Chapter 4
four
Kayleigh [off-screen]: Favorite hockey fights you’ve been in—go.
Hayes: Ooh, tough one. There was this time Turgenev crashed Dmitriyev in Buffalo. That was pretty good.
Kayleigh: What happened?
Hayes: Well, I dropped the gloves, obviously.
Can’t go after our goalie. He dropped his gloves, too, and I got him against the boards.
But Jenkins—he’s in Calgary, now, I think—came up too.
And then East, here, joined in, and the next thing I know, the refs send both entire teams to the penalty box for five minutes while they figure out what even happened.
Kayleigh: Were you thinking of that fight, too, Phil?
Phil: I wouldn’t say favorite. I don’t have favorite fights. It’s not really something you set out to do. I’ll get in there if I have to, but I don’t want to cost the team those penalty minutes, and I don’t want anyone to get hurt.
Top comments:
sealionsfan82: Glad Easton is so measured. Hockey fights are dangerous, and the incident Hayes talked about got a man in the hospital.
sealions4lyfe: @sealionsfan82—It’s a contact sport. Let men be men. Easton’s a pussy.
sealionsfan82: @sealions4lyfe—Have you heard of CTE? It’s not the ’80s anymore. Players whaling on each other isn’t how you win the game
(Video posted in The Rookery, the direct-to-consumer streaming service of the San Francisco Sea Lions and all associated teams, on 11/10/2024)
Jax didn’t sit next to Tom on the team bus to the airport. He also didn’t try to join in the card game the old guys played on most flights. These things had to be taken slowly.
Anyway, he wasn’t a huge fan of the way Tom kept jerking away from him whenever they touched or Jax mentioned anything to do with his love life. Tom might not be a homophobe in the classic, bible-thumping sense, but he wasn’t exactly cool about it either.
Instead, Jax sat with Breezy and let Breezy talk his ear off about how Vanessa had forgiven him for Jax insinuating her job decorating rich people’s houses made her less tough than a nurse.
He did an excellent job pretending not to snort at how ridiculous he found her outrage.
Sure, he might need to work on his own preconceived notions about WAGs, but he’d always been painfully aware it wasn’t a life model he aspired to.
Any partner of his wouldn’t be welcome in the group, and that changed the way he saw them.
To Breezy, a woman giving up her life to follow his career was a sacrifice, and maybe he had a point.
But the same woman would never invite Jax’s boyfriend, if he ever had one, along to the bridal shower or baby brunch or any one of the events they posted on Instagram.
Then again, maybe Jax, as a perpetual egoist, couldn’t understand a way of life that entailed devoting your whole self to someone else’s job.
He just didn’t think he could love a man who would be satisfied with an influencer career and coordinating outfits with twenty other people in his spare time.
Although…Jax played hockey professionally. He spent pretty much the entirety of his working hours coordinating his outfits with other guys.
The thought made him laugh, and then he had to share it with Breezy, who also chuckled.
“I never thought about it that way.” Breezy turned to him, eyes wide. “I guess the WAGs really are, like, their own team, you know? Wedding season is their playoffs.”
“You are going to make some woman very happy,” Jax told him.
A huge smile lit up Breezy’s face. “Thanks, man. Hey, you will too. You should try it sometime. I know you’re all about the one-night-stand thing, but having a girlfriend is lit.”
Jax smiled awkwardly, trying to formulate a response that wouldn’t crush Breezy’s hopes and dreams.
Thankfully, Mooney leaned over the aisle. “So, you think Vanessa’s gonna be Mrs. Breezy? You know she’s going dress shopping with Allie.”
All the blood drained instantly from Breezy’s face.
Good. He was way too young to get married.
The roadie went from south to north, so they started in Florida.
On the bright side, awesome beaches; on the downside, even in November, the humidity climbed above 70 percent.
Finally, a reason to be glad he didn’t live on the East Coast anymore.
At least the ice was decent in Sunrise. They must have paid a fortune to get an NHL-level rink installed there, and they didn’t have Vegas money. The investment had paid off.
The other bright side was that they’d played a matinee game against the Wildcats—a loss. But they were 4–3–3 in the season so far, so Jax didn’t worry too much; they had plenty of time to turn things around and eleven points in the standings. And it left the team with a free evening in Florida.
For the first time since Jax had joined the team, Tom agreed to go out for drinks. For the first time since Jax had joined the team, he begged off with a headache. The opportunity was too good.
