Chapter Nineteen #2
He resisted the urge to glare at Hayes and Vanderbilt in particular. Things weren’t great on the team right now, but surely, they wouldn’t go that far?
“I’m sorry,” Ben muttered out of the corner of his mouth.
Phil studied him.
Since he’d come clean about his real identity, he hadn’t made it a secret he didn’t care about hockey all that much.
He did care about Charlie, and he cared about Phil, and apparently, the thought that his actions or lack thereof had put one or both of them in immediate danger had gotten to him.
Or maybe it was the long-term danger of being trapped in a team run by assholes that had stressed him out so much he’d screwed up half a year’s work of subterfuge.
Phil rubbed Ben’s shoulder regardless of the audience. “It’s okay. I get it.”
They made it through the rest of practice at what Phil would charitably call “half-pace.” Ben called Edwards up to him and pretended to take him extremely seriously, going with his suggestions for drills.
Edwards blossomed under the attention, and his ideas weren’t as bad as Phil would have thought.
He was just too reticent to take control during practice of his own accord.
Trout returned from his phone call looking significantly paler. He didn’t once protest Edwards running the show, and on the return to the hotel, he slid into one of the first seats on the bus and said nothing.
It took the team a few minutes to congregate in Tom’s room. Beforehand, Tom had hastily opened his suitcase and mussed the covers to make it seem as if he’d slept there.
“Stop judging me,” he grumbled at Phil. “You’ve been keeping secrets too.”
“Not by choice.” Though now Phil thought about it, he would have to tell Tom he’d married Ben sooner rather than later.
It was a tight fit. Tom had a big room, a perk of being captain, but hockey teams dressed twenty guys per game as well as three spares, and they had all either heard what Ben had said or been told by a friend.
With Tom, Jax, Breezy, and Mooney crowded onto the double bed, Ben and Phil sitting at the table, and Hayes and Vanderbilt occupying the windowsill, everyone else crowded in where they could.
Luca and Howie sat on the floor between the bed and the window.
Mats hopped up on the table between Phil and Ben.
The noise level grew, everyone chattering away amongst themselves. Ben winced and rubbed his temples.
“All right everyone,” Phil said loudly, and the room went quiet. It was nice that still worked. “We’re going to keep this brief. Ben?”
“Right. So.” Ben sighed and rubbed across his forehead again. “I’m going to start with an apology. You deserve a real coach, and you deserve the truth, and I haven’t been giving you either.”
He told the whole story, no stops or starts, nothing excluded except for Charlie and Ben’s relationship to Phil. Under the table, Phil let their knees brush together.
The room went quiet with rapt attention, save for the occasional muttered curse word about Trout.
“So I’m hoping the police will do something about Trout and Van Giesing,” Ben finished. “But either way, I can quit effective immediately.”
“No way,” Breezy said.
“Are you insane, man?” Hayes said. “He just told us he’s never even played hockey.”
“I told you I played for a semester in college,” Ben said mildly.
Phil tried and failed to hide a grimace. College hockey on Brigham Young’s intramural team did not count.
Breezy shook his head calmly. “We’re losing Pulvermacher.
We’re losing Trout. The team will get sold, maybe even moved.
We’re only barely hanging on to third place in the Pacific right now, and we could drop down at any point in March.
If we get a new coach who starts having us learn a new system, new methods, there’s no way we make it this year. ”
Tom and Jax traded a look that said they agreed but were hesitant to say as much.
“We’ve been doing okay with Phil coaching,” Howie said. “Sorry, Coach Morris. Sinclair.”
Ben waved him off.
“I can’t randomly switch jobs in the middle of the season,” Phil pointed out, but he gave Howie an encouraging smile. After being scratched every other game for no good reason since January, Howie could have been far more vengeful than he was.
“You can keep coaching while Sinclair pretends to, though,” Tom said. “Breezy’s right. We’re about to lose a lot of stability. New owners and new coaches mean shake-ups.”
Noise broke out in the room, guys talking about their contract length, whether they could be traded unasked, what their top-ten lists looked like.
“Hey!” Phil yelled. “No one’s getting traded yet. We’ve got a lot of season to play, and you suckers had better make it to playoffs. I want my last game to be a good one.”
“So you’ll keep telling Morris how to coach?” Jax asked. “Sorry—Sinclair.”
Ben waved a hand. “Call me Ben.”
Phil looked at Ben. “Would you be okay with sticking the season out?”
