5. Brody
Monday practice is supposed to be light. Drill, drill, drill baby and then home by early afternoon. Except Saturday we gave up two power-play goals in four minutes, so Sacco has us running until somebody cries.
I blow my third pass in ten minutes. It isn’t even close. The puck skips six feet behind our winger and rings off the boards, and the drill dies, and five guys coast to a stop and look at me.
“Any time you want to join us, Callahan,” Sacco calls from the half wall.
“Yep. Sorry.”
We run it again. I hit it this time because I’ve done the same drill a thousand times and I can do it when I pay attention. My body knows the movements. The rest of me is somewhere I can’t tell a single person in this building about.
JP catches me at the water break. He flips his mask up on top of his head, which means a conversation is happening whether I want one or not.
“Okay,” he says. “What is it?”
“What’s what?”
“You missed three passes a peewee makes. You,” he pokes me in the chest pad, “are chewing on something.”
I could tell him. For one second, I actually think about it: JP, the owner is my prime match, and he moves into my house tonight. I picture his brain melting out his ears, and the second passes.
No, it’s not fair to make him carry this for me. Then he has a secret to keep too, unless we’re planning on telling the whole team and that’s the worst idea ever.
Besides I still don’t quite know what to think about it myself. Everett Rourke looks at me like I am dirt. No wonder he and Gordie didn’t get on. Gordie was one of the most down-to-earth men I have ever met. His son is a prim, rude little nobody.
“It’s Dorn, right?” JP drops his voice. “We’ll get him again soon. You’re already planning round two.”
I let him think it. It’s even true, in the sense that Dorn exists and I hate him. “Something like that.”
“The league’s watching him now. Yeah, you got into trouble but everyone saw what he did to Linus. He fucking started it. He so much as breathes on the kid, he’s gone.” JP shrugs and pulls his mask back down. “Sleep at night, big man. That’s my professional advice.”
Back in the room after skate, Sacco is in the doorway of the equipment cave checking over the contents.
Somebody finally asks him the question the whole team has been asking between ourselves all week. “Did anybody even know Gordie had a son?”
“Yeah, I knew,” Sacco says. Of course, he did. He and Gordie were practically joined at the hip. If you want to know anything about this franchise, you ask Sacco, and mostly he doesn’t tell you. The guy cares about hockey. Nothing else is important. You’ll get a grunt.
“So?” JP settles onto the bench, still in his pads. “What’s the story?”
Sacco sets the skate he is holding down. “His mother took him to London when he was fourteen. He’d still come over some summers, and then the day he turned eighteen he stopped coming at all. School over there, then finance, then his own firm. Money. A lot of money.”
“Gordie used to fly over twice a year to see him. If he got a dinner out of it, he called it a good trip. He never said one hard word about that boy. But you’d see him when he came back from those trips. It took something out of him every time.”
“He never came to a game? Ever?” someone asks.
“Not once that I know of. He didn’t approve of hockey. Of his father’s money coming from it. Of any of it.”
The room goes ugly fast. So the guy who couldn’t be bothered owns us now. Somebody heard it from somebody’s agent: the son is just waiting out a clock in the will, selling the second the lawyers let him, and won’t spend a dollar on this roster in the meantime.
Guys who never met Gordie’s son are ready to fight him in a parking lot on Gordie’s behalf. That’s this room. We loved that old man.
I stand at my stall with a roll of tape in my hands, saying nothing.
It matches what I know. That little omega is cold as ice. Maybe he takes after his mother.
“Hey.” JP’s voice comes muffled through the chest protector he’s hauling over his head. “Weren’t you going to do the captain thing last week? Introduce yourself?”
“Didn’t get the chance,” I say. “His people run a tight schedule.”
The lie comes out way too smooth.
I shower and drive home. At six o’clock tonight, the man half this room wants to fight in a parking lot is going to pull into my garage and unpack his bags down the hall from my bedroom, and nobody in that locker room can ever, ever know.
I get home by three and clean a house that is already clean.
His assistant arrives at five. She is small, dark-haired and wears a cashmere coat.
She backs a van into my garage, stacks four boxes and a suit bag in my front hallway, hands me a folder with a copy of the contracts in it. She’s gone in under seven minutes.
I bought this house nine years ago, after a fan found my old condo. It wasn’t serious. Just weird.
But then the Barons really started to take off and with that, so did the paparazzi. Man, those vultures really care about the absolute minor stuff that you do.
They used to hover outside my building all the time.
So when I finally bought my own place, I didn’t ask about kitchens. I asked about sightlines.
There is no view of the front door from the street. I have a gate, a long drive and a security firm watching the cameras.
At six exactly, the button on the security gate goes. I can’t see who it is. He’s in a gray rental sedan with tinted windows. It has to be him.
I feel my stomach flip which is stupid. I’ve faced harder opponents on the ice. I’ve had my nose broken twice. I’ve gone into more than one game knowing that there’s a guy on the other side so eager to pummel me that he wouldn’t care if he killed me.
Somehow this is more nerve-wracking.
I grit my teeth. I don’t care what that little priss thinks of me. At least that’s what I tell myself as I watch him press the button. His car noses in, following the pathway toward the garage door which I have left open.
