Chapter 30
DENNY
There’s nothing nearly as consuming as an excited crowd. It’s true that so many players usually tune out the crowd because it can be incredibly distracting. Especially with a hostile crowd, such as Tampa’s. They’re as nasty as their team.
Sports are often as much a mental game as a physical one. It doesn’t take much to break our concentration and truly fuck up our mindset. That’s why putting walls in place is so important. Focus is important.
We’re let out of the chute and spill onto the ice. I grab a puck to take a shot at the empty goal while Marion takes his place in the crease. It’s Felton’s night to sit out.
Coach Shively alternates goalies in a rather predictable pattern.
Only about fifty percent of the time does their particular playing style suit the team we’re playing.
I know most of us feel frustrated about this.
If you know Felton is better against Vegas, then why is Marion in net?
I get why he does it. Both goalies need to be good against all teams. You don’t know when one of them is going to need to be out.
As was proven when Felton was suspended for several games, and Marion had to be in net. Nevertheless, it can be frustrating.
Sometimes it works out, though. Tonight is one of those nights.
Marion is excellent against Ottawa, which might not be apparent in the score since we’re tied, but we’re tied 2-2 going into the third period.
He’s only let in two goals, and they’ve taken a combined forty-something attempts on goal in the past two periods. That’s pretty good.
I’m all about positive spins.
I move around the ice, concentrating on warming up my muscles again as opposed to taking shots. I like the feel of the ice under my skates. It’s so smooth after the Zamboni. It needs some roughing up.
Dasan takes center with Nason and me on wing, Ren and D’Quan defending. The puck drops, and Ottawa takes it, flinging it away. I intercept before it gets too far and toss it back toward Dasan.
“Get in way,” Ottawa’s German player yells as I move around him. I love to listen to German accents. There’s something mesmerizing to me about it.
Not enough to distract me, of course. I pretend he was talking to me, and I shift my trajectory to get in one of Ottawa’s defensemen’s paths. He runs into me, and I shove him against the boards, just as Dasan scores.
The crowd’s angry calls make me grin as we close in around Dasan. “Nice shot,” I say.
We break apart and rearrange on the ice. I stay long enough for the puck to drop and Dasan to take it this time before heading for the bench. A ref’s whistle stops the game as I’m climbing over. The call is against Ottawa.
I look up at the screen while taking my seat to watch the relay while spraying water into my mouth. He held Willits’ stick as Willits tried to skate away. Two minutes. That brings us into a power play.
“It’s nice to have refs who call the shit that matters,” Jackson says beside me.
Not wrong.
The puck remains primarily in Ottawa’s defensive zone.
All I seem to hear is the slapping of sticks as we fight for possession.
Nason makes a shot, but it’s stopped, bouncing off their goalie’s knee pad and then again off the bar of the goal.
Without looking away, I slide down when Jackson gets up and climbs over the wall.
With three seconds left on the power play, Nason makes his goal. 4-2. My eyes flicker up to the boards, just to confirm that I know how to count. Yep. We’re solidly in the lead. There are still thirteen minutes left, so anything can happen. That’s not too little time to at least tie it up again.
Ottaway doesn’t tie it up. We win.
As soon as my blades hit the chute, a yawn overtakes me. It’s like running into a wall of exhaustion. I hadn’t been aware of it while focused on hockey and my adrenaline pumping, but now that the excitement is over, I feel it like a bullet train.
Because the entire team is dependent on everyone being on the bus before it can leave the arena, I don’t take a long shower at away games.
I want to. Especially tonight. Instead, I wash my hair excessively.
Three times, just for good measure. A quick but thorough wash of the rest of me to get rid of the hockey stink, and I head back to my cubby.
There are still guys in the showers, so I know I did well tonight with time management. Chatter fills the locker room. A quiet buzz of excitement that always follows a win. There are plans to celebrate. Some guys are going to find a bar, others a club, and some to the restaurant in the hotel.
“Going back to your room?” Zenia asks me, shoving me on the way by.