“If everyone knows I know nothing, sure. And if we get a better system for road trips and Charlie.”
Phil nodded, considering. “I can usually stay home for those, if you’ve got a full coaching staff otherwise. But what if I’m back in the lineup?”
“By playoffs, I’d be able to take Charlie along, at least for the games after the school year ends.”
“Is that a plan we can all stick to though?” Phil looked around the room doubtfully.
“Then no one in here can let on what you know, not to wives, girlfriends, anyone. Especially the media. If and when Trout and Van Giesing do get caught, we’re all going to be under heavy scrutiny.
Covering for our head coach, who isn’t even a coach, might not be a good look. ”
Hayes shrugged. “Way I see it, if Coach Morris retires at the end of the season with no one the wiser, it looks better for us.”
“Um,” Ben said. “I am a journalist.”
“So?”
“So, I will be writing about what happened here. Not least so Pulvermacher gets some public scrutiny too. Otherwise, he fucks off to Arizona and runs a new team where he gets to ignore anything shady going on until it might detriment him.”
“And be a homophobic dickhead,” Jax added.
“And that.”
Hayes sighed, aggrieved. “I know you’ve found yourself with this shelter project bullshit, dude, but is homophobia really the point right now?”
Ben stared at him, unblinking. “I’m gay.”
Hayes’s jaw snapped shut, and he looked away.
“You never know,” Phil tried. “Having articles written about what’s happening might do more to make us look good than if no one ever finds out.”
“Would a new coach be so bad?” Luca ventured. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
“I think,” Tom said slowly, “we should wait out what happens with Trout and the police. Worst comes to worst, he isn’t arrested, and Ben can’t publish his articles.
Trout keeps his job, and with Ben gone, a new head coach wouldn’t know what’s going on.
At least Ben and Phil have been doing their best for the team. ”
Ben winced guiltily.
Phil kicked him under the table. “You have.”
“My best is not good enough,” Ben muttered.
“Cap makes a good point,” Vanderbilt said.
It was the first he’d spoken, and Phil breathed an internal sigh of relief he chose to support Tom.
“We don’t know how this will shake out and the most important thing we can do is protect our playoff chances.
The better we are as a team the better our chances of a new GM keeping us or at least trading us well. ”
“And you’re sure a decent coach wouldn’t be better for that?” Ben asked.
Jax wobbled his head from side to side. “In the long term, sure, we definitely need a good coach. No offense.”
“You can all stop apologizing,” Ben said wearily. “I’m not offended. I know I’m a terrible coach.”
“Right. Sorry. As I was saying, long-term we do need a coach who knows what he’s about.
But it’s already mid-February. We only have two months left of the regular season, and getting a new coach now would mean reshuffling the lines again, maybe even finding a whole new strategy as a team.
I vote we stick to the status quo and make the best of this year, then start fresh next season. ”
Phil caught the look on Tom’s face just then, pride and joy writ large across the smile dimpling his cheeks as he watched Jax taking his leadership role on the team seriously and indicating he intended to stay.
Now that things with Ben were settled, he could admit to himself how happy he was for his friend without any of the envy that had dogged him before.
The team took a vote on the issue, and after a bit of judicious elbowing, Phil could describe the results as begrudgingly unanimous.
They would stick with Ben until they knew what would happen to Trout and Van Giesing, take their best shot at a playoff spot, and hope the results would see them through until next season.
Tom swore everyone to secrecy, and then the team filtered out in pairs and threes and fours.
Most everyone was carefully not talking about what had happened, instead loudly discussing league rankings or video games.
The Europeans might have immediately begun gossiping about what they’d seen and heard, but at least not too many people in Minnesota spoke Swedish or Russian.
Phil let out a long breath when the door closed behind the last of them, leaving him and Ben alone with Tom and Jax.
“Are we even now?” Tom asked Phil immediately.
“Even?”
“I didn’t tell you about my…thing; you didn’t tell me about this.”
Phil considered. “Your thing lasted fourteen years, Tom. This was a couple months.”
“A couple months that could impact the rest of my career.”
“Fair.”
“So. Even?”
Phil sighed heavily. “No, I have to tell you the rest as well.” He gave Tom and Jax the rough rundown of Ben’s family situation, Charlie, and, finally, their courthouse visit last week. Ben interjected occasionally, but otherwise seemed content to let them talk, slumped in his chair.