Howie
Mayhem corners me in the training room.
I'm on the bike, rehabbing my knee, headphones in, trying not to think about the fact that Ella left for work this morning without touching me, for the sixth day in a row.
He sits on the bench across from me and waits. Just sits there with his hands on his knees, filling the room with his six-foot-five silence until I pull out an earbud.
"What?"
"Get off the bike."
"I have twelve more minutes."
“Come on, Howie."
I obey, and he hands me a towel while I swig from my water bottle. We sit in the training room while the rest of the guys run drills above us, the thud of pucks and the scrape of blades filtering through the ceiling.
Mayhem takes his time, as per usual. He’s fast as fuck on skates, but very much the silent observer on our shenanigans. “I’m going to say something," he says, finally. "And you're going to listen."
"Okay."
"You're in love with Rookie's sister."
My brows shoot up, and I open my mouth to deny it, to deflect, make a joke about how Mayhem's been reading too much, but nothing comes out. Because he's right.
"I'm not going to lecture you," he says. "You're a grown man. She's a grown woman. I don't care who you sleep with."
"But."
"But Rookie doesn't know. And the longer he doesn't know, the worse it gets.
" He leans forward, elbows on his knees.
"You think you're protecting him. Or protecting her.
Or protecting yourself. But what you're actually doing is building a bomb. Need I remind you what happened with Grentley and T Stag?”
I stare at the floor. The tile is scuffed and stained with years of athletic tape residue and spilled Gatorade.
"Tell Rook,” Mayhem says. "Before he finds out. Because if he finds out on his own, it won't matter that you love her. All he'll hear is that you lied."
"I know."
"Do you? Because I watched you kiss her in front of the whole team and then let her pretend it was nothing. That's careless."
The word lands. The thing everyone already thinks I am. The party boy. The yes man. The guy who can't say no to temptation.
"I'm going to tell him," I say.
"When?"
"After her boards. She takes the NCLEX soon, and she's stressed enough. I don't want to blow up her life right before—"
"There's always a reason to wait." Mayhem stands. Looks down at me. “But silence can cut deeper than truth sometimes.”
He leaves. The door clicks shut, and I sit on the bench with my towel and my water bottle and the echo of the truest thing anyone has said to me in weeks.
Practice ends, and I'm in the recovery pool when my phone buzzes on the deck. I grab it with a wet hand, expecting Ella.
It's a link from Spinner. A podcast clip. The message says:
heads up, bro.
I click it, and my father's voice fills the room.
"—well, you know, it's a different league now. Soft. When I played, you taped it up and got back out there. My kid's sitting out with a sprained knee like it's a broken femur. I didn't raise him to be—"
I close the clip.
My hand is shaking. Water drips from my fingers onto the screen, blurring the progress bar, and I watch the seconds tick on a podcast I'm not going to finish.
Spinner appears at the door, already dressed. "You okay? I shouldn't have sent that."
"What podcast is that?"
"Some sports talk thing. They asked him about your timeline and he just … went off." Spinner leans against the doorframe. "It's not a big show. Nobody listens."
"Somebody listened enough to send it to you."
He winces. "My agent flagged it. He's got alerts set for the team.”
I climb out of the pool and towel off, moving mechanically. My father went on record, publicly, spouting his disapproval of me.
I can already see the headlines. HOUSER SR. QUESTIONS SON'S TOUGHNESS.
The comment sections write themselves. People who remember what my father did, people who think the apple doesn't fall far, people who'll use this to paint me as either too soft or too much like him, depending on which narrative gets more clicks.
"Don't read the comments," Spinner says.
"I wasn't going to."
“Sure you weren’t.” Spinner playfully punches my shoulder, muttering something about his mama, and heads out.
I gather my stuff and drive home, where the condo is dark. Rookie’s got a media appearance, and I’m assuming Ella’s still at work, so I just sit on the couch like a masochist and listen to the full podcast.
In the twelve-minute interview, my father talks about his own career for most of it—glory days he describes full of hits, playoff runs, and concussions. He makes his suspension sound like a conspiracy to ruin him rather than the right call after a dick move.
