Chapter 3 Jacks
Jacks
Tuesdays at Barbacks were dead. Not dead dead—we had our regulars, the guys who showed up rain or shine because this place had become their living room and we’d become their weird, dysfunctional family; but compared to the chaos of weekends or watch party nights or Lightning game days, Tuesdays were practically meditative, which meant I had time to restock the bar without someone screaming at me for another round.
Small victories.
“—and then, I swear to God, Jacks, he asked if I wanted to see his collection.”
Benji was perched on a barstool, supposedly on break but really following me around and narrating his dating disasters while I tried to work. This was our routine. I didn’t hate it, but I’d heard so many of Benji’s stories that I could’ve predicted the bitter ending before he even began.
“His collection of what?” I asked, sliding a case of beer into the cooler.
“That’s what I said! I was like, ‘Collection? Sure, what do you collect?’ Thinking, you know, maybe it’s something normal like coins or stamps or vintage porn.”
“Vintage porn is normal to you?”
“Compared to what he actually said? Yes. Absolutely. Vintage porn would have been a gift.”
I straightened, wiping my hands on my jeans. “Okay, I’ll bite. What did he collect?”
Benji leaned forward, his eyes wide with the particular glee he got when sharing truly horrifying information.
“Toenail clippings.”
I stared.
And blinked.
“His own,” Benji clarified, like that made it better. “He was clear about that. It wasn’t a serial killer situation. He kept his own personal toenails . . . in jars . . . plural. He has jars, Jacks, labeled and organized by year.”
“That’s . . .”
“Horrifying? Revolting? Vile beyond reckoning?”
“I was going to say ‘creative,’ but yeah, all of those work, too.”
“Which means he’s been doing this for years. This was a long-term commitment to being disgusting. This was a lifestyle.”
I couldn’t help it—I laughed.
Benji’s dating life was a constant source of entertainment, mostly because he had no filter and would swipe right on anyone with a pulse just to see what happened.
“So I’m guessing you didn’t go see the collection.”
“I told him I was allergic to keratin and then blocked him so fast my phone almost caught fire.” Benji took a sip of his water. “Manhole is a wasteland, Jacks. A barren, toenail-infested wasteland.”
“It’s called Manhole, Benj. It’s not Christian Mingle. What do you expect? You’d have better luck calling some of the numbers you collect from this place every night. At least you’ve met these guys in person and have some sort of creeper vibe check already.”
“Drunk creeper vibe is more like it.”
I grunted. He wasn’t wrong about that. I liked the guys who came into the bar. Mostly, they were nice, regular dudes who liked sports—or were at least sports-adjacent, which in our world was sometimes as close as we could get.
“I’m going to die alone,” Benji slumped over the bar, burying his head in crossed arms.
“You’re not going to die alone.”
“I’m going to die alone, and they’re going to find my body surrounded by cats who have eaten my face.”
“You don’t have any cats.”
“I’ll get cats! Specifically for the face-eating. It’s the only future I can see for myself now.”
I was about to respond—something about how he was being dramatic, which was both true and normal for Benji on a day ending in “y”—when the front door opened.
I glanced up, ready to call out a greeting across the nearly empty bar.
But my brain stopped working.
Four guys walked in.
Really big guys.
Deliciously athletic guys.
Guys wearing clothes that cost more than my monthly rent but somehow still looked casual.
I recognized them immediately:
Tyler Chen.
Erik Lindqvist.
Some shorter guy I didn’t know but who looked like Yosemite Sam had mated with Popeye and turned to hockey.
And Skyler Shaw.
All four were looking at me.
The case of beer I’d picked up slipped in my suddenly sweaty grip. I fumbled it, caught it, fumbled it again, and somehow managed to not drop it on my foot through what could only be described as divine intervention.
“Oh shit,” Benji whispered, sitting up straighter. “Oh shit, shit, shit! It’s the hockey players. The hot hockey players. And they brought a friend.”
“Benji—”
“Finn!” Benji’s voice rang out across the bar. “The Bolts are back . . . and they’re still hot as fuck!”
I was going to kill Benji.
I was going to kill him and hide the body and claim I knew nothing when the police came asking questions.
From somewhere in the back, I heard Finn’s muffled response: “What?”
“Hockey players! CODE RED!” He looked up at me. “That should’ve been blue. They wear blue, right?”
“Blue? Yeah, right. Blue,” I stammered.