No one knew shit about hockey in Florida.
Hooking up in Edmonton had been dumb as fuck.
When the guy he’d matched with on an app he’d thought kept his identity reasonably anonymous showed up wearing his fucking jersey, he’d nearly called the whole thing off.
He hadn’t because he was drunk, horny, and still pissed about being traded for being queer.
It would serve management in Philly right if he got outed after all, and everyone found out why they’d traded him.
Then Tom caught him, and Jax had a queasy moment of fear that his stupid, drunk revenge fantasy would become a reality. He still hadn’t decided whether to be relieved or disappointed it hadn’t.
Florida though. Florida was safe turf. Not to actually be gay, obviously.
You couldn’t pay Jax to live in this state, and if his agent had suggested he move here back when he was in contract talks and not just being traded with no warning, he’d have demanded some ludicrously high sum.
Fifteen mil or bust. Something no team in the league could afford.
Anything not to have to live in Florida while being queer.
Visiting Florida as a gay man though? That shit ruled.
Jax considered going old-school, forgoing the apps, and heading out to the clubs instead.
He’d packed a single pair of jeans for this road trip, anticipating very little cause to wear anything but game day suits and athleisure.
Along with a tight, threadbare shirt, he could easily pass as one of many guys in a crowd out to hook up.
Of course, as soon as he’d gotten his wallet squeezed into the scant space in the back pocket of his pants and fixed his hair to appear artfully tousled in the little makeup mirror in the bathroom (Jax really had to get one of those installed whenever he finally found a place), there came a knock on the door.
He checked his watch. He’d switched out his usual Rolex for a leather band, which appeared less expensive, though it wasn’t. Seemed safer for going out. Eleven thirty, too late for a casual visitor.
“Jax?” Tom asked through the door.
He was so soft-spoken for a hockey player, especially for such a tall one. He had a good three or four inches on Jax, but with the way he talked, the way he behaved, it surprised Jax every time to realize he took up so much physical space.
Jax pulled open the door. “What is it?”
“I, uh…” Tom looked him up and down slowly. “I wanted to talk to you about drills. Were you going somewhere?”
“And if I was?”
“Curfew starts in fifteen minutes.”
Jax blinked. That explained why he wasn’t still out getting drinks. “Tom, you are a thirty-two-year-old man.”
“So?”
“So, have you never broken curfew to get laid?”
“Of course not!”
Right, of course not. Tom would never. He was so squeaky clean.
Even when he got mad, his anger took the form of self-deprecation.
Jax still wasn’t over the revelation that Tom acted so weird around him due to his own feelings of inadequacy.
This guy—with his knife-sharp jawline, his piercing eyes, his towering presence on the ice, and his aw-shucks Canadian manners off of it—felt inadequate because Jax could cut a fucking bell pepper faster than him.
It made Jax want to wrap him up in a blanket and then shake that blanket burrito until it made sense.
“You were, uh, going to get…going out to…um…”
“Go to a club and find someone to fuck, yep.”
“Someone,” Tom repeated.
The emphasis was weird, as if he wanted to insinuate something but didn’t dare say what.
Jax rolled his eyes and pulled Tom inside his hotel room by the elbow. The door clicked shut. “A man, yes.”
“Right.”
Jax considered whether or not he had the patience to explain to Tom why his baffled confusion in the face of anything not entirely heterosexual was getting very old and somewhat insulting.
Homophobia didn’t only show itself in slurs and violence, but also in being treated like a space alien for being gay.
He decided against getting into it for the sake of his sanity.
A man only had so much time to spend staring at Tom Crowley’s confused face before starting to think he was a little adorable.
Jax didn’t need the crisis that would cause for both of them in his life.
“Yes, I’m gay, and I like hooking up. We’ve been over this.”
Tom appeared to digest this for a moment. Then his mouth set in a thin, stubborn line. “Well, I can’t let you.”
“Why? Because I might get my gay cooties all over you?”
Jax really had to stop saying purposefully outrageous things in Tom’s vicinity. He just enjoyed the confused flutter of Tom’s sooty eyelashes so much.
“Because it’s past curfew.”
“Have you ever broken a rule in your life?”
“Yes.” The answer came instantaneously, Tom’s voice so firmly haunted. Jax resolved never to ask.
“Okay, well, I don’t want to stick around here talking about drills. I want to get laid in a place where no one will be wearing my fucking jersey.”
Tom positioned himself so he blocked the door.
“You’re being ridiculous.”