over, giving me an eye roll he is not concealing. “It’s music, Marchetti.”
“It’s not music. It’s a crime scene. You don’t layer metal over Monáe. That’s not an opinion. That’s acoustics. My nonna raised me with standards.”
“Your nonna has opinions about metal music?”
“My nonna has opinions about everything. She would walk in here and fix this in ten seconds.” I point at the offending stall. “We’re going to need a protocol. Locker room music protocol. Before the week is out. I’m making a schedule.”
“It’s day one,” Thompson says.
“And already we need a protocol. That’s how serious this is.”
The coaching staff comes through at nine.
New systems, new sweaters. I’ve heard versions of this speech before, with my last team, and the words are a little different but the basics are the same.
We’re building something here. Fresh start.
New chapter. I nod along and mean it more than I expected to, which catches me a little, the sincerity of my own nodding.
Staff introductions are next. The head coach goes through the support staff one by one. Strength coach. Equipment manager. Video coordinator. The room claps for each the way hockey players clap for anything that isn’t a goal, which is three hits and a nod.
I’m sitting between Thompson and Berger, still in my base layer, hair damp. Berger has already changed into a clean shirt, his fourth of the day if his own count is accurate.
“Fourth shirt,” I say to him. “New record?”
“It’s not a record. It’s a necessity. I refuse to sit in a meeting damp.”
“I am.”
“I’ve noticed.” He straightens his collar. “And I’ve chosen not to say anything.”
“You literally just said something.” He gives me a look then turns back to the front of the room.
“Athletic training staff,” Coach Bodie says. “You’ll be seeing a lot of these folks.”
Gary Miller stands up first, gives the standard intro. I met him earlier in the week. Solid guy.
Then the guy next to him stands. And I know him. Takes me less than a second to realize from where.
That wide smile. The warm light from the overheads catching his sepia brown skin, his jaw, the line of his neck. Deep brown eyes. Though from this distance, I can’t see the gold flecks that I could last night.
He stands up straight and easy with his hands clasped in front of him.
Navy polo, team crest on the chest, badge clipped to his belt.
His eyes sweep the room and my stomach flips as they glance past me.
I spent part of the night looking up at those eyes while I was on my knees on a concrete floor. A very good part of the night.
Zee.
“Isaiah Brooks, assistant athletic trainer.” His voice is warm and even and nothing like the voice from last night. “Most of you I’ll get to know over the next few weeks as we build out your individual plans.”
I’m watching his hands while he gestures and I’m thinking about those hands undoing my belt, wrapping around me.
The twist of his wrist that made me forget how to finish a sentence.
His grip on the back of my neck. All of it, flooding back in the middle of a team meeting while he talks about building plans and early intervention, and I should not be thinking about his hands right now.
“My approach is pretty straightforward. You come to me with what’s bothering you, I figure out why, and we build a plan to fix it. I’d rather hear about something small on Monday than deal with something big on Thursday.”
My shoulder throbs right on cue. Because of course the man who had his hands on me in a club bathroom last night is the same man who’s going to have his hands on my shoulder for the next however many months.
The shoulder that’s the whole reason I’m in this city.
The shoulder that needs careful, professional, ongoing attention from a person I was on my knees for twelve hours ago.
“My door’s open. Literally. If the door is open, walk in. You don’t need an appointment. You don’t need a reason. If something doesn’t feel right, come talk to me.”
The name on the polo. I read it twice. brOOKS.
Zee is Isaiah Brooks.
The voice he’s using now belongs to a staff polo and a treatment room. The voice from last night was low and private and belonged behind a locked door.
I’m staring. I can’t stop.
He finishes and sits back down. He doesn’t look at me.
Not because he’s avoiding it but because there’s nothing to avoid.
I’m just another hockey player in a room of hockey players and he just did his two-minute introduction and he’s moving on.
He doesn’t know that the guy he was in a bathroom with in a dark club is sitting a few rows behind him.
Thompson leans over. “You good?”
“Great.” Because I actually am. And apparently my whole face isn’t hiding what I am feeling. Never has and today won’t change that. “Never been better. Best day one of my entire life, Thompson. And I include the day I got drafted in that.”
“You look weird.”
“I look happy. This is what happy looks like. It’s a new team, new building, the ice is incredible. I’m allowed to be happy.”
“You can’t be this happy about the ice.”
“I am exactly this happy about the ice.”
He gives me a look and turns back to the presentation.
Berger, from my other side: “Who’s the trainer?”
“Miller’s the head guy. I met him earlier this week.”
“Not Miller. The young one. Brooks.”
“No idea.” True from a professional standpoint. From every other standpoint, the most spectacular lie I’ve told in months. “Why?”
“No reason. He seems competent. Good presentation. Clear communicator.” Berger tilts his head at the projector. “Unlike whoever set up this display. The aspect ratio is wrong. Everything is slightly stretched.”
“Berger, I don’t think anyone else in this room is looking at the aspect ratio.”
“Then everyone else in this room is wrong.”
The coach wraps up. Players stand. Chairs scrape.
I pick up my water bottle. Roll my right shoulder. Head for the hallway.
Brooks is by the far wall, talking to Miller. Small precise gestures while he talks, his posture squared, professional. He’s a few feet away and I don’t have a plan, not even the outline of one. I walk out with Thompson on one side and Berger on the other.
“So we need to talk about the coffee,” Berger says, like he’s been waiting for the meeting to end so he could begin his real agenda.
“The coffee is fine,” Thompson says.
“The coffee is not fine, Thompson. The coffee is an institutional failure. I’ve had gas station coffee with better roasting notes.”
“It’s free coffee in a hockey facility. It doesn’t need notes.”
Berger stops walking. “Coffee always needs notes. That is a non-negotiable position.”
“He’s right,” I say. “I found a pour-over place on Piedmont. Barista named Tasha. She does this thing with the water temperature. I’ve been here five days and it’s the best thing that’s happened to me in Atlanta.”
“A pour-over place.” Thompson looks at both of us. “You guys need better priorities.”
“I need this pour-over place,” Berger says. “I need the address. I need it today.”
“I’ll send it to the chat.”
“Send it to me directly. I don’t trust the chat with something this important.”
I’m whistling the hook from the last song on the playlist as I walk out to my car. Just the melody, not the words. The day went sideways in the best way but everything is looking up.