Chapter 1 - Brynn
Mics and Misconduct - Brynn
"Chicago's locker room chemistry was so toxic it needed a hazmat suit, and somehow Zac Torres got blamed for the smell."
I lean into the mic, letting my voice drop into that conspiratorial register my listeners love.
The "On Air" light glows red above my bedroom-turned-studio door, and Riley's laugh crackles through my headphones from her apartment across the city — I picture her in her usual uniform of oversized glasses and a hoodie she probably slept in.
"Okay, you beautiful degenerates," I continue, "buckle up, because we need to unpack the trade that broke hockey Twitter and my personal will to live. The Minnesota Mammoths just acquired six-foot-three of stone-faced controversy, and I have thoughts."
"You always have thoughts," Riley says. "That's literally the premise of this podcast."
"Rude. Accurate, but rude." I glance at my whiteboard, where I've scrawled TORRES = ENIGMA OR ASSHOLE?
? in aggressive red marker. The question marks mock me.
"So here's where we're at: Zac Torres, twenty-nine years old, five seasons with Chicago, career plus-minus that makes strong men weep with joy, and yet somehow—somehow—this man has been labeled a 'locker room problem. '"
I make air quotes even though no one can see me. The lavender candle on my desk is fighting a losing battle against the ghost of last night's kung pao chicken.
"The advanced stats tell a different story," Riley says. "Torres's on-ice impact was actually—"
"Riley." I hold up a hand she can't see. "I love you, but if you say 'expected goals above replacement' one more time, I'm going to need you to translate that into a language that includes feelings and drama."
A pause. Then, dry as toast: "Fine. He made his teammates better. They just didn't like him for it."
"See? Was that so hard?" I grab my stats printout and fan myself with it, even though the apartment's February chill has me in two sweaters. "He's the vegetables your mom hid in the mac and cheese. Nutritious but unappreciated. And now he's our problem."
"Minnesota's problem."
"Our city, our team, our problem. I'm nothing if not a homer.
" I pull up my notes, scanning bullet points I've practically memorized.
"Right, so—the official line from Chicago's front office is 'pursuing a different direction.
' Which is corporate-speak for 'we needed a scapegoat and he doesn't fight back. '"
"You think he was scapegoated?"
"I think—" I stop. Take a breath. "I think it's interesting that a guy whose teammates scored more when he was on the ice is somehow blamed for bad vibes. The advanced metrics don't lie, even if I need you to translate them for me."
"The eye test says he's difficult. Media-averse. Doesn't do the whole 'personality' thing."
"Right, because personality is definitely the same as performance.
" I hear the edge in my voice and dial it back.
"Look, the man once answered twelve questions with variations of 'we played hard.
' He makes a brick wall look chatty. Granite has more charisma.
But that doesn't make him a cancer—it makes him boring in post-game scrums."
Riley makes a thoughtful sound. "We've got a listener question on this, actually. Lee from Duluth asks: 'Is Torres actually a locker room problem, or is he just media-averse and we're conflating the two?'"
Lee from Duluth, asking the questions I don't want to answer.
"Right. Okay." I lean back in my chair, the springs creaking. "So here's the thing about media-averse guys. Some of them are just... they're not built for the performance part. Doesn't mean there's nothing there. It means—"
I catch myself. The words forming are too specific, too knowing. Too much.
"—it means I'm projecting my romance novel brain onto a guy who probably just really hates microphones.
Moving on." I shuffle papers I don't need to shuffle.
"What we do know is that the Mammoths got him for pennies on the dollar because Chicago was desperate to move on.
Their loss, potentially our gain, assuming the vibes check out. "
"You think they will?"
"I think—" I stop again. Pull the professional mask tighter.
"I think we'll find out. That's literally why we have a podcast. Speaking of which—" I glance at my rundown, "—we should probably talk about the upcoming road trip and whether Kowalski's going to keep juggling the second line like a circus performer, but that's a topic for next week. "
"Teasing content. Very professional of you."
"I learned from the best. That's all for today, degenerates. Keep your sticks on the ice and your DMs unhinged. Riley?"
"May your fantasy teams prosper and your exes' teams tank."
I punch the stop button. The red light flickers off.
