Chapter Sixteen
Will
“Run it again!” Coach shouts. Perfect. I knew practice today was going to be fucking brutal after losing the first two games and the tie last night.
I skate back to the starting line, waiting for the rest of the team to line up so we can run the stick handling drill again.
The whistle blows and everything inside me erupts as I skate as fast as I can down the rink while dribbling the puck.
I’m not the last person to finish the drill, but I’m not the first person either. That honor goes to Fuck Head. I eye him as he skates a circle, getting ready for the next drill. He catches my eye then winks at me, getting into position. Cocky asshole.
Every time I see his face, I think about Kennedy confessing to me that Carter would take videos and pictures of her without her knowledge.
I don’t have any other way of describing it besides: it's fucked up.
It's fucked up what he did to her. More fucked up than I knew about.
Something is seriously wrong with that guy.
As in clinically. What kind of creep violates their girlfriend like that and then has the audacity to violate her publicly.
A shudder moves through me when I think about what he might actually be capable of when it comes to women.
The way she was literally shaking with fear that he gave her makes me want to keep her as far away from him as possible. I don’t know how I’m going to handle seeing him everyday the rest of the season.
Carter and I were never really friends, even before Kenny dated him.
We’re both first string wingers and have been since freshman year, interacting as more rivals than teammates.
It's hard to describe because during games he and I are fucking dynamite together as right and left wingers respectively, but there is always an edge to it. He scores a goal in one game, and I do everything in my power to score two in the next one. I skate faster than him in the first drill, and he pushes himself to skate faster than me in the next one. I PR a leg press during weight training, then he PRs weighted squats. I hook up with his sister, who in my defense, I didn’t know was his sister at the time, and he asks out Kennedy the very next week.
Now though, there’s no competitiveness on my side. Just pure unadulterated disgust. Disgust and repulsion.
I don’t realize I’m even doing it until I body check Carter harder than I intended. But I’ve spent the majority of practice unconsciously doing everything I can to harass him on the ice within the constraints of not getting suspended.
“Dude, what the fuck is your problem?” He says, righting his jersey.
“You,” I say.
I’m not sure what I expected, but it definitely was not for him to skate toward me, chuckle, and say just low enough for the two of us to hear, “So you finally fucked her, huh?”
I bite down on my mouth guard as hard as I can, clenching my fists around my stick until my hands hurt.
If I punch him, I will be suspended from the team, but more than that, I’m pretty sure Kennedy would be pissed.
Instead, I say nothing, do nothing, pushing down the low simmering rage threatening to explode out of me.
By the end of practice, I’ve managed to get a tiny handle on my emotions. Carter needs to be in fucking jail or prison, preferbly for life, and looking at him on the ice, playing like nothing ever happened makes me sick.
I get that she didn’t share the details of everything he did to her before last week, but I wish I knew. And I can’t help the niggling feeling that there is so much more she isn’t ready to tell me about.
I glare at the back of Carter’s head, seething. “Bro, you need to chill out,” Adrian says on the way into the locker room. “You’re gonna make us skate laps if you don’t start playing nice.”
Adrian’s comment only adds to my anger. Is everyone else okay with this creep just being on our team? Do they not realize just how fucking depraved you have to be to record videos of your girlfriend without her knowledge and then post naked pictures of her online after cheating on her?!
I close my eyes and I strip out of my sweaty pads, hopping in the shower. I wrap my knee, dress, and leave without another word to anyone.
Will: Tell me something good
Kennedy: I just bought a dress for the hockey gala
I still haven’t left the rink, I’m sitting in the driver’s seat of my car, phone in hand, contemplating asking her to send me a picture of the dress but think better of it before I hit send. I’m thankful for my lack of idiocy because she sends another message:
Kennedy: I’ll try it on for you the next time you come over
Will: I can come over literally right now
Kennedy: Can’t. I’m with Miranda. She’s sleeping over at my place tonight. I’m free tomorrow.
Will: The bus leaves tomorrow for our away game Thursday
Kennedy: Then I’ll be waiting for you when you get back on Friday
I should not be hard right now in broad daylight but Kennedy Brooks has me under some kind of spell. Suddenly my ire from practice seems small and irrelevant, something I can push down and deal with later.
