Chapter 7
seven
Kayleigh [off-screen]: We’ve got our captain, Tom Crowler, trying out the team beanie, goalie Dmitriyev in custom sweatpants with his number, and here’s alternate Phil Easton in the brand-new Sea Lions lace-up hoodie. What do you guys think?
Dmitriyev: Yes. Is good.
Phil: Yeah, very comfortable. One hundred percent cotton, so that’s nice.
Kayleigh: Tom?
Tom: Yeah, it’s great.
Kayleigh: So are we gonna catch you wearing team swag around town?
Phil: [choked laughter]
Tom: Oh, uh, I don’t really go into the city much. I, uh—
Kayleigh: Tom, you gotta give me something here.
Phil: How about some action shots of us wearing the merch on the ice?
[Clip show of Phil and Tom skating in Sea Lions merch while Dmitriyev lounges on his side in the goal, wearing the sweatpants]
Top comments:
clions2010: Crowler and Easton continue to be a black hole of charisma off ice and a sinkhole of playoff performance on it
seelionssaylions: Jeez, at least Dmitriyev has the excuse of not being a native speaker. What reason does Crowler have to be so bad at words?
SFCLions: Tom…hey. Hey, Tom. I’m free on Thursday. I could introduce you to some new hobbies on Thursday, when I am free
(Video posted in the outtakes section of The Rookery, the direct-to-consumer streaming service of the San Francisco Sea Lions and all associated teams, on 09/26/2024)
Tom was having a hard time remembering why he didn’t want to spend time with Jax.
At the beginning of the season, he’d been so sure he had to avoid Jax at all costs.
Jax acted outgoing and loud. He had a reputation as a thoughtless party boy who spent big on dumb things such as luxury gadgets and designer sweatpants.
And he gave funny media soundbites. All of those things sounded like the exact opposite of what Tom wanted in his life.
Then, when he saw under the surface and understood why Jax acted the way he did, he’d been desperate to prove he was neither a homophobe nor did he hate Jax, and he’d been resentful and scared Jax might see him for who he was in turn.
The combination made him clingy and skittish by turn.
Now that Jax knew, Tom couldn’t get enough of him.
Jax was still loud and outgoing. He still had in-jokes with Breezy that made Tom want to groan and order a strong drink.
But now, Tom didn’t worry Jax would get too close and accidentally see too much.
He liked Jax clowning around, making everyone else laugh.
He was never afraid to make a fool of himself if it made other people smile.
Two nights after their loss in Philly, the team congregated at a sports bar in Denver, the kind of place with five TVs broadcasting different games at once.
Miraculously, none of them showed hockey thanks to ESPN’s stupid regional blackouts.
They’d lost the game against Colorado, but only in overtime, so they still got a point.
Tom’s mom had texted, You win some, you lose some.
When he’d written Thanks, Mom, he’d almost meant it.
Tomorrow, they would play in Boston, and then the road trip would finally end, so everyone was relieved and exhausted.
No one wanted to go clubbing tonight. Tom hoped curfew wouldn’t be too hard to uphold.
He was squished into the corner of the booth with Jax pressed up against his side, a solid wall of heat.
Across from them, Breezy held out his phone to show Jax a picture. “This is Chloe. She looks nice, right?”
The picture showed a blonde woman hugging a dog.
Jax frowned. “What about Vanessa?”
Breezy groaned. “So my dad found out her uncle runs one of the restaurants in Montreal we can’t go to because my grandpa says it’s, you know—” He lowered his voice. “—run by the mob.”
“Did you ask her about it?”
“Yeah, man, of course. She got super shifty and didn’t answer, and I think her family must be from, like, that part of Sicily.”
“Right.” Jax drew out the i for a long time. He caught Tom’s eye and made a baffled face for a split second, and Tom had to take a long sip of his beer to avoid laughing. “So, Chloe?”
Breezy beamed. “Yeah, her great-great-grandmother’s from Messina, which is almost in Calabria. She lives in Quebec most of the time, but we could do long distance or something.”
Jax turned his attention to Luca, who was on his second beer already. “You have these kinds of problems too?”
Luca looked him dead in the eye. “I’m from Rome. We have joined the twenty-first century, unlike Montreal.”
Jax collapsed into helpless laughter.
Tom glanced over at Breezy’s offended face and laughed as well.
Luca clapped Breezy on the shoulder. “Come on, Casanova. I will buy you a drink and teach you how to talk to women not picked out by your parents.”