I watch him on the security camera as he gets out of the car. He’s wearing a dark suit, no tie, top button open.
He is the most beautiful thing that has ever stood in my garage, and it is a genuine pity about the personality.
He grabs a briefcase from the passenger seat, then looks around for the exit, making his way through the connecting door to my kitchen moments later.
I turn the security feed off before he comes in.
His scent hits me immediately and I feel myself harden in my pants. I want to grab him, bend him over the kitchen counter and—
“Thank you for hosting, Mr. Callahan.” He says it to a point just over my shoulder, refusing to meet my eyes.
“Of course.”
A silence. Tremendous start.
He has closed the garage door behind him and I have made the mistake of not opening the windows in the kitchen. His scent has nowhere to go. Orange peel. Dark honey. It climbs into me on every breath. I want to bite him, swallow him alive.
I’m not going to do that.
“How about I give you the tour?”
He’s standing deadly still, his nostrils flared. My scent is affecting him as badly as his is affecting me. Good.
“Just show me where my room is.”
No please. No thank you.
“Sure.”
I point out the rooms as we walk, giving him the tour anyway.
“Kitchen, obviously. Living room. Gym’s in the basement, use whatever. Laundry. My room’s at that end.”
He follows behind me saying nothing.
I stop at the far door. “You’re down here.”
I spent an hour on this room. New sheets, washed in the unscented stuff. Cleared the closet, found the good hangers. It has its own bathroom, blackout blinds, and the entire width of the house between his door and mine. He looks at the room, then down the hallway at the distance.
“Thank you,” he says, and sets his laptop bag on the desk like he’s checking into a conference.
“Here’s my week,” I say, because somebody has to say something.
“Morning skate at nine, home by two most days. Games Tuesday, Friday, Sunday. All home. We’re on a homestand, which is the only luck anybody’s had in this whole thing.
Media availability Thursday, at the rink, nowhere near here.
Sun comes Wednesday afternoon. There’s a list on the fridge with the gate code, the Wi-Fi, the security company’s number, and garbage day. ”
“Garbage day,” he repeats, faintly.
“Yeah,” I say. “I mean I’ll take it out, same as I always do, but just so you know.”
“Sure,” he says, looking around at the room. His face is so carefully blank that I have no idea what he is thinking.
“If you need anything—”
“I won’t.”
Okay. I’m just trying to be a good host. “I mean if—”
“I won’t. And I’d appreciate it if you left me alone. I will arrange my own meals, preferably while you are out. I will not be joining you for any activity. Or using your gym. Or anything else.”
I put my hands up. “Fine.”
“And you stay out of this room until we’re done here.”
What the fuck? Is he expecting me to come ravage him in his sleep? Not that the thought doesn’t do things for me but I’m not a barbarian.
“Works for me,” I say.
I stand there a moment too long. He raises his eyebrows at me.
Okay, fine. I get it.
I leave, closing the door behind me.
I stand in the hallway and breathe out heavily. Fuck. That little omega smells like pure heaven. I really, really want to open the door.
I don’t.
Instead, despite him telling me he didn’t want to eat with me, “I’m making food,” I tell his closed door. “You want in?”
A pause, long enough that I almost walk away. Then: “No.”
I cook because I was going to cook anyway. It’s the team diet, nothing fancy: chicken, rice, steamed vegetables.
I put the fan on high and open the windows. The food smells amazing, but underneath it all I can scent him.
There is no way I am going to sleep tonight. Not with him down the hall.
I’m just plating up when the doorbell rings.
Only one person rings my doorbell. Deliveries stop at the gate, and the gate calls my phone. There is exactly one person alive who has had my gate code for years and a spare key he’s too polite to use.
Crap.
I get there as the bell goes again and open the door eight inches, my shoulder filling the rest.
JP is on my porch, holding up a six-pack. “Don’t know what’s been bothering you, bud, but I figured this would solve it.” He’s already stepping forward, fifteen years of walking into each other’s houses, and stops when I don’t move.
He looks at my hand on the frame. Then at me.
“You’re not letting me in?” He laughs when he says it.
“Bad night, man. I’m wiped.”
“Uh huh.” He leans an inch to the left, casual as anything, and looks past me. I move with him, but the hallway is the hallway. There’s nothing there. Everything of Rourke’s is in his bedroom, with him.
I can still smell him though. The question is whether JP can or whether the cooking chicken covers the orange.
The kitchen fan hums away behind me. If he steps inside, JP will know somebody’s here. If he breathes deep enough, he might know everything. My heart is going like it’s overtime.
JP looks at me for three long seconds. He knows my face better than my sister does.
“Okay,” he says at last, slow. “You good?”
“I’m good.”
He hands the six-pack through the gap instead of pushing it.
“Enjoy, big man.” He goes down the steps backward, watching me, and points two fingers at his own eyes and then at mine, the thing he does from the crease when he wants a defenseman’s attention.
Then he turns at the bottom, and a couple of minutes later, the gate swings shut behind his taillights.
I close the door and stand there with my forehead against it and a six-pack going warm in my hand.