Chapter 8
eight
Kayleigh [off-screen]: Best things about the NHL so far—go.
Howie: Wow, I mean, everything! Playing hockey on the big stage, my family seeing me out there—especially my dad. He’s a hockey coach; it means a lot, you know?
Mooney: [snorts] See, Howie made the team straight off his first training camp. He doesn’t know suffering.
Howie: Hey, I was in Juniors too!
Mooney: Okay, so I got drafted two years ago, but I went back to my Juniors team for a year, and then I was on the Pups—the Sea Lion’s AHL team—last year.
And we went everywhere by bus. Everywhere.
That’s twenty-plus sweaty dudes trapped in a bus for up to ten hours.
Last year, one guy got food poisoning on our trip home from an away game.
Worst five hours of my life. Then this year, I get here, I’m psyched already, right?
And then we go on our first away game, and I get on the team bus, and it’s, like, comfortable?
How? What magic do they put into the NHL buses? I love it.
Kayleigh: So what would you tell all the guys out there trying to make it?
Howie: Um, keep doing your best?
Mooney: What he said. And shout-out to the San Diego Pups. I miss you guys!
Top comments:
s_d_pups_official: Aww, we miss you too, Diego! Cuckoo says he’s sorry for throwing up in the bus
seelionssaylions: Great to see these new guys rounding out the offense! Keep your heads up, boys!
[comment deleted]
Sea_Lions_Official: This comment has been deleted. We take personal attacks on our players for their race, religion, or personal lives very seriously. Keep your heads in the game.
(From “Meet this Year’s Sea Lion Rookies,” posted to YouTube on 11/10/2024)
When the trade to San Francisco went through, Jax spent the following weeks mourning the loss of the good thing he’d had going in Philadelphia.
He missed his house, his friends, his booty calls, all of it.
But by the next road trip in mid-November, two weeks after the East Coast swing, Jax realized what he’d missed most of all was the comforting reliability of a set routine and the steady hum of other people, present and familiar in his life.
Becoming friends with Tom gave him exactly what he needed.
They went to practice, they had lunch together, and they played the game.
Jax took the spinning bike next to Tom’s in the cooldown room more often than not.
Mooney even asked Tom for advice sometimes, especially with Jax there to make him less austere and threatening.
It was only natural to continue spending time together on the road.
After the game in Ottawa, they sat pressed up against each other all evening, shoulder to shoulder on Jax’s hotel bed, watching video and pointing things out on the small screen. In Calgary, it was Tom’s bed.
When Coach Trout got another half hour to unleash his not particularly well-hidden sadism on the D-core, they took Luca and Breezy out for lunch while Hayesie and the other vets chilled, literally, in ice baths so they could be something approaching fighting fit for the game in the evening.
“What is wrong with that man?” Luca groused over his kale and salmon salad.
“He’s probably very sad.” Breezy licked dressing off his knife. “You know, like, on the inside.” A drop of dressing ran down the side of his chin.
Luca studied him. “It is a miracle you survived to adulthood. In Italy, we would have put you out in the hills for the wolves to find.”
Breezy shoved a massive forkful of Cobb salad into his mouth before retorting, “In Montreal, you might have been hugged as a child, then you wouldn’t be this way.”
With every word, Jax watched, mesmerized, as bits of egg and bacon and chicken breast were compacted with lettuce.
“What way?”
“Mean.”
“Boys,” Tom said with the air of an exhausted father.
Both of them looked over to him, appearing for all the world like kids with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar.
“Are you all right?” Jax asked them.
Breezy shrugged. “I’ll be fine.”
Luca nodded. “What he said.”
“Okay, well, you two are the only ones.”
Tom glared at Jax.
“What?” Jax said. “It’s true. And so long as this coaching situation is going on, we’re gonna need you two to step up.”
“What do you mean?”
Tom and Jax exchanged a glance. They’d talked about it a few times now, and it became more and more clear with each passing game.
“We want Luca to have more ice time,” Tom said. “Breezy, you’re on the first D-pair now. What do you think about having Luca there with you?”
Luca took a slow, measured sip of his water and turned to Breezy. Breezy met his gaze, steadier than Jax expected.
“I think that’s a good idea,” he said. “Me and Hayesie do okay, but our styles are pretty similar. Luca’s different enough we could really make something special happen.”
