5. Archie
ARCHIE
I had a whole list of excuses for getting out of team appearances, and over the years, I’d used every one of them. Once it was that I’d tweaked a hamstring, the next time it was a migraine. I also used the one about a prior commitment but kept it vague in case anyone asked for details.
The PR team had stopped fighting me on it.
Everyone knew that I turned up for games, played hard, and went home.
I didn’t do galas, and I most certainly didn’t do small talk—I was terrible at it—over tiny pieces of food I couldn’t taste.
Standing in a room full of strangers and pretending to be the smiling guy in the poster was just not me.
But this event was different, and the head of PR had made that clear.
The email contained the word “mandatory” in uppercase letters, and I suspected the rest of my teammates didn’t have that word on theirs.
It was for my eyes only. Every player was expected to attend, and there were no exceptions.
I read the email three times, sitting at my kitchen counter with a coffee going cold beside me.
With each pass, my mood became more gloomy.
It wasn’t the crowd I minded so much. It was that this event mattered to me, and the things that mattered were the hardest to sit through.
The fundraiser was to start a free hockey league for kids. This was for travel hockey, and I understood what that was because I’d been one of those kids. People outside of the hockey world heard “travel hockey” and pictured a couple of car trips. But it was far from that.
Travel hockey was the most competitive level of youth hockey, where the talented kids went if they wanted a real shot at making it. And “travel” could mean an hour’s drive to the next town for a game or it could be a flight across the country for a weekend tournament.
And it cost a fortune. Between the league fees, the ice time, equipment a growing kid outgrew each season, hotels, gas, and the tournament entries, families paid anywhere from a few thousand dollars a year to well over twenty thousand, per child.
I knew the numbers because my dads had lived them.
My alpha father had taken extra shifts at work, and my omega dad drove four hours each way on more weekends that I could count. He sat in freezing rinks with a thermos and paperback while I played.
They bought my gear secondhand, and they did without things. Not that I noticed, but when my brother and I argued, he threw that information at me, wanting me to know I was being selfish and not appreciating what our folks did, not just for me, but for him as well because he played hockey too.
We were lucky because we got to keep playing, but there were kids who didn’t.
Boys I’d shared a locker room with at ten or eleven and who were just as good as me, some of them better, I never saw again after a season or two.
They didn’t quit because they stopped loving the game but because their families ran out of money.
Nobody spoke of the reason, but we all knew why.
And that was what this event was for, the one I didn’t want to go to because I’d be on display and I wanted to hide away when I wasn’t on the ice. The money we raised would help kids who couldn’t afford it so they wouldn't be one that disappeared.
If this had been a dinner where I ate rubbery chicken and sipped bad wine, I could have gotten through it, just as I did everything else in my life. I could smile, grip my fork, and pretend I wasn’t going to stab the next person who asked about the playoffs.
But this event brought up feelings, and in my life, that presented a problem.
I couldn’t feel things because that was when I wobbled, and my wolf got agitated, and I had to leave in a hurry.
Thinking of travel hockey took me back to my childhood, my parents’ sacrifices, and how they didn’t support me when Alpha made his threat.
I got why they didn’t, and it probably wouldn’t have had any effect if they had stood up to Garrick. And he may have treated them badly after that. My folks and I still spoke regularly, but I hadn’t been back to visit in years.
And from thinking of that tangled mess, my mind went to the one who wasn’t here. Walter, the omega I’d given up.
But as I was thinking of coping mechanisms to get me through the evening, my wolf lifted his head and said he wanted to be there. He hadn't wanted to go anywhere in years, but he had fond memories of the kids and teams I’d played with in the years I’d traveled.
I’m glad. It’ll be good to do something for kids who weren’t as lucky as me.
We could do this.
But when morning became afternoon and I counted the hours until the event, I began dreading it, thinking of everything that could go wrong. I couldn’t get out of it, and I checked the time every five minutes.
I got my suit out of the closet that I’d worn twice, once to my college graduation and the second was my first visit to the team headquarters.
I shaved and stood in front of the mirror smiling.
No amount of grinning or laughing would have my eyes lighting up.
That ability was stamped out when I agreed with Alpha to cut my mate loose.
Hopefully the lighting at the event would be dim enough that no one would notice I was dead inside.
My captain texted me late afternoon. You coming tonight or do I have to drag you there?
I’m coming, don’t worry.
That must be a first, he wrote back.
He thought a charity gala was a good night out because he had a partner accompanying him and a daughter at home who’d wake him in the morning with kisses.
I couldn’t begrudge him his happiness. My folks used to be like that.
Their lives weren’t the same after I left, according to my brother.
Like me, there was something missing in their lives.
Making sure I had my phone so I could always use a non-existent friend as an excuse to leave early, I drove into the city.
The venue was one of those hotels downtown with chandeliers, marble floors, and staff in white gloves. What happened if one of those gloves got smudged? Did they have spares?
By the door, there was a photo backdrop covered in the charity’s logo with a photographer waiting.
I was Archie the Kodiak, the one kids asked for selfies with and the guy from the highlight reels.
Not that that person existed except here on the red carpet.
I smiled, put my chin down, shook hands with someone, I wasn’t sure who, and told them it was a great cause.
That was my public face, and I walked off after thirty seconds.
Inside, it was as I expected. The ballroom was full of people with money dressed in their best, trying not to look at someone at the next table and calculate how much they were worth.
Waiters wandered between tables with trays, and there was a stage at the front with kids in helmets grinning at the camera.
My teammates were scattered through the crowd, and the captain lifted his glass, probably relieved I’d come. I got a club soda so I had something in my hand and found a spot by the wall where I could count the minutes until it was acceptable to leave.
But somewhere in this space, under the perfume, the food, and the hundreds of bodies, a scent made its way to me, one I hadn’t encountered in eight years. My glass was halfway to my mouth, and the only word that mattered popped into my head.
Mate.