Chapter 3 Clark
CLARK
There’s a moment right before the puck drops when the entire world hushes.
Not literally—the crowd still roars, the organ still blares the ubiquitous hockey anthem, and Coach Badaszek still yells something that’s probably important but gets lost in the general bedlam.
But in my head, it’s as quiet as a winter snowfall in the woods.
It’s just me, the ice, and the absolute certainty that this is exactly where I’m supposed to be in life.
I love the game.
Heck, I even love practice. You’ll never hear me complain. Not even when Coach makes us bag skate—sprinting between the lines until we collapse.
I love it in the bone-deep, soul-affirming way that makes people write country songs or get tattoos. Hockey gave me purpose when I was just a scrappy kid from the Pacific Northwest with more dreams than talent and a whole lot of people telling me I’d never make it.
But I did make it. Against all odds, through sheer stubborn refusal to quit.
The road here wasn’t exactly a straight shot. More like a crisscross-crossover through Rejection City with a few detours into “maybe you should consider a backup plan” territory.
I never let a day pass without counting my blessings.
I spent two years on the AHL affiliate team for the Boston Breakers—the Saskatchewan Squatches, which, yes, is a real team name.
And yes, their mascot is exactly what you think it is.
They don’t take themselves too seriously and their fan base goes absolutely bonkers over “Sasquatch sightings” in the stands during games.
I loved every ridiculous minute of it.
Then their starting goalie went down with an injury, and I got the call up. Played a shutout game. Then another. Two consecutive defensive goose-eggs. No biscuits in the basket. I blocked the net and I blocked it hot.
A call-up goalie is the kind of thing that gets noticed. It’s unheard of, but I was on fire. It was my chance to shoot my shot. Or, in this case, not let anyone else get a shot.
Suddenly, scouts were paying attention. The next season, the Knights acquired my player rights via trade, and I found myself in Cobbiton, Nebraska—of all oddly charming places—living the dream I’d been chasing since I was six years old and my dad first laced up my skates.
“Culpepper, eyes alive!” Coach Badaszek’s voice cuts through my reminiscing like a sharp blade.
I snap to attention. The man has the uncanny ability to know when my brain has wandered, even for half a second. Some people think he’s got eyes in the back of his head. I’m pretty sure he also has them on the sides, top, everywhere.
“Yes, Coach!”
“Less daydreaming, more blocking. Unless you want to spend tomorrow’s game on the bench, writing an essay about the basics of goaltending.”
“On it, Coach.”
Practice is brutal today, which means it’s a normal Tuesday in Hockey Town. Badaszek runs us through drill after drill, his whistle punctuating every mistake with a shrill reminder not to let my mind wander, which it’s prone to do.
My ability to daydream got me on the ice. Some people claim that it’s a distraction, making me forgetful, but in reality, it provides a kind of underrated focus.
While most kids were playing video games—okay, to be fair, I did some of that too—I was just daydreaming about this.
The sound, the smell, the feel. Every nuance of hockey came to life in my imagination.
I pictured the locker room, practices, the drills, the sweat, blood—sometimes tears.
It was like a constant movie in my head and now it’s my life.
What my teachers called “absent-mindedness” and “distraction” paid off.
Booyah and huzzah! Take that, scoffers.
Well, mostly it paid off.
Now, my daydreams always have to do with, you guessed it, April Hansen. I thought I could shake the crush I have on my best friend, but it only seems to grow by the day.
When Badaszek finally lets up and we hit the showers, my legs are burning and I’m pretty sure I’ve sweated out fifty percent of my body weight. Time to hydrate.
As I toss my sweaty, stinky gear into the laundry cart, I nearly get a wadded-up sock to the face. Grimacing, I dodge it.
“Almost got you in the smacker,” Hayden says without apology.
“Were you aiming or—?”
He plays on the left wing of the front line and laughs as if I won’t soon return the favor. I may be one of the newer players, but I humbly hold my own on the ice and off—and I think the old guard respects me for it.
The truth is, most hockey players are basically just large children with exceptional dental insurance.
The locker room scene proves it. Someone blasts a rock song as if they need to get pumped up to return to the real world.
That doesn’t make sense to most people, but I get it.
We live and breathe the game. The rest is secondary—except when it comes to our family and friends.
Mikey is showing off photos of his proposal to Juniper like a proud peacock.
Fletch peels off his practice jersey and, as usual, provides commentary on everyone’s life choices.