“CODE BLUE, FINN!” Benji yelled his correction.
“Benji, I swear to God—” I started.
But it was too late.
The players were already approaching the bar. Skyler and Erik were grinning as though Benji’s complete lack of chill was the funniest thing they’d ever witnessed. The short one looked slightly maniacal. I briefly worried he might try to pull a bank heist or a card trick, though I wasn’t sure which.
“Hey!” Skyler said, sliding onto a barstool beside Benji with the easy confidence of someone who’d never second-guessed a social interaction in his life. His left arm rose to drape around a stunned Benji’s shoulders as he grinned at me. “Jacks, right? We met a few weeks ago.”
Six weeks. It had been six weeks. Not that I was counting.
“Yeah, I remember. You’re still single? Skyler. Shit. You’re still Skyler?” I set down the beer case, trying to act like my heart wasn’t doing something stupid in my chest.
“Yeah, shithead’s still Skyler.” The fireplug laughed, deep and booming. “Can’t change that no matter how much we try.”
Erik and Tyler elbowed each other and laughed.
Skyler didn’t so much as flinch. “So, I told the boys we had to come check this place out again. Murph hadn’t been yet.” He gestured to the shorter guy, who was already eyeing the menu with predatory interest. “Murph, this is Jacks. Jacks, Murph. He’s annoying but mostly harmless.”
“I am neither of those things,” Murph said, not looking up from the menu. “I’m both delightful and dangerous, like an asp in a necktie. Ask anyone.”
“And this is Benji, the cleverest bartender in Tampa.” Skyler squeezed poor Benji until his face turned white, though the pride blooming in his features hid any discomfort.
Murph, ignoring his teammate, asked, “Do you guys have mozzarella sticks?”
“We do,” I said.
“Sick. I’ll take like four orders of those.”
“He’s not joking,” Tyler said, settling onto the stool next to Skyler. “He will eat four orders of mozzarella sticks and then complain about being bloated for three days.”
“It’s called living, Tyler. You should try it sometime.”
I grabbed menus and distributed them, hyper-aware of Skyler’s eyes following my every movement. When I handed him his menu, our fingers brushed.
Barely.
Only the lightest touch.
I doubt he noticed.
But my entire arm tingled. Hell, my toes tingled, too.
“So,” Skyler said, leaning forward on his elbows, making his biceps bulge in an obscene way, “I gotta tell you, man—we were out of town the other night and I got stuck watching this ESPN thing about college football injuries. You were on it.”
My stomach dropped.
“Oh. Yeah. That.” I busied myself wiping down a section of bar that was already clean. “They reached out a while back, said they wanted to do a ‘where are they now’ thing. I almost said no, but . . .” I shrugged. “It was free publicity for the bar, right?”
“Dude, you were incredible at FSU.” Skyler’s enthusiasm was almost overwhelming. “That fourth-quarter stop against Miami—you know the one I’m talking about?—where you read the screen pass before they even threw it? I must’ve watched that play fifty times.”
I blinked at him.
“You watched my film?”
“Bro, I’m from Tallahassee. FSU football was my whole childhood, and you were my favorite player.” He said it like it was obvious, like it was the most natural thing in the world. “I told you last time I was here, I have your jersey.”
I didn’t know what to do with any of that, so I began filling four pint glasses to keep myself from falling over.
Skyler Shaw, NHL captain, professional athlete, a real-life famous person, owned my jersey, had watched my film, and had been my fan while I was busy being nobody special at a state school.
“That’s . . .” I cleared my throat. “That’s cool, man. I didn’t realize anyone remembered me.”
“Are you kidding? The way you moved? Your instincts? You were gonna be special. Shit, you were special.” His expression shifted into something more somber. “What happened to your knee—that was brutal. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.” Murph tossed the menu down and planted his elbows on the bar. “Injuries suck. We all know it’s part of the game, but still . . .”
I tensed, the way I always did when people brought up the incident, waiting for the pity, the awkward condolences, the “everything happens for a reason” bullshit that made me want to throw things.
But the guys didn’t do any of that. They looked at me—really looked at me—with something that felt more like respect than sympathy.
“Injuries are a bitch,” Skyler said. “Every athlete knows it, but that doesn’t make it suck less. We get it.”
“Yeah.” I let out a breath as Erik said, “We get it.”
The moment stretched. Skyler’s gaze never wavered from mine. Something passed between us—some kind of understanding that I couldn’t quite name.