"That hit wasn't as bad as they made it," he says, and the host doesn't push back.
Then Dad pivots to me, and the tone shifts to something I recognize from every phone call, every voicemail, every family dinner where he'd watch game tape at the table and point out my mistakes between bites of steak.
“Howie Junior’s got talent. Nobody's denying that. But talent without grit is just entertainment. You've got to be willing to sacrifice. I played with a torn rotator cuff in the playoffs. Broken hand. You think I sat out for a sprained knee?"
I lock the phone, setting it face-down on the coffee table. Then I press my palms against my eyes.
The thing about my father is that he's not entirely wrong. To the outside world, it looks exactly like what he's describing, a nepo baby with a famous last name who doesn't have the grit to push through.
And the worst part — the part that sits in my stomach like a stone — is that he'd say it's exactly what he'd expect from me. The party boy. Always chasing the next good time instead of focusing on what matters.
I open the fridge, grab a beer, and crack it on the edge of the counter.
I should call my agent. Why isn’t Benny sending me podcast alerts like Spinner’s agent? I should issue a statement or do my own interview.
Instead, I drink the beer. And then another. And I'm reaching for a third when Ella walks through the door.
She reads me in three seconds, dropping her bag and kicking off her shoes before crossing the room to interrupt my father’s voice in my head.
"What happened?"
"Nothing." I turn away from her, unable to manage my relief at the sight of her compared to my dread of what that means.
"Bernard." She takes the beer from my hand and sets it on the counter. "What happened?"
I show her the podcast. She scans the transcript quickly, jaw tightening, before she closes it.
"He's an asshole."
"He's my father."
"Those things aren't mutually exclusive." She looks at me. Steady. Unafraid. "What do you need?"
I stare at her. I need to hit something. I need to skate until my lungs burn. I need to be someone else's son. I need her to stay right where she is and never move.
"I don't know," I say.
She takes my hand, leads me to the couch, sits beside me, and doesn't talk. She holds my hand, leans her head on my shoulder, and we sit in silence. And it’s the best thing I can imagine.
My phone buzzes. I glance over to see a preview of Rookie, in the group chat, sending a clip of his media appearance with three fire emojis. Then Spinner, sending the podcast link to the same chat with the message:
yo Howie you good?
Rookie responds:
wtf is this? Howie your dad is cringe
bro that's fucked up
want me to call him?
I almost laugh. Jason Rujkowski, who cannot remember to buy his sister a game ticket, is offering to call my father and defend me.
There's a version of that gesture that's touching.
There's another version that's just Rookie — loud, impulsive, charging into situations he doesn't understand because action is faster than thought.
I type back:
I'm good. Don't call him. I'll handle it.
But I don't handle it so much as I sit on the couch with his forbidden sister, whose virginity I exploded.
But truly, I think I did something selfish.
I could have helped Ella find a nice guy who would be with her in the open.
But I wanted her. I wanted her so bad, and damn it, I still want her sitting beside me through all this crap.
When the keys in the lock signal Rookie’s arrival, she drops my hand, moves to the chair, and opens the laptop.
Rookie collapses onto the couch beside me, making it feel like Ella is across an ocean. My roommate drops an arm around my shoulder and says, "Dude, your dad is a piece of work. You want to talk about it?"
"Not really."
"Cool. Want to watch game highlights?”
"Sure."
He turns on the TV. Cracks a protein shake. Talks over the play-by-play the way he talks over everything.
I sit there, and think about Mayhem saying, "tell him" and Ella's hand that I can't hold, and my father calling me soft on a podcast, and the bomb I'm building that gets bigger every day.
I should tell Rookie tonight. Right now, while we’re all here. "Hey, man, I need to tell you something about me and your sister."
The words are right there.
Instead, I say, "Nice pass," and Rookie nods, and the moment dies. The woman I love says nothing, eventually closing the laptop and wandering off to my bed alone while her brother—my best friend—has no idea that everything he thinks he knows about his life is wrong.