21. Thick As Thieves
THICK AS THIEVES
LAKE
“So, would you say that your captain is putting a lot of pressure on you guys this season?” I ask Knox, who seems to be impervious to interview-related nerves as he leans back in the interrogation chair and throws his feet up on the table.
“Hmm? Oh, Crew? Nah, he’s usually this hysterical. I don’t doubt that he can take us all the way to the Frozen Four, but we’re up against some pretty tight competition,” he answers nonchalantly, popping his gum rather loudly in the small space that was reserved for my amateur examinations.
The room is definitely…interesting. Windowless, constructed of sound-dampened concrete walls, probably previously used as some walk-in janitor’s closet or an unlawful holding cell for delinquents.
From the limited time I’ve spent with Knox, he’s not the kind of person to fold under pressure, which means whatever intel I gather from him during our session won’t be newsworthy in the slightest. But I agreed to interview everyone on the Mustangs, and it’s in the team’s best interest if every player is on their best behavior.
I mean, I don’t think anyone would want to sabotage the Mustangs’ public image.
Well, maybe aside from one skidmark of a dickless nobody, but I’m making waves in my therapy.
Instead of praying on my enemies’ downfalls, I just practice my hand-eye coordination by throwing darts at their blurrily magnified faces taped to a red target.
“Would you say it’s easy to cooperate with other players on the team?” I follow up, squinting my eyes as if I can dissect the athlete in front of me with a simple question.
I’m not a straight-A student. I’m a C student coasting through the curriculum with a Red Bull and a dream, so for me, it’s important that I take this journalist job seriously and prove to myself that I’m capable of pulling this off.
Knox shrugs, drumming his fingers in a rhythmless tune against the table, that gum of his rolling over his back molars and accentuating a smacking sound that makes my nerves grind together.
“We’re like a family. The guys make it easy to experiment with new ideas, and we’re always learning from each other when it comes to our skills.”
“And what are some skills you find yourself working on?”
Knox suddenly bursts into laughter as if I just delivered the funniest one-liner in existence, even going as far as slapping his knee for dramatic effect. “Me? Oh, I don’t need any extra work. Ask Crew. I’m one of the best players on the team.”
“And the humblest,” I add under my breath, pretending to jot down insightful notes into my notebook as a headache actively curb-stomps my brain in.
“When did your passion for hockey first start?”
Knox—the only person strong enough to stave off imposter syndrome with mere willpower—ponders my question before answering. “When I was a kid, I used to go down to the local lake during winter with a few of my friends and play hockey on the ice. It became somewhat of a seasonal tradition.”
“And do you want to pursue a professional career?”
“I can’t imagine a future where I’m not playing in the NHL. It’s the end goal. I know I have the chops to go pro, but it’s all about hard work and perfect timing.”
I never realized how serious these guys took hockey. I mean, playing at a D-1 level is pretty intense. They’re at the top of their game. Hockey to them is what protesting is to me—it’s their lifeblood.
I wrap up my last question in a neat, pretty bow, counting down the minutes until Sutton graces me with his presence. “Do you have any advice for people who want to start playing hockey?”
Knox preens. “It’s a learning experience.
You’re not going to be perfect the first time around.
You’re not going to be perfect the tenth time around.
You’re always going to be improving, and it’s important that you allow yourself to make mistakes so you can learn from them.
Also, Liquid I.V. is going to be your best friend. Not sponsored.”
My interview with Knox takes less than five minutes, and I send him strutting out of my makeshift office. I’m still clearing out the fumes of his arrogance when my next victim walks through the door.
Harlan occupies the seat, having far more decorum than his predecessor.
He folds his hands in his lap, scoots the chair in so his chest is nearly flush against the edge of the table, and stares at me without blinking for an unnerving amount of time.
He has this anxious energy about him that makes him resemble a dormouse.
Harlan has always struck me as the shier of the guys, which is fascinating, because the sport he plays requires some personability. He’s the exact opposite of Knox.
“Hi, Harlan. This is gonna be super low-key, alright? And if you want something off the record, just let me know.”
He glances around like he’s expecting a bounty hunter to barrel through the door and take him out with a state-of-the-art silencer. “I tend to…avoid interviews after games. Crew is usually the one who does all the talking.”