“We thought so too.” Jax leaned forward. “We were also thinking about the power play. Right now, we’ve got Hayesie on the first unit, but we think you would be a better fit, Luca, with Breezy and Hayesie on the second.”
“Hayes will not be happy,” Luca observed.
“That’s your only objection?”
A smile stole across Luca’s face. He was so extremely good-looking—with eyelashes some women would kill for and the face of an angel—it made Jax uncomfortable.
It made Jax want to pat him on the head and make sure no one ever hurt him.
Given everything he’d witnessed so far about Luca’s personality, he would probably claw off Jax’s face if he tried, but the urge remained.
Proving Jax’s point, Luca said, “I obviously agree I am the best at everything.”
Breezy groaned. “He’s gonna be insufferable.”
“We’ll talk to Hayesie,” Tom said, although it appeared as though he found the thought alone about as pleasant as chewing glass.
“I would like to be there.” Luca returned to his salad once he’d said it, nodding in satisfaction.
“Why?”
When Jax laughed at the question, Tom cringed.
He was such an awkward man. An awkward, gorgeous man who had put off his usual visit to the most aggressively heterosexual hairdresser in the Bay Area long enough his hair had begun to emulate something akin to style.
It fell across his forehead, giving him a subtle delicacy, highlighting the sharp cut of his nose and jaw.
Also, he’d put on a tank top after practice, and Jax wanted to lick his biceps.
Apparently, finding out he had a queer teammate was a gateway drug into fantasizing about that teammate.
Jax couldn’t wait for his subconscious to finish working through this so he could be the best platonic friend Tom ever had.
Right now, he kept having to hold back his most id-driven thoughts.
“It seems…the right thing to do.”
Breezy nodded at Luca in approval.
Luca’s assessment turned out to be correct.
They broached the topic with Hayes and Morris on the flight from Calgary to Montreal.
Morris nodded thoughtfully, voiced a few concerns about Luca being a little too new to be a good addition to the special teams, but said he’d give it a shot.
Luca, standing awkwardly next to the four-way seat, gripping the backrests when they hit turbulence, said very little except how glad he was for the opportunity.
His expressive eyes remained steady when he added that he hoped Hayes would be open to giving him advice.
Hayes’s expression darkened and darkened as the conversation went on. At the end of it, he shot Tom a nasty look. “Everyone warned me you were an asshole,” he said. “I kept saying no, no, he’s just shy. Guess I was fuckin’ wrong.”
“James,” Tom tried, the first time anyone had used Hayes’s full given name in Jax’s hearing. Heedless, Hayes stalked to the rear of the plane and found a seat by himself, where he stayed for the rest of the flight.
Jax tried to distract Tom, first with more hockey talk, then with an increasingly desperate game of Would You Rather.
But Tom was impervious to whimsy, and Jax ended up finding out Breezy would rather always have slightly wet socks than always be slightly too cold.
As a consequence, Luca, who had been silent and dejected since Hayes’s outburst, started ribbing him for being the worst Canadian in the world, for which Breezy blamed his Italian blood, which forced Jax to sit between them for the remainder of the flight to avoid bloodshed.
Things didn’t improve in the locker room in Montreal.
Hayes remained bitter and angry. As one of the team leaders—and especially with Phil out—some of the guys naturally took their cues from him.
It made the power play awkward and uncomfortable, with Vanderbilt passing to Jax and Tom and summarily ignoring Luca’s existence.
In the second break, with Montreal leading 3–1, Hayes graduated from icy glares to hostile barbs about how ineffective the new special teams were.
Jax listened, feeling helpless and discouraged.
Maybe it had been overly ambitious of them to change the lineup so fast. Luca was very new in the big leagues, though he had so much poise.
Maybe Morris had a secret long-term plan he hadn’t told them about, which explained why he didn’t intervene with Trout.
Maybe they’d ruined their chances at a playoff berth.
They’d been doing so well this season, too, and now the locker room was poisoned.
By the intermission, Hayes had talked himself up enough to get to his feet and stalk over to where Luca sat, sandwiched between Breezy and Howie. He examined the rookie head to toe. “That’s what you get for promoting his type.”
A shudder ran down Jax’s spine. “What exactly is his type?” He didn’t want to hear the answer, but he would much rather take whatever came than make Luca face it alone. The kid was only twenty-one.
Simultaneously, Hayes spat, “Mexicans,” while Howie said, “Queers.”
Dead silence fell across the locker room.