Just then, loud tapping on my window violently disrupts the vision I was having of Kennedy waiting on her bed already naked for me. I start, locking my phone on instinct, finding Liam standing next to my car, a smile on his face. I roll my window down. “What’s up?”
“‘Buncha guys are going to SixtyForty to watch the game. You want to come?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
A few hours later Adrian, Liam, and I are sitting in a booth drinking beers and watching the Lightning Vs. Panthers hockey game.
“You talk to Maurice recently?” Liam asks, shoveling nachos into his face. Stones drop into my stomach as soon as the words are out of his mouth; I’ve yet to tell anyone else other than Coach and Kennedy that I’m going to decline to sign the draft after I graduate.
“No, I haven't."
“This time next year that could be you on the ice,” Liam says. He nods his head at the TV before taking another sip of his beer.
“Nah, he’ll be warming the bench,” Adrian responds good naturedly.
I force out a weak, “Ha.” Then, pull out my phone, hoping they’ll drop it.
Adrian pats my back. Says, “We’re just fucking with you, Will. You won’t be warming the bench.”
“No, I know. I’m not offended,” I say. “I’m just…thinking.”
Liam responds with the affirmative. He and Adrian launch into an animated conversation about how this season is the end of an era and how we have to win the frozen four this year.
After a few moments, their conversation fades out as I keep thinking about how to tell everyone I’m not going to the league next year.
Liam might never talk to me again. Liam would do anything to be drafted.
I know he secretly hopes that he’ll get drafted at the end of the season, even though there’s almost no chance of that happening.
Adrian too. They’d both told me independently of each other that they'd commit multiple felonies if it meant they had a chance to play in the league, and here I am about to throw it all away for physical therapy school.
I’ve had this conversation with myself hundreds of times.
I think it's why I still haven’t told anyone else about it.
But after I messed up my knee skiing at Adrian's lakehouse, I knew my pro career was over.
I knew the second it happened, too: Adrian twisted the boat, making the ski line crack like a whip, sending me off sideways.
My kneecap was subluxed before I even hit the water.
I started researching grad schools that night.
I can’t stand the thought of destroying my knee day after day. I’ve already needed surgery once, I’m pretty sure I need it again right now, and I don’t think ligaments can survive many more surgeries than that.
◆◆◆
I’m rooming with Liam, no surprise. Coach always pairs me up with Liam or Adrian. Probably because the three of us actually live together. I’m not mad about it, Liam’s a good roomie: we never fight about the AC or the shower.
He and I Ro-Sham-Bo sudden death for who gets the bed closest to the window. He wins, lucky bastard.
We both unpack with efficiency, changing into sweats and getting into the bed. I appreciate that he doesn’t say anything about the three hickeys I’m currently sporting along my right collar bone.
Before he can place his headphones over his head and doom scroll, I ask, “Do you care if I call someone real quick?”
He smirks at me like he just caught me admitting something. “That’s fine. Who’re you calling? Kennedy?”
My neck heats up unexpectedly, I guess he did catch me. “Yeah. We, uh, we take our astronomy quizzes together.”
He agrees, but not before shooting me several self satisfied glances and a pointed look at my chest. He dons his headphones and gets under the duvet, turning the volume on his headphones up so loud that I can hear the sound of his show all the way from my bed.
With Liam cool about me calling Kennedy, I open up my phone. She answers on the first ring, her hello low and breathy, sending a pulse straight to my cock.
“Hang on, can I Facetime you? I want to see your hotel room,” she says into my ear.
Fuck yeah. I pull the phone away from my face and tap the video call button.
Her smile is the first thing I notice when she picks up the call, the second is that she’s wearing the hoodie I “accidentally” left at her apartment after we hooked up.
“You look comfortable,” I tease.
“Thank you, I just got this hoodie, actually,” she says playfully. “You like this brand right?”
“No, I’ve never heard of,” I pretend to read the logo of the hoodie, squinting my eyes, “Nike before.”
“That’s right, I forgot. You have old man eyes and knit your own sweaters.”
“Whoa, whoa, first of all, you’re the only one who knits sweaters here.”
She scoffs, but I can see the curling of her lips she’s trying to suppress. “Rude–”