Chapter Twelve
Breezy [dressed in hockey gear, a rainbow toque, and holding a hockey stick wrapped in rainbow tape]: Good morning, everyone! Welcome to our first practice skate with the Pot of Gold kids! Joining me today is Mara, the shelter coordinator, and I’m Chris—
Jayden: No, you’re not. No one calls you that. I’m Jayden, and I’ll be taking over hosting from this clown.
Breezy: Hey!
Jayden: So this is the Sea Lions locker room, and it’s ridiculous. There are pictures of sea lions everywhere. Not team members. Actual sea lions with little name plates. This one’s called Fred.
Breezy: Fred’s my favorite!
Jayden: And over here—
Mara: Jayden, what did we say about making fun of the Sea Lions, who are very kindly and generously sponsoring us?
Jayden: Um…that it’s super funny, and I should do it all the time?
Top comments:
puckpuckstick: Get this kid a gig commentating games.
SFCLions: Unbelievable. The Sea Lions are using time and resources that could be going to any number of worthy causes to sponsor this shelter thing and the children can’t even be respectful?
sealions4lyfe: @SFCLions—Time and resources they should be using to practice hockey lol.
(From “Pot of Gold on Ice” video posted to YouTube by the official Sea Lions account on 12/10/2024)
“Are you insane?” Ben hissed.
The door had barely closed behind Ms. Rodriguez. Charlie stayed in the gym after his own interrogation, wanting to finish his workout. Apparently, he and Phil had made up a routine, which was the lunacy cherry on top of the insanity sundae of Phil’s behavior.
“I don’t know, Coach Morris. Am I?”
Ben winced. He’d filed all the paperwork for Charlie under his legal name, not the alias he’d taken on, which meant he couldn’t list coaching as a current job.
When he gave Phil’s lawyer the files, he did briefly consider using the alias Pulvermacher hired him under, but while his fake papers could fool hockey media, the same couldn’t be said of the US government.
On the Canadian road trip, Ben had to pretend to double back for something he’d forgotten on the plane, purely so no one on the team could hear the customs agent address him as “Mr. Sinclair.”
“You knew there was something—”
“Didn’t know you were lying about your entire life story down to your goddamn name.”
“Well, then, why would you tell her you’re going to fucking marry me?!” Ben didn’t mean to get loud, but he couldn’t help the panic clawing its way up his throat and out of his mouth.
Phil gave him a look that would have leveled lesser men. “I don’t know if you noticed, Ben, but that wasn’t going great for you. I thought you wanted to keep Charlie.”
“I do! But lying won’t help!”
“Oh, really?” Phil exploded. “Then tell me what you’re doing to my fucking team!”
Ben bit his lip, stubbornly silent. If he told Phil now—if Phil learned his knee had been sacrificed for a stupid bet—Phil would never forgive him.
Phil sighed, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Look, maybe I took it a little far—”
“A little far? Phil, a little far is pretending to date so CPS thinks I live here—”
“You do live here.”
“But—”
“Look, she was about to say you wouldn’t be able to take care of Charlie if you didn’t have a long-term place to live, which I agree with, by the way. But since you can stay here as long as you need, problem solved.”
“New problem—now we have to get married!”
Phil shrugged. “I’ve done it before. It’s mostly paperwork.”
Incredulous, Ben stalked to the kitchen and started scrubbing the coffee cups.
Phil followed, albeit slowly. “You don’t have to wash up. The cleaning—”
“Fuck your fucking cleaning service.” Ben threw the sponge into the sink. It landed with a disappointing wet thud. “We can’t get married.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” Ben spluttered. “Let’s see. You’re an NHL player, you’re a public figure, you’re straight—”
“Soon to be retired.”
“What?”
“I’ll retire soon. Then it won’t matter if anyone finds out. Look, do you like me?”
Ben rested both hands on the rim of the sink, head bent down, and tried to breathe. “Yes,” he admitted against his better judgment.
“Great. Do you like living here?”
Ben closed his eyes. “Yes, all right? I think your stupid open-plan living room is great, except for the ugly rug. I sleep stupidly well on the mattress in the guest room. Your shower is ridiculous, and I never want to leave it.”
“Perfect. Let’s get married.”
“We can’t. You don’t even know—you don’t—”
“So tell me.”
“I…”
“I don’t know what number your parents pulled on you to make you this unable to trust people,” Phil said, “but I told you before. All I want to do is help you.”
Ben couldn’t answer.
He finished cleaning the cups and set them on the drying rack.
