Chapter Three #2
“Noted. Any tricks to your spaceship there?” Ben nodded in the direction of the sleek, shiny coffee machine, the only thing Phil had really cared about when he and Camille planned this kitchen.
“Nope. Haven’t you been using it the last few days?”
“No.”
“What did you do instead?”
“Not drink coffee.”
Phil would die if he had to do that. “It’s pretty straightforward. You press the coffee button, and it gives you coffee. It needs cleaning sometimes, but my—”
“Your cleaning service takes care of it.” Ben said it in tones of resignation.
Phil made to get up and deal with the coffeemaker, but Ben pressed him gently down into his seat with a hand on Phil’s shoulder.
“What’s wrong with my cleaning service?”
“Nothing, nothing.”
“What, you think I have time between eighty-two regular season games, half of them on the road, to scrub countertops and detail a coffee machine?”
Ben sighed. “No, I guess you’re right. I don’t like other people touching my things, that’s all.”
Interesting. Not to jump to conclusions, but an integral part of growing up as an athlete on a team meant getting used to other people touching your things and sharing space in a locker room as well as travel and accommodation on the road.
Sure, the NHL sprang for single rooms these days, but guys were still in and out of one another’s space all the time, and someone always forgot a charger or toothpaste or a spare pair of socks on the road.
Everyone who had grown up playing knew having no privacy to speak of for half the year was part of the deal.
Phil tallied it up as more evidence that Ben had less experience with hockey than a head coach should.
He made a mental note to write this shit down later.
“I can tell Rosalia to stay out of your room?” he said.
Ben looked up, cautiously pleased. “Oh. Actually, if you could, that would be great. Thank you.”
“No problem. I’m warning you now, though, I have no idea where any of the cleaning supplies are, and I don’t know how to use the washing machine.”
“Surely you bought it?”
Phil made a weighing motion with his hand. “I paid for it, yeah. But Camille made most of the choices.”
“Camille is…”
“My ex-wife. We got divorced just before you signed your contract.”
“And she didn’t want to keep all the stuff she picked?”
Phil shrugged. “Hasn’t said anything so far. She’s been traveling, I think. She had a good time being a hockey player’s wife for a while there, but I think she wants more out of life than a fancy washing machine and occasionally redecorating the lounge.”
The lounge—and the house itself—had been a point of contention when they were shopping around for real estate.
Phil wanted a house with a yard and a garage; Camille liked sleek, new apartments.
They compromised on the open-plan downstairs and the modern, floaty staircase.
Phil found the former slightly less cozy than he’d prefer and the latter an active pain in his ass when he was injured.
But as a newlywed, he’d been happy to make the sacrifice.
In retrospect, the house ended up being a microcosm of all the other issues they couldn’t agree on.
“Hm. Understandable.” Ben slid a full coffee cup and an omelet across the table.
Phil snorted.
“Hm?”
“You could be on my side, man.”
Grabbing his own plate, Ben sat down across from Phil. “That kind of divorce, was it?”
Phil considered as he ate. The omelet tasted surprisingly good, flavorful and laden with vegetables. It took him a moment to realize Ben left the yolks in, something Phil hadn’t done in years. He practically moaned around the second bite.
As for the divorce, Phil would describe it as amicable.
Being single and living alone was daunting, particularly when he thought he’d passed that stage of life, but he didn’t blame her for leaving.
He’d loved Camille, passionately at the start, but he’d loved her the way he loved putting on a game day suit and getting photographed en route to the rink.
Being with her made him feel glamorous and exciting, but she had never been satisfied with staying home in her pajamas all day when he had an off day.
And now, five years after marrying her, Phil could say with some certainty whoever he ended up with would need to be into vegging out sometimes.
And then there was the kids issue.
“Not really,” Phil said. “We ended up wanting different things, but I hope she gets what she’s going for.”
She would; Camille already had a very lucrative contract locked down halfway across the globe.
“Glad to hear it. The last thing the team needs is some headline about you going off the rails.”
“Just headlines about me going off the team, huh?”
Ben looked up sharply. “That’s not what I meant. You’ll be back soon enough.”