Then Murph said, “Okay, this is touching, but I need to know more about these mozzarella sticks. Are they, like, fresh? Or frozen? Because I have opinions about frozen mozzarella sticks.”
Thank God, the tension broke.
The guys stayed for three hours and ate ninety dollars’ worth of appetizers (Murph alone accounted for half of that), drank moderately, and treated every single person who approached them with genuine warmth.
They took photos with fans. They signed napkins. They asked about people’s lives and actually listened to the answers. And Skyler . . .
Skyler kept finding reasons to talk to me.
Every time I passed his end of the bar, he’d pull me into conversation, asking questions about the bar or Tampa or what I thought of this season’s Lightning roster.
He asked about FSU—and not just my career, but about the program, the culture, and whether I still followed college football.
He remembered details from plays I’d half forgotten and brought them up like they were yesterday’s history.
It was flattering, but it was also . . . a lot to take in.
“Your number one fan is working overtime tonight,” Benji murmured, sliding up next to me while I poured a beer.
“He’s not my fan; he’s—”
“The dude literally has your jersey and poster.” Benji’s grin was insufferable. “Erik told me. He framed the poster. It’s on his wall in his apartment, like, where he lives now, as a grown-ass adult.”
“That’s . . .” I didn’t have words. “That’s not . . .”
“Not what? Not weird? Because it’s a little weird, Jacks. Actually, it’s not a little weird. It’s weird as shit. It might be the good kind of weird, but still . . .”
“It’s just stuff. He’s a football fan from Tallahassee. It makes sense. Everybody’s a little crazy when it comes to football in that town. It’s our thing.”
“Uh-huh.” Benji was giving me that sideways look, the one that said he saw right through my bullshit. “And the way he keeps staring at you when you’re not looking? Is that stuff, too?”
“He’s not—”
“He is. Trust me. I have excellent gaydar.”
“He’s straight.”
“Is he?”
“Benji.” I turned to face him. “He’s an NHL captain who’s been photographed with women he’s dated or banged or whatever. He’s straight. This is one athlete connecting with another former athlete who played in a different sport. That’s all.”
Benji held up his hands in surrender. “Fine. Whatever you say, but if I’m right, you owe me twenty bucks and another glitter night.”
“You’re not right.”
“We’ll see.”
As the evening wound down, the players closed out their tab—tipping outrageously because that was what professional athletes did—and gathered their things to leave. Skyler was the last one off his stool.
“Hey,” he said, lingering while his teammates headed for the door. “This was cool, getting to meet you again, I mean, for real this time.”
“Yeah.” My voice sounded foreign to my own ears. “Yeah, it was cool.”
“We should—” He stopped, ran a hand through his hair. “I mean, I’m sure we’ll be back. The guys love this place. So, I’ll see you around?”
“I’ll be here.” I raised a hand, forgetting there was a towel in it.
He smiled that same easy, warm smile from six weeks ago, the one that made his whole face light up.
“Sick. Cool. Okay.” He was backing toward the door now, almost bumping into a table. “Later, Jacks.”
“Later.”
He waved, and then he was gone, disappearing through the door with his teammates.
I stared for way too long.
“Jacks.”
I turned.
Finn was standing at the end of the bar, arms crossed, expression unreadable.
“Can I talk to you for a sec?”
I followed him to the quieter end of the bar, away from the few remaining customers and Benji’s infallible hearing.
“What’s up?”
Finn studied me for a moment. “I like those guys. They’re good for business and good for the community. And Skyler seems nice.”
“But?”
“But I’m your friend before I’m your boss. You know that, right?” He waited for me to nod. “As your friend . . .” Finn’s expression softened. “Be careful, okay? I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“C’mon, Finn, there’s nothing to get hurt about. He’s just a dude who likes football.”
“Really? That’s what that was?”
“Finn, he’s straight. He’s had girlfriends, probably has a girl lined up in every town they play in. There are photos of him with women all over the internet.” I forced a laugh. “This is just a famous guy who remembers my football career. That’s all, nothing more.”
Finn nodded slowly, still staring. “Okay,” he said. “Please . . . keep your guard up, okay? Celebrity attention can feel like something it isn’t, and I don’t want you reading more into this than what’s there.”
“I’m not,” I said. “I promise.”
He patted my shoulder, then headed back toward the office, leaving me alone with my mind filled with bright eyes and a wide smile.