Chapter Six
“On the Sea Lions, we’ve got an interesting mix.
While team captain, Tom Crowler, favors classic looks like this black suit with a light blue shirt [image below], in recent months he’s spiced it up with silk ties and designer pocket squares.
His alternates, Jimmy Hayes and Jax Grant, shine in very different ways.
Where Hayes picks casual styles with turtlenecks and drawstring pants, Grant is known for his more eccentric yet formal choices.
Check out the purple three-piece suit by Dior he wore to the team’s New Year’s gala [image below].
But our pick for team style winner is last year’s rookie Luca Mazetti, who shines in elegant tailoring with a few accent pieces.
The man knows how to rock a suit, what can we say?
Check out these pinstripes [image below].
The team’s style loser? Chris ‘Breezy’ Calabrese.
Someone get this man to a tailor and find him a suit he didn’t get at Macy’s! ”
Top comments:
Jefferson Howard: They’re hockey players, not fashion models. Who cares what they wear?
calabreezy: yeah I love Breezy, but fair
(From “Wearing Versus Styling: NHL Players' Game Day Looks—Who’s Hot and Who’s Not?” Posted to on 10/25/2025)
Something was wrong with Breezy.
No, wait.
There were many things wrong with Breezy, starting with the fact that he called himself “Breezy,” through his insistence on believing himself to be Italian, and ending somewhere around how attractive Luca found him.
But ever since the illuminating lunch with Tom Crowler a few days ago, he’d been acting oddly.
Luca hoped against hope it had nothing to do with his sexuality.
Breezy assured him he had no problems with Luca being bisexual, and apparently Breezy’s support of the gay agenda extended to witnessing Phil Easton’s wedding to Ben.
He was also respectful enough about it to keep not one but two queer relationships on the team secret for months at a time.
Luca did get the distinct impression Breezy wanted them to remain secret, which he didn’t know how to feel about.
He hadn’t contemplated coming out to Breezy before he’d done it. This was largely because he hadn’t contemplated coming out to anyone besides his family until he no longer played hockey for a living. Having done it now, Luca was both relieved and more tense than he’d ever been in his life.
The relief was natural, he supposed, the feeling one expected to have about a secret coming to light with no negative consequences.
But surely now that he knew Luca liked men, Breezy would realize Luca harbored more-than-friendly feelings toward him.
No one took their platonic roommate out for planned dates or rubbed them down with arnica gel.
Breezy’s new awkwardness must be due to suspicion.
The smart thing would be to cancel his next planned outing, scheduled for the team’s week at home and before the season started with an away game on Saturday.
Luca looked down at his phone and considered calling off the appointment.
But suspicious or no, Breezy deserved to know Luca appreciated him, and he deserved nice things. What was the worst that could happen if Breezy found out his true motivations?
Breezy could ask him to move out and never speak to him again.
With a sigh, Luca went to knock on Breezy’s door. Breezy would no more do that than he would take down the stupid “pastas of Italy” map. The only way to discover what was bothering Breezy was to talk to him like a grown-up.
Breezy opened the door, his phone in one hand a few centimeters from his ear.
“I’m sorry he said that,” he said as he gestured for Luca to come inside. “That’s messed up.”
Breezy’s room consisted of only a bed and the closet.
He had a second TV on the wall opposite his bed, and Luca knew he sprawled out with his back against the headboard watching his dumb romantic comedies on free evenings when he wasn’t in the living room with Luca.
There weren’t any chairs, not surprising given the gargantuan bed. Luca took a seat at its edge.
“Mhm.” Breezy rolled his eyes at Luca. “Yeah. Well…I mean, have you tried telling him how you feel?”
Breezy paused to listen to the response on the other end of the line.
It must have been unsatisfying. He collapsed onto the bed next to Luca.
“Uh-huh. Yeah, I know how he gets. But I don’t think antagonizing him more—”
Breezy closed his eyes when a loud voice interrupted on the other end, and he slumped into Luca. Unthinking, Luca caught his weight, impressive though it was, and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. Breezy nosed his way into Luca’s collarbone.
Luca’s heart pounded.
“Yeah, Mom. Whatever you say. You know him best; you married the guy.”
Christ, his mother. He always got a little down after those phone calls. With his free hand, Luca carded through Breezy’s hair.