Silence rushes in—not normal silence, but the dead, flat quiet of soundproofing foam and closed windows.
I pull off my headphones and the pressure against my temples releases.
My reflection stares back at me from the dark computer monitor: blonde ponytail gone messy, two sweaters, lipstick I put on three hours ago and mostly chewed off.
I exhale. Rub my face with both hands.
"Jesus Christ," I mutter to no one.
My phone buzzes. Riley.
RILEY: How much of that Torres take were you actually believing and how much was podcast voice?
I stare at the text. She always knows. Three years of co-hosting and she can hear the difference between me riffing and me... whatever that was.
brYNN: All podcast voice. You know me. Drama for the content.
Three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again.
RILEY: K. You good? You sound weird today.
I almost laugh. I sound weird because I just spent forty-five minutes talking about a man whose hoodie is currently shoved in my closet, behind dry-cleaning I will never pick up, and I've never told anyone why I still have it. Not Riley. Not even Sloane.
I told them both a version. That I met someone in Vegas. That it was intense. That I left before it got complicated.
I didn't tell them that I gave him a fake name. That I woke up at 4 AM with his arm heavy across my waist, looked at his face in the gray light, and felt so terrified of being seen that I slipped out before he could open his eyes.
I didn't tell them that for one night, I wasn't performing. Wasn't "on." Wasn't the clever one, the funny one, the one who fills silence because silence is where feelings live.
I was just... there. With him. And it scared me so much I ran.
brYNN: I'm good. Long week. Talk tomorrow?
RILEY: You know where to find me. Same bat time, same bat channel.
brYNN: Love you, weirdo.
RILEY: Love you too, disaster.
I set the phone down. The apartment is quiet again, but different now. Heavier.
The apartment feels too small suddenly, too close. I stand, joints cracking from two hours in my podcast chair, and move without thinking toward my bedroom. Past the whiteboard. Past the graveyard of half-drunk coffee cups with lipstick kisses on the rims.
My closet door doesn't latch properly. It never has. I tug it open, push past the dry-cleaning bag I've been meaning to pick up for six months, and there it is.
Gray. Soft. A gas station logo across the chest that's faded from too many washes—not by me. By him, before.
I pull the hoodie out and hold it. The cotton is pilled under my fingers, worn thin at the cuffs. It smells like dust and something fainter underneath. Something I can't quite name anymore but would recognize anywhere.
Two years. This thing has lived in my closet for two years.
I should throw it out. I've told myself that approximately nine hundred times. It's just fabric. Just threads and stitching and a gas station logo from a town I'll never visit again.
Except it's not.
It's proof.
Proof that for one night, someone looked at me—really looked, not at the performance or the punchlines—and didn't look away. Proof that I can be that person, the one who stays, the one who's honest, the one who doesn't fill every silence with a joke because jokes are armor and armor is safe.
I was her for eight hours. Then I woke up with his arm across my waist and I looked at his face in the gray pre-dawn light, and I thought—
He's going to figure out I'm not this.
That the woman he talked to all night, the one who laughed without performing and listened without planning her next line—she was a fluke.
A one-time anomaly. And when he woke up and looked at me in actual daylight, he'd see the real version.
The one who's too much and not enough all at once. The one people leave.
So I left first.
I always leave first.
I told Riley about it a month later. Sat on her couch with a bottle of wine and said, "I met someone in Vegas and I think I ruined it."
She didn't ask for details. Just said, "Oh, B," in that way she has, and handed me more wine, and we watched four episodes of a dating show where everyone made worse decisions than me.
She didn't push. She never does. That's why I can tell her the almost-truth—because she holds the almost and doesn't demand the rest.
The rest is this: I kept his hoodie because it's the only evidence I have that I can be soft. That I can stay. That somewhere, under all the armor, there's a person worth knowing.
I just don't believe it most days.
My phone buzzes on the desk in the other room. I don't move.
It buzzes again.
I carry the hoodie with me when I go to check it, which is a choice I don't let myself think too hard about. The screen glows:
MIRA CHEN (Sports National): Call me. Torres profile just came up. You're my first choice.
I stare at the text. Then at the hoodie in my hands. Then back at the text. What the fuck is happening.
My thumb hovers over Mira's contact.
I don't call back.