Phil took a seat at the kitchen table, watching him steadily.
When Ben couldn’t think of any more ways to occupy his hands, he turned to face Phil. He pasted the facsimile of a smile onto his face. “What’s on for today? Do we have a game? Practice?”
“Rest day,” Phil said. “But Breezy and Mooney are bringing the kids from the shelter to the rink. I thought I could take Charlie? He made a few friends last time.”
“Sounds good,” Ben said. “When do we leave?”
“You don’t have to come. I’m sure you have secret things you need to do that you don’t want me knowing about.”
Ben did. Of course, Ben did. But Charlie’d had a rough morning and needed support, and Phil had had a rough morning and didn’t deserve to be saddled with childcare alone. Not when Ben had given him nothing in return but lies.
Anyway, there wouldn’t be any goal horns this morning.
Charlie’s mood improved rapidly once he heard they were headed for the rink. Ben liked seeing him so enthusiastic about something, even if that something was hockey.
He knew exactly what Charlie saw in the sport.
Phil was the first adult to accept him for himself despite having no incentive to do so, and he saw how much Phil loved playing.
Phil made the effort to include Charlie, to find other kids his age who could relate, and he never lied to Charlie.
Ben had to admit he had done none of those things, too caught up in the responsibility of taking care of Charlie and the team and Pulvermacher’s requests to actually take care of his nephew.
They packed the trunk of Phil’s SUV full of hockey gear and drove to the rink.
The whole way there, Phil kept up a light banter with Charlie about the kids from the shelter and how their hockey game was progressing.
Charlie wanted to be a goalie—horrifying news for Ben.
Phil had already memorized half the shelter kids’ names and had tips for Charlie on how to block their shots.
He gave Charlie space to talk first and then talk more.
He responded to what Charlie said thoughtfully, and the whole experience made Ben feel as though he was on a weekend excursion with the family he’d never envisioned having.
“It’s Christmas next week,” he blurted out at a stoplight during a lull in the conversation.
“Ugh,” Charlie said.
“Don’t mind him. He’s never had a Christmas not with our family,” Ben said to Phil. “We could do something for the shelter kids—if you both think it’s a good idea?”
“It’s a great idea,” Phil said. “Maybe we could get some rainbow Sea Lions merch or something?”
“Real stuff too.” Charlie said it so quietly Ben could barely hear him in the front seat.
“Hm?”
“Real stuff. Clothes that aren’t hand-me-downs. Not-used-books. Sanitary products. Binders for…for guys like me.”
“If Phil’s footing the bill…”
“Of course Phil’s footing the bill,” Phil said. “But also, let’s ask Breezy. He’s the go-to guy for all the shelter stuff.”
Ben narrowed his eyes. He’d have thought Jax was the go-to guy for the shelter. He could only think of one reason to insist on Breezy. “You just want to put him in a Santa suit on the internet.”
“Leave me my small pleasures in life.”
As if Ben could turn down anything Phil wanted. Anything except maybe marriage.
In the parking lot, Charlie greeted the shelter kids with hugs and fist bumps, and Ben found himself filled with elation when they were genuinely excited to see him as well.
Charlie could have a place here. Phil had made him a place here.
Charlie had been telling Ben as much for days, that he didn’t want to leave Phil, that he was happy here. Ben had been too scared to listen.
In many ways, he still was.
He trudged up to the stands, ready to watch yet more hockey as the kids slowly trickled onto the ice from below.
“Hi, Coach,” Mooney called up from the ice. Lunes. His name was Diego Lunes, and Ben would not get caught up in the hockey nickname bullshit.
“Lunes.”
“You joining us on the ice?”
“Hell no, it’s my day off.”
Lunes laughed as if Ben had said something funny.
He probably loved being on skates even when he didn’t have to be, the weirdo.
Hockey players were bizarre people. Lunes skated off toward the player entrance, where Breezy waited with an arm full of hockey sticks and a bucket of pucks he’d gotten from the freezer.
Lunes blew the whistle around his neck, the kids gathered around in a circle, and Ben leaned forward to watch.
He’d never had the chance to be openly queer as a teenager or, more accurately, he’d never taken the chance.
But he’d also been a teenager in the nineties, and things had changed so drastically since then.
Being visible in the way some of these kids chose to be—with skate laces and hockey tape in the shades of various flags, with makeup and accessories emphasizing or diminishing their gender expression—was amazing and brave.
He knew they had all suffered for it, or they wouldn’t have ended up at Pot of Gold.
But where Ben had ended up alone, they hadn’t. That had to be worth something.