Breezy pushed up into the touch, and Luca lost his balance, both of them toppling onto the sheets with Breezy’s head resting against Luca’s shoulder. Surrounded on all sides by Breezy’s scent, Luca could do nothing but continue to stroke his hair and wish desperately he could kiss this better.
“Uh-huh. Yeah. Do you want me to talk to Matty about it?”
Luca tugged a little at Breezy’s hair. He nuzzled closer into Luca’s skin.
“I know they’re a lot alike. I can try anyway, if you want.”
The conversation seemed to be winding down. Breezy made a series of listening sounds and then said, “Okay, I will. I love you. No, I still don’t want to meet anyone. No, not even if she’s Italian. Bye.”
He dropped his phone onto the bed with an exhausted sigh.
Luca wondered if he should say something.
“My mom says hi,” Breezy told him, muffled into Luca’s shoulder.
Swallowing his impulse to tell Breezy where his mother could shove her greetings, Luca said, “Thank you.”
He’d met Breezy’s family once, a few weeks into his start with the team.
It was right after the locker room blowup when Hayes called him incompetent and blamed him for being “Mexican,” while Howie had claimed he was “queer.” Luca hadn’t known what to say to either accusation.
Still brand new in the NHL, he didn’t want his teammates to see any weakness in him but lacked the right approach to call Hayes out himself.
Telling the man he wasn’t Mexican would have been a slap in the face to Mooney, who had been standing right beside him.
Telling Howie that he wasn’t queer would have been worse, given he’d be lying.
Thankfully, Tom had rescued him by shutting down the entire situation, and then Breezy had cleared up the misunderstanding of Luca’s nationality and taken him out to dinner with his family.
For Luca, the dinner had seemed a reprieve from the tensions of the team—at least until he gained some insight into a whole new world of tension.
Breezy’s parents spent the entire evening bickering about what to order.
Breezy’s father, a stout man in his mid-forties, told his wife she ought to reconsider dessert since she was getting fat.
She retaliated by describing to the waitstaff in great detail what an embarrassment her husband would be if they kept refilling his wine glass.
Breezy’s brother, who looked just like Breezy but with forty pounds less muscle and black-framed glasses, egged them both on with pseudo-scientific facts about the dangers of obesity and off-color anecdotes about things their father had done while drunk.
Trapped in the middle, Breezy spent half the evening reassuring his mother she looked wonderful, which she did, and letting his father mock him for his performance during the games—a distraction technique, Luca assumed.
Ever since, Luca had been skeptical of Breezy’s close relationship to his family.
“Your family is terrible” wasn’t the sort of thing you could say to someone else though. Instead, Luca carded his hand through Breezy’s hair again, letting it fall across his forehead.
“That feels so good,” Breezy rumbled. “You should have a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend, I guess. Someone to give head massages. You’re depriving the world.”
Luca snorted a laugh. “You should get a girlfriend to do this for you.”
Breezy made a buzzer noise. It vibrated against Luca’s collarbone.
“You love dating. Why not try again?” He knew such encouragement counted as self-sabotage, but he hated to see Breezy hurting.
Sighing, Breezy pushed himself upright, and Luca mourned the loss of his touch. “You know why.”
Luca rolled to a seated position. “Is this about Amélie? I told you then she was shallow and rude and—”
“She wasn’t,” Breezy said, just as he had every time Luca mentioned the girl.
“She was, and I am sorry I ever introduced you.”
Breezy kept quiet for a long time. He stroked his fingers over the bedsheets, flattening creases. Finally, he looked up at Luca. “Why did you?”
Luca swallowed. “I watched you date three different women in two months because your parents picked them for you. I wanted you to meet someone for a different reason.”
“So you thought it would be better for me to date someone you picked?”
“I thought maybe you would get along.”
The full and unvarnished truth was that Luca thought Breezy would be so taken by the novelty of dating someone not chosen by his parents he would settle down with her.
Everything about Breezy, from his generosity with his time and means, to his love for companionship, to his tendency for physical affection, screamed “relationship material.” He only needed to find the right person, and at the time, Luca believed it wouldn’t take much to convince him Amélie could be that person.
In turn, Luca hoped seeing Breezy fall for someone so unlike him would mean he’d finally be able to move on from his unfortunate attraction.