They moseyed off to the bar just as Howie and Mooney returned with a platter of shot glasses and a handful of darts, respectively.
Tom could think of a million ways in which that could go wrong, starting with any of the servers realizing they were underage and ending with a trip to the emergency room.
He was about to say as much when Jax laid a hand on his knee under the table.
“I got this,” he muttered.
A week ago, Tom might have pulled his leg away. Now, he kept it in place. It was easier on his hip anyway.
“All right, boys,” Jax said cheerily. “Loser takes a shot?”
“Are you challenging me?” Howie puffed his chest out.
“Sure am.”
Jax lost spectacularly to Howie. One of his darts bounced off the framed picture of Babe Ruth two feet above the dartboard. He picked up the shot glass with good grace, toasted Howie, and squinted at the bar. “Wow, check out the girl Luca’s talking to!”
While their backs were turned, Jax dumped the shot in a potted plant.
The girl with Luca was gorgeous. She wore leggings and had her hair pulled away from her face in a half bun.
Though she had a stack of textbooks with her at the bar, she seemed utterly engrossed in the conversation instead of her studies.
Breezy stood beside them, looking as if he’d unlock the secrets of the universe if he listened close enough.
Jax threw the game against Mooney as well and, afterward, pretended to be so tipsy he absolutely had to go and dance on the little, makeshift floor in the middle of the bar.
Mooney and Howie were young enough to be excited at the prospect, and while they flailed about somewhat more rhythmically than he expected, Tom took the opportunity to introduce a few more shots to the local plant life.
He wasn’t quite quick enough. Breezy slid into place across from him and downed two of the remaining shots in quick succession.
“I will never be able to do what he does,” he said mournfully.
“What, chat up a girl?”
“Chat up that kind of girl.”
Tom made a questioning noise.
“She’s writing a term paper about Fellini’s use of shadow and light. Luca’s seen, like, all of Fellini’s movies apparently.” Breezy stared down at the table. Tom twisted the platter until only empties sat in front of him. “I thought Fellini was a brand of freezer pizza.”
“I wouldn’t have done any better.”
Breezy glanced up from under his thick curls. “Really?”
“Yeah.” Tom hazarded a smile. “All I know is hockey. If I meet someone—a girl—who wants to talk about anything else, I’m screwed.”
“Is that why you never pick up?”
Tom went hot and then cold all over.
“Because I thought you had some tragic backstory, and a girl back home broke your heart so bad you could never love again until you won the Stanley Cup.”
“Um.”
“’Cause you seem pretty sad a lot?” Breezy’s fingers snaked out, and he grabbed a third shot while Tom tried to parse the words coming out of his mouth. “And I think the guys would love to help you be less sad, but we don’t know how.”
“Let’s focus on winning the Cup, then.”
With a loud groan, Jax fell into his seat, pressed up right against Tom. He was warm from the dance floor, and he smelled a little of sweat underneath his expensive cologne. “Yes. Cup. Breezy, our mission in life is to get this man a Cup.”
“We can do it,” Breezy said with the solemn conviction of the very drunk. “But also, though, I think I need to start watching smart people movies.”
“You do you.”
In the end, Tom and Jax had to walk to the hotel with Breezy propped up between them, no mean feat given he was taller than Tom and broader than Jax.
Luca had gone home with his student friend, and Tom had extracted promises from Mooney and Howie, still dancing—although by then, attached to two scantily clad girls in matching cowboy hats studded with what Howie called “the good kind of rhinestones”—to be back by curfew.
He had little hope they would remember if things kept heating up on the dance floor.
Who knew Howie could move his hips like that?
“It’s just,” Breezy said, leaning heavily on Tom as he tripped over his own feet, “sometimes I think the girls I meet ’cause my parents talk up their hockey player son are kind of in it for the money?
And that feels mean and wrong to say, right?
And all relationships are about money at some point anyway, but… ”
“Are they?” Jax asked.
Breezy was too drunk and too, well, Breezy to catch his tone of incredulity, but it made Tom smile.
“I mean, once you get married, all your money is shared. And one person always earns more, right? How can you not fight about it then?”
“Sometimes, couples earn the same,” Tom pointed out. “Think of, uh, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie?”
“I guess,” Breezy said doubtfully. “But, like, they didn’t last. And even if I find a girl who earns the same, I’m away all the time, and then she’d have to take care of the kids and the house, and it’s not any fun to be the responsible person all the time, so we would definitely fight about it.”
Tom must have been drunker than he thought because Breezy made a solid argument. Responsibility was no fun.