“Blue asked me what love at first sight feels like,” Redd says, referring to the little sister he didn’t know existed for most of her life, who was somewhat recently sent to live with him.
“True love? There’s no such thing,” Liam, our captain, argues.
We all go silent, surprised he’d contribute to a conversation about the L-word. Granted, he loves his wife, but the guy is a certified grump.
Stance firm, he says, “Love grows over time.”
Everyone pipes up with opinions. I happen to know as a matter of irrefutable fact that love at first sight is very, very real.
I would also argue that it grows over time and grows and grows and never stops growing.
It’s practically eating me out of house and home.
Actually, that would be the dogs. But they’re primarily for her. Everything is.
Robo says, “Tell Blue that it feels like getting checked into the boards, but in a good way.”
Vohn Brandt, assistant coach and not to be trifled with, says, “It’s subjective but real. End of story.” He speaks with authority, whether from experience—after all, he’s married to a romance book store owner—or both, I’m not sure.
“Aggressive.” Jack shudders.
“Speaking of love,” Pierre says, looking up from his phone with a grin. “Cara just sent me a photo of a puppy from a charity thing. Look at this face.”
He flashes his phone around while doing baby talk about how cute the bichon frise and toy poodle mix is.
“Yeah, that’s an objectively cute puppy,” I say nonchalantly because I instantly want it. It’s not like I have puppy fever. No, more like April fever and I use any excuse to add to my home for wayward and lovable dogs.
“Ooh. Bree would approve,” Fletch chimes.
“Don’t you guys already have a dog?” I ask, reaching for my water bottle.
“Yeah, Bailey,” Fletch confirms. “But this isn’t for us. I’m texting Nina.”
Lane tenses. “My wife.”
Fletch doesn’t even look up. “Yup.”
Lane’s expression shifts from casual to mildly threatening in point-five seconds. “Why are you texting my wife?”
“Relax, Romeo. I’m telling her to come down here so you two can make a mutual, adult decision about whether to get a dog, instead of you being suckered into randomly bringing one home because Kai and Mya gave you puppy-dog eyes.”
He tips his head from side to side as if Fletch makes an excellent point and may have just saved his marriage.
“Nothing wrong with random dogs,” I point out.
The entire locker room turns to look at me.
“How many dogs do you have now, Culpepper?” Grady asks.
“Three.”
“Three,” Hayden repeats. “You have three dogs in a two-bedroom apartment.”
“It’s spacious.”
“It’s a fire hazard of fur and dog toys.”
“April is good at training them,” I say defensively. “They’re very well-behaved.”
“But she’s still working on training you.” Grady chuckles.
I frown. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
The guys exchange looks. The kind of looks that come with a silent conversation I’m not privy to.
“Nothing,” Redd says, way too innocently.
I power up my Superman heat vision and scorch them all.
Mikey flinches. “It’s just that you and April seem pretty close.”
“We’re friends.”
“Right. Friends.” Fletch makes air quotes.
“Best friends,” I clarify.
“Sure,” Mikey says. “Just like how I was ‘just friends’ with Juniper for years.”
“You mean enemies?”
“Same thing.”
“April and I are actually just friends. Period. Full stop.”
Hayden leans back against his locker, arms crossed. “Dude, you literally talk about her every single day.”
“I do not.”
“Yesterday you told us about how she reorganized your pantry over the weekend.”
“That benefited you because I can actually find things now. If you recall, I brought the vat of seven-layer dip to board game night, which I shared with your dumb butts.”
Beau, another goalie, grunts. “It was good.”
Pierre says, “Last week you spent twenty minutes explaining her system for your bills.”
“It’s efficient!”
“And this morning,” Robo adds with a lilt in his voice, “you told us about the video of a smol floof doing a sploot while borking that she sent you at six a.m. and how cute it was that she added her own commentary.”
My lips curl with a smile. It was adorable.
Lane scrunches up his face. “A what doing a what?”
Liam says, “Translation: a small dog stretching while barking.”
Lane shakes his head.
“Best you learn the lingo,” Fletch supplies.
Okay, so maybe I talk about April sometimes. But it’s a normal amount. A totally friend zone appropriate amount.
“Plus,” Jack says, “we’ve all noticed you never go on more than one date with anyone.”
Here we go. The exact conversation I do my level best to avoid.