“Yep. I’m fucking tired.”
“Need to make sure baby’s good?” Marion asks.
“Yeah, that too. I know he’s fine since he’s here, and no one knows we’re here.” By no one, I mean my mother. She can’t just materialize out of thin air and force her way into the hotel room.
“You miss him,” D’Quan says with a grin. “I get that. I miss my kids when I’m away. And he’s still new.”
“Yes. That.”
He grips my shoulder, a big smile on his face. “That feeling never goes away, but definitely enjoy it while he’s small and huggable. They get grubby and loud soon enough. Still fun, but less quiet snuggles than there had once been.”
“Thanks. I will.”
D’Quan winks and heads for the door with his bag over his shoulder and stick in hand. It’s not long before I’m following, fighting to swallow my incessant yawning. I feel like my body is being a little dramatic.
I drop into the seat and let my head fall back.
A yawn immediately overtakes me. I’m fucking tired.
I’m relieved to be back on the road with my team and am even more thankful that Coach and management were willing to work with me so I can bring Ty and Tyler.
I presented them with my out-of-control mother, her bonus calls to CAS and the police, and my concerns about leaving them alone.
It was the general manager who suggested allowing them on the flight with us.
Something that’s not typical, but under these circumstances, everyone understood my concerns.
I want to play. I miss hockey so damn much when I’m away for too long. But my fear of what can happen while I’m more than forty minutes away at our home arena was far too much for me to deal with. If something happened and I couldn’t get there?
There’s no way I’d be able to concentrate on the game.
Ren sits beside me and grips my legs. I smile, though I keep my eyes shut.
“You look exhausted,” he notes.
“I am.”
“That mean you saw what your mom is doing tonight?” Nason asks as he takes the seat behind me.
“I don’t want to know,” I mutter.
“Actually, I think you do,” Zenia says from the seat across the aisle. I glance in his direction. He’s offering me his phone.
Interestingly, he’s smirking. I can only imagine.
Leaning over Ren, I take Zenia’s phone and look down.
Spectrum is up. Immediately, I tense because I fucking hate Spectrum.
It’s nearly as much of a cesspool of idiocy as Click Drip is.
On the one hand, I like that Click Drip doesn’t have the same stupid community standards that Spectrum does, and forces parents to police and take responsibility for their underage children on the app, but on the other hand, it’s also rampant with bullshit if you get on the wrong side of the algorithm.
It’s a repost of my mother’s post by an account named Tyler Brassard. My heart jumps. Oh, fuck.
I read Tyler’s first, and it’s savage.
This coming from a woman who trespasses onto her son’s private property, shoves her way into the house, and forcibly rips an infant from someone’s arms. This coming from a person whose idea of comforting a newborn is bouncing them roughly on their knee and yelling at them when they’re crying because they forced them to eat after they just ate and won’t stop crying.
This from a woman who has made false but really fucking serious allegations to the provincial agencies because she’s not getting what she wants.
Her structurally messy post not only speaks to her lack of basic understanding of the written English language, but she also proves that she doesn’t know her son’s life because Denny and Sally weren’t married.
There wasn’t so much as a date set. She displays all the signs of a narcissist who isn’t used to not getting whatever the fuck she wants.
Now read this post again and view it for what it is: an abusive parent who has turned into an abusive grandparent.
My heart jumps. That’s a little too close to home. I scroll a little further down and read my mother’s post now, in which I’m tagged.
brEAKING NEWS: @Denny#51Willow is now GAY and Disrespecting his DEAD wife by raising her Son with her Brother in an Inappropriate Relationship in front of an Impressionable Child.
The Baby’s Mother would be Mortified. Boycott Denny Willow!
Tell the NHL that he Can’t Play Hockey if he’s going to be a Poor Example of a Human Being.
“Wow,” Ren says.
“What the fuck?” I counter.
“Should I suggest navigating to her profile and looking at the previous two posts?” Zenia asks.