Instead, I fold the hoodie—carefully, corners matched, the way I always do—and carry it back to the closet. Slide it behind the dry-cleaning. Close the door as best I can, which isn't all the way.
It never closes all the way.
Just like the rest of it.
Three hours later, I'm pacing my living room with my phone in my hands.
This is my second call to Sloane tonight. The first one was pure emotion—fury, outrage, words spilling out before I could filter them. "Zac fucking Torres, Sloane. Of all the players in this goddamn league—" I'd hung up before she could ask questions. Before I had to manufacture answers.
I've pulled myself together. A scalding hot shower always does the trick. This call is different. I'm actually trying to decide.
My phone sits on the coffee table, Sloane's contact pulled up but not yet dialed. Outside, a siren wails past and fades into the distance. February in Minneapolis means dark by five and cold that seeps through walls, and I've already turned the heat up twice.
I sink onto the couch and stare at the ceiling. Two years I've managed to avoid this. Two years of carefully not covering Chicago games, not Googling his name, not letting myself think about what might have happened if I'd stayed for breakfast.
And now he's here. In my city. On my team. And my editor wants me to spend two weeks following him around like the universe has a sick sense of humor.
I tap Sloane's name before I can talk myself out of it.
She answers on the second ring. "Okay, I was giving you space, but it's been three hours and you hung up on me mid-sentence, so—"
"I've calmed down." I don't sound calm. I try again. "Okay, I've mostly calmed down. I need your PR brain."
"My PR brain is concerned about your life brain."
"Career advice. That's all I'm asking." I stand up, sit back down, press my palm flat against my thigh to stop fidgeting. "A profile on Zac Torres for Sports National. Good visibility or career suicide?"
Sloane pauses. In the background, I hear what might be a hockey game—Garrett's probably watching tape. "It's good visibility," she says carefully. "If you can deliver."
"I can always deliver."
"Brynn."
"What?"
Another pause. Gentler this time. "You don't have to take this. He's worse with the press than Garrett was when I met him. Wasn't it Zac a few years ago that—"
"Nothing happened." The words come out too fast, too sharp. I force my voice lighter. "I told you, we crossed paths once. He was difficult. End of story."
"You said 'not after' and hung up on me earlier. That's not 'nothing happened.'"
My chest tightens. I stand up, move to the window, press my forehead against the cold glass.
"It was a long day," I say. "I was being dramatic. You know me—I make everything a bit."
"That's exactly what worries me."
Silence stretches between us. The city bleeds through my thin walls—traffic, distant bass from a neighbor's apartment, someone laughing too loud in the hallway.
"There's something I should probably—"
The words form in my mouth. He wasn't difficult. He was—
I shut it down. Pivot.
"—consider," I finish. "Like whether his whole thing with journalists is going to make this piece impossible. He once answered twelve questions with variations of 'we played hard.'"
The silence that follows tells me Sloane knows. Not the specifics—she can't know those—but she knows I pivoted. She knows she's being handled.
"Sure," she says. "That's definitely what you were about to say."
"It was."
"Okay."
"Sloane—"
"You know," she says, and her voice shifts—softer, less pointed, "Garrett was media-averse when we met. Still is, mostly. Walls aren't always personality. Sometimes they're protection."
I latch onto the deflection like a lifeline. "Speaking of Garrett, how's the—"
"Subtle."
"I'm never subtle. How's the cohabitation? Has he reorganized your closet by color yet?"
Sloane laughs, and the tension in my chest loosens by exactly one degree. We talk about her for a while—the apartment, Garrett's season, the upcoming road trip. Normal friend things. Things that don't require me to lie or tell the truth.
When we hang up, I take a breath. Let it out.
He probably won't remember "Rebecca" anyway. I'm making this a bigger issue than it needs to be.
But I pull up Mira's text anyway.
brYNN: I'm in. When do I start?
Send.
The phone goes dark. I stare at it for a long moment, waiting for something—buyer's remorse, panic, the universe intervening to save me from myself.
Nothing happens.
I glance toward the bedroom. The closet door is still ajar, the way I left it. I can't see the hoodie from here, but I know exactly where it is—shoved in the back corner, behind dry-cleaning I'll never pick up.
I don't go back for it.
I turn off the lights and don't look back.