“I promise my questions aren’t as invasive as the paparazzi’s.” I chuckle, though I don’t think it comforts him in the slightest.
It takes him a second to catch on, and when he does, he laughs like he was never allowed to at home. “Oh, hah, HAH.”
“Right…so, what do you think the team’s biggest strength is?”
Harlan bites his bottom lip, quite literally chewing over the response that appears to stick to the sides of his throat. “The team’s biggest strength?”
Oh, dear. I’d let him off the hook, but I can’t show any favoritism. If the other players thought the interview process was optional, they wouldn’t waste their time entertaining me.
Sympathy and guilt scorch my cheeks. I flip my journal closed and lay my pen to rest.
“We can totally skip this question if you want,” I offer, hoping that I come off approachable enough for him to lower his guard.
I don’t need Harlan’s input that much, especially if it’s going to give him an aneurysm. I’m pretty sure a surface-level question about his preferred post-game snack would take him out.
“I just don’t want to say the wrong thing, you know?
The team has so many strengths—I can’t consolidate them into a single answer,” he rambles, shifting his eyes downwards to fixate on something out of my line of sight.
His well-built chest falls shallowly—the only indication he’s breathing at all—and I can practically hear the uncertainty saturating his tone.
“Uh, okay. No worries. What about the team’s biggest weakness?”
“Weakness?” he parrots.
Right, that’s a way more incriminating question.
Poor Harlan wrings his hands in his lap, as if he can manually squeeze out all his first-time reservations. A wealth of qualms that have universally decided that his brain was the perfect pincushion for their unopposed reign.
“Never mind. Here’s an easy one. How do you prepare physically and mentally for such a demanding sport like hockey?”
There’s a pause, and for a second, I think Harlan is going to jump ship, but his shoulders actually seem to relax. “Well, a lot of the guys go to the gym before or after practice, seven days a week. We hit quads, glutes, traps, core. Our sessions usually last for an hour.”
This is good. We’re getting somewhere.
I nod supportively, enlisting the help of my notepad again. “What about any mental workouts? I imagine that balancing hockey and school has to be challenging.”
“It might seem stupid, but I try to meditate when I can. Turn my brain off for a while, you know? It definitely gets overwhelming at times, so it’s important to take breaks every now and then. Oh, and eating clean helps a lot too.”
I spend the next ten minutes not pulling teeth—to my surprise—and I pat Harlan on the back as he departs through the exit.
My last interviewee of the day happens to be none other than the one person I shouldn’t be left alone in a room with.
Sutton leans against the far wall, looking like goddamn sex on legs with his understated confidence.
He’s dressed in an MU hoodie and gray sweatpants that shouldn’t sculpt his lower half the way they do—every muscle and bulge visible, reminding me how easy it would be to untie his drawstrings and cop a feel in the privacy of our sanctum.
“You can come in,” I call out to him, still glued to the entrance’s threshold in fear of trading sense for sex and pouncing on him like a cougar in heat.
I’ve grown used to the ouroboros of overthinking that usually occupies my head, but right now, I’m only capable of cycling through some X-rated stations.
Sutton pushes off the wall and saunters over to me, barely fitting through the door frame and involuntarily brushing my shoulder as he enters the room.
He sits down in a chair that seems far too small to support him, though to be fair, all the hockey players so far have squished into it like it’s fit for a doll rather than a real human being.
His presence is…heavy. Not suffocating, but unignorable.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to uphold my professionalism with him looking at me like he wants to venture to No Man’s Land again and really test how soundproof these walls are.
Sutton’s eyes skim my barren office, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was secretly looking for a camouflaged recording device. “This is…intense,” he intones.
“Yeah, it’s the best we’ve got considering I don’t even have a budget.”
A slight change in subject. “How have the guys been so far?”
I shrug. “They’ve been alright. I don’t think I’ll make any breakthroughs, but this isn’t a career-altering article I’m writing. I’m just grateful that everyone seems pretty cooperative so far.”
The galaxies in Sutton’s eyes—usually warm and muted and swirling with extracts of honeysuckle stars—drop a shade in color as the air in the room turns frigid. For a moment, it feels like someone is pouring liquid nitrogen into the empty spaces of my body.
He rests his hand, palm up, on the table. “If they’re not, just tell me, okay?”