“That’s because they’re all spotlight snipers,” I mutter. “No one is genuinely interested in me.” Just the NHL player with the decent contract and the Instagram following.
“Interested in what?” Fletch asks. “Your outstanding Lego collection?”
“Hey, that Darth Vader helmet set is a legitimate work of art.”
“You’re basically a giant kid,” Lane observes. “Which, to be fair, makes you the only one of us I’d actually trust to babysit Mya and Kai.”
“See? Thank you.”
“Only if April is there, though,” he adds quickly. “Left to your own devices, you and the kids would stay up until midnight, eat nothing but candy, and probably skip brushing your teeth entirely.”
“I brush my teeth!”
“Once a week doesn’t count, bud.”
“Twice a day!” I protest. “Sometimes three times if I know April is coming over.”
The locker room goes dead silent.
Fletch slowly claps. “And there it is.”
“There what is?”
“Our man from the Pacific Northwest is pining,” Hayden says with a grin.
Tucking my chin, I balk. “I am not pining.”
“You brush your teeth extra when you know you’re going to see April,” Mikey points out.
Vohn, tone flat, says, “I bet he flosses too.”
Beau adds, “That’s textbook pining.”
“That’s basic hygiene!”
“Face it, Culpepper,” Grady says. “You’ve got it bad.”
I want to argue. Want to tell them they’re all wrong, that April and I are genuinely, truly, platonically just friends. But the words stick in my throat like peanut butter.
She does love a good PB and J. Grape on basic days. Raspberry if she’s feeling fancy. Marshmallow Fluff if I want to cheer her up.
I suddenly feel like I’m on center ice in my underwear as everyone stares, waiting for me to defend or deny my position.
However, if I tell them the truth, maybe they’ll stop badgering me. it could work. However, I sense I’m going to regret this and future me will want to punch past me square in the smacker.
But I shake my head and only hear what I say after it’s out of my mouth.
“I’ve spent the last ten years in what I like to call the Friend Tundra.
Not the friend zone—that implies there’s a border, a line I could theoretically cross.
No, the Friend Tundra is a frozen wasteland that comes with the absolute certainty that we’ll only ever be friends. ”
Everyone gawps. Some with mouths agape.
But I’m on a roll now. The puck is sliding across the ice with no one to stop it but me.
I’m the worst goalie ever. “Sure, I’ve heard heartwarming stories of people going from friends to lovers.
My own parents, actually—Dad pursued Mom for three years before she finally agreed to a date. But April and me? Titanic-ed.”
Hayden says, “Do you mean that ship has sailed, sunk, and is currently rusting at the bottom of the ocean?”
I nod solemnly.
Mikey pretends to play a sad violin.
“How can you be so sure?” Liam asks, reading my expression.
Because there is no stopping me now—because these guys are my brothers, we’ve bled together on the ice, and celebrated together off it—I tell them.
“April and I were good friends in high school. We spent a lot of time together. But no sooner was I considering making a move than my best guy friend since way back when we were still in diapers, Whitaker, invoked bro code. Said he wanted to ask April to the prom. I should’ve told him no, should’ve said I was going to ask her myself.
But I froze. And then he commented how it probably didn’t matter anyway because she was ‘like a little sister’ to me. ”
“And you didn’t correct him,” Pierre says quietly.
“Nope. I latched onto that excuse like a life raft. Later, when he double checked if it was cool to take her as his date, I even stated it for the record. Because here’s the thing—I was already the ‘athletic Mr. Popularity’ guy.
Hockey was my whole identity. I saw what dating drama did to other guys on the team, how it messed with their focus, ruined friendships.
And April was the most stable, genuine connection I’d ever had. I couldn’t risk losing that.”
“So you friend zoned yourself,” Fletch summarizes.
“Basically. Then after that, it just stuck. Like somewhere along the way, remaining just friends became a challenge. A quest to prove it was true and nothing more.”
Lane shakes his head. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“You’re not wrong.”
He pats himself on the back.
The guys are all looking at me with varying degrees of pity and amusement when Coach Badaszek’s voice echoes from the hall. “Culpepper, out here, now!”
I frown, toweling off my hair. “Now?”
The guys make a low, “Ooh,” sound as if I’m in trouble.
What did I forget this time?
Certainly not that I have a crush on my best friend, but they don’t need to know the gory details of how wide and deep and strong it is. As much as I love hockey, if April asked me to stop playing, I would.