While I shouldn’t, I do as he says and scroll down. The previous posts are just as explicit, just as messy, just as cringy. I’m amused to see that the little preview of comments pulls up Tyler’s on both, and he’s telling this woman right where to fucking go.
I click the screen off and toss the phone back to Zenia.
“I know what it’s like to have hateful parents,” Felton says.
His quiet voice comes from in front of Zenia, and I shift to look at him.
He gives me a sad smile. “It’s best for your mental health if you block her.
If you can’t do it yourself, ask someone else to.
” He glances at Ren and then bows his head before sitting further back in the seat.
“When I was a kid,” Marion says, peeking his head over the back of the seat in front of me, “I had friend in Patras. He was always angry and some hostile. One day when we are teenagers, he was arrested and put in… child jail?” Marion shakes his head.
“Sorry. I’m unsure of the words in English.
Anyway. He released soon when the truth of what happened come out.
He was always angry because Mother hit him and his little sisters all the time.
She was bad. She was mean. Always yells.
Always hits. One day, he hit her back when she goes to strike little sister. ”
“Wow,” Zenia says, frowning.
Marion nods. “I say this because maybe she so angry because she is hit?”
I consider his words and think about my childhood. I was never physically abused. To my knowledge, neither were my siblings. But does that mean my mother wasn’t? Or maybe she abused my father. Or… maybe she was abused as a child?
“I’m not sure that’s a comforting excuse, man,” Zenia says.
“No. Not excuse. Sorry. It is…” He waves his hand as he searches for the words. “Example of why maybe she is so angry? For understanding, maybe.”
Marion is good at clear hockey talk, but when we move to conversations outside of hockey, English not being his first language is far more obvious.
It’s even more challenging when we switch to French.
By we, I mean the Canadian players on the team.
I know phrases, and that’s primarily because of Carson and Kroy.
I listen to my teammates around me, both discussing my mother’s assholery online, offering me their support, and interjecting examples of assholes they’ve encountered throughout their lives and what drove them to be dicks.
By the time I’m letting myself into the hotel room where Tyler and Ty are, I’m even more tired. Amused. A little cranky. But I smile when I find Tyler sitting up in bed with a sheepish smile.
“Sorry,” he says immediately. “I can delete my comments and posts if you want.”
“No,” I say and drop my bag. “Just… no more. Okay? Don’t engage. Please.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
I shake my head. My mother has been largely left unchecked because, quite frankly, I don’t fucking care what she’s spewing.
Even the crap she’s posting now isn’t that big a deal to me.
She wants to call me gay, then fine. I truly don’t give a shit what she or anyone else has to say about my sexuality.
The local police know what’s going on. CAS knows what’s going on. My team knows what’s going on, right up to management. I have a suspicion my agent knows what’s going on since they’ve called me a couple times over the past week, and I haven’t gotten around to returning their calls.
I should.
“Something,” I say while stripping down to my underwear. “I need someone else to deal with it because, as angry as I am, I really don’t care what she’s going on about online.”
“You should do something,” Tyler agrees. He grins as I crawl across the bed to him. He reaches for me, bringing me into his arms, and I settle on his chest. “I’m sorry I lost my temper. I hope I didn’t say too much or something I shouldn’t have. It was hard to tone it down.”
“I know. Just don’t engage anymore. I’ve received advice that we need to block her on social media. I’ll call Aspen in the morning and make sure they’ve seen this.”
Tyler sighs. My eyes close, and I concentrate on feeling his fingers run through my hair.
“Thank you for being here. This is probably the first time since my mother first showed up at my door that I haven’t spent the entire time away from the two of you worried about what’s happening in my absence. I could concentrate on hockey.”
“I’m glad I’m able to be here. We watched your game together, though Ty’s attention span needs to be worked on. He just keeps falling asleep.”
I laugh, arms tightening around him. I’m really happy he’s mine, and if my mother wants to vilify my relationship with him, so be it. I’m chasing my happiness, and I sure as fuck don’t need her approval.