What an optimistic take. Or a downright lie.
“We’ll see,” Phil said. “Are you heading to the practice rink?”
“Yeah, I’ll give you a lift. Physical therapy at ten, right?”
Surprised, Phil set down his fork. “Yeah.”
A shadow of a smile stole across Ben’s face. “I do get updates from the trainers.”
“Right.” Phil had nearly forgotten he was an investment to Ben more than anything else.
“If you don’t mind hanging around after, I can give you a lift back too. But we’ll have to stop at the hardware store.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see.”
When it replaced Phil’s main job, physical therapy was grueling.
It involved stretching and pushing and pulling, all with the express purpose of gauging his current range of movement.
The sharply unpleasant awareness that his knee wasn’t meant to feel how it did, loose and unsteady, accompanied every motion.
And then came strengthening. One major goal for rehab as an athlete was to keep the surrounding musculature as strong as possible.
So, Phil spent an hour with Franziska doing quad and calf exercises, adapting them to the brace fitted to his knee.
With PT done for the day, he hobbled to the weight room to work on upper-body strength.
The weight room was Phil’s favorite room in the arena.
Sure, no one made it to the NHL without loving being on the ice.
And magic happened in the locker room when everyone gelled together and the games went well.
But the Sea Lions’ locker room wasn’t as electric as others Phil had been part of in Juniors because, when they lost, the cloying atmosphere of Tom’s guilt could choke everyone in there.
In the weight room, whatever worries they had on the ice or in the locker room vanished.
The pressures of the NHL had no place here.
Unlike the other places the players frequented every day, the weight room remained private to the team and the staff.
Nothing about it differed from any other gym, which made it boring to film.
And there was no requirement to show up: most of the team, those old enough to have invested properly in their own living space at any rate, had equipment at home, including Phil.
Spending time in the weight room meant spending time with teammates on purpose.
Admitting you were lonely, or just in need of some company, wasn’t really the done thing, but turning up in the team weight room on any given day guaranteed having someone to shoot the shit with.
Phil could trace his friendship with Tom back to the weight room those first couple years in the NHL.
They’d shared a hotel room at the time, too, but they’d barely talked about anything real.
Instead, they spotted each other in weight rooms across the continent and built the sort of trust never put into words.
When Phil had taken a five-minute major after laying out a left winger from Anaheim ten games into their second season together, Tom had turned up in the weight room next morning to find Phil lying down, staring up at the bench press.
He’d dropped down next to Phil and, under the guise of stretching, asked him how he was holding up.
Phil, who’d been awake since 4:00 a.m. reading all the nasty comments online, had found himself spilling everything to Tom: how hard he tried to ignore the way the media waited for him to put one foot out of line before calling him a thug, how every jack-off on Twitter seemed to think they were qualified to weigh in on his contract and his skills, how being one of the only Black men in the league seemed to come with either an automatic heel role or the assumption he was part of some affirmative action program.
Tom hadn’t said much, but he’d kept spotting Phil. Ever since, he made a point to praise Phil’s contributions to the team in interviews.
So today, with his knee calling his entire future into question and a man he didn’t trust to guide the team he’d devoted his entire adult life to living in his guest room, the weight room was the natural place to hang out for a little distraction.
Phil had only gotten to song three on his go-to workout playlist, Spotify’s Usher radio, when such a distraction occurred.
Unfortunately, it came in the form of his replacement.
After watching Luca Mazetti on TV, Phil had forgotten how short he was for a hockey player.
His speed and quick stride made him seem taller, and the skates and layers of padding helped.
Dressed only in loose workout gear and standing next to Breezy, Luca looked very small.
Phil didn’t know they made eyes that big on men.
Still, Mazetti carried himself with a grace and poise Breezy would never hope to manage even after twenty more years of life experience. Phil loved the guy, but he was a goof.
“Phil!” Breezy’s eyes lit up, and a wide smile spread across his face. As evidenced—goof.
“Hey, Breezy.” Phil loosened his grip on the machine and sat back. “How’s it going?”
“It’s going,” Breezy said. “Hey, have you met Luca?”