Chapter Three
Vanderbilt [reading from a notecard]: Who on the team would you let babysit your kid?
Oh, [bleeping noise], talk about a race for the bottom.
I mean, Jax and Breezy do all the shelter stuff, but those kids are almost adults.
No way I’m handing either of them an infant.
I would say Hayes, but the only time I’ve ever seen him near a baby he was holding a beer, so, no.
Gotta go with Dmitriyev. The man loves his baby cuddles.
Dmitriyev: [nodding solemnly] Vanderbilt’s baby is best baby. I would let him babysit too. Is good father.
Tom: Well, I don’t have kids, but I do have a dog. Jax is pretty good with her. So is Phil. The young guys…I dunno. Howie has the energy to play with her. Breezy… He’s a great guy, but I don’t see it.
Jax: Oh, pretty good, am I? I’m gonna remind him he said that the next time he wants me to take her for a walk in the middle of the night. But, yeah, I’m with him. I feel like Breezy would just stare at the dog.
Kayleigh [off-screen]: What about Luca? Would you give him a dog? Or a baby?
Jax: God, no.
Top comments:
seelionssaylions: love the unanimous consent. Breezy is not to be trusted
amazetti: Breezy and Luca voted worst at life
1642rox: I’m sorry. Did anyone else hear Jax say Tom sends him out with the dog in the middle of the night?? What are you doing at Tom’s place in the middle of the night, Jax?
(From “San Francisco Sea Lions Call Each Other Out For Fun, Part 3,” posted to YouTube 09/28/2025)
“Preseason starts soon,” Michelle observed. She sat at her desk with her feet kicked up on the table, heels discarded beside the wastepaper basket.
“Yup.” Chris lounged on the couch in her office, legs spread, trying to hit the bin with crumpled-up tissues from the dispenser in front of him.
So far, he’d hit her shoes twice.
Preseason started tomorrow. Today was the last day off Chris would get for a long time between games, practices, and road trips.
Most of the guys were at home with their families and girlfriends, or boyfriends in some cases.
Luca had left the apartment this morning bright and early, so he must have had plans.
“How does that make you feel?”
He glared at her.
“You want me to ask about the alternate situation instead?” She raised her eyebrows pointedly.
He did not. “I don’t know. I guess I’m feeling good.”
“Then what don’t you know?”
Chris sighed and pulled at the corner of the tissue he’d just balled up. “There’s a lot of pressure.”
“Why?”
“Everyone knows we couldn’t win before because someone was working against us, so it’s like…of course we should be able to win now the problem is fixed, right?”
“And you don’t think you will?”
Chris shifted on the couch, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “I think we can, but I don’t know if we will.”
“If you did, it wouldn’t be much fun.”
“I guess.”
Michelle swung her feet off the desk and sat up straight. “Chris, do you think your coaches expect a Stanley Cup?”
He shrugged. “Eventually, sure.”
“Do you think your teammates do?”
“Same thing.”
“Do you think maybe you expect it of yourself?”
Glaring at her, Chris threw his tissue ball at the trash. He missed. “Hockey’s not about me.”
She sighed heavily.
“What?”
Michelle slipped her feet into her shoes. He hated when she did that. It meant Professional Therapist Michelle Horowitz was back in the building. He enjoyed hanging out in her office for an hour every two weeks, but when she started asking tough questions, he wanted the hour to be up.
“Chris,” she said very kindly. “Do you want me to refer you to someone else?”
“What? No! Why would you— Why would I want that?”
“Well, you’ve been coming to see me now how long?”
He counted on his fingers. “I made the team out of training camp three years ago, so I guess about two and a half years?”
“Uh-huh. And why did you come see me?”
He shifted in his seat. “It was hard getting used to the schedule and having so many people watching me every night.”
“Right.” Michelle nodded for emphasis. “So we worked out some strategies to keep you focused on the game and not on what was going on around you, found some ways for you to relax in your downtime.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay. So what are we doing now?”
“Um.” Chris licked his lips, finding his whole mouth had gone suddenly dry. “Well, it’s like conditioning, right? If I don’t keep training my brain, I’ll slide back into being overwhelmed by everything.”
“I think you can give yourself a little more credit.” Michelle’s high ponytail swished when she shook her head.
“You’re doing great out there. But you’re still sitting here with the weight of the world on your shoulders, and either you can’t or you don’t want to tell me why.
So I’m thinking the professional thing to do is get you a referral. ”
“Please don’t.” The thought of talking to someone else, of getting comfortable with someone else, was worse than telling Michelle about all the things he worried about. “I guess I worry about personal stuff. Not hockey stuff. And you’re not a therapist for my personal life. You do sports stuff.”
Michelle scooped one of the tissue balls up in her palm and threw it at him. It smacked straight onto the middle of his forehead.
“Next time, I want you to bring me a list of things you’re worried about,” she told him. “Not hockey related.”
“I get homework?!”
“Welcome to real therapy.”
Chris went down to the weight room afterward, feeling grumpy and out of sorts. He’d hoped the start of preseason would settle his nerves about how fast everything was changing around him. Clearly, he’d been mistaken. As usual.
“How can I be bad at therapy?” he asked Howie, taking the stationary bike next to him.
Howie shrugged. “Same way I can be bad at making pasta. Too dumb to live, bro.”
“How’d you fuck up pasta?”
“Put the water in the pot, turned the stove on, got distracted looking up how pasta was invented on my phone. Next thing I know, the water’s evaporated, and my pot has a scorch mark.” Howie upped the resistance on his bike as soon as he finished talking, getting up out of his saddle to stand.
“Man,” Chris sighed, taking a pull from his water bottle. “Why did they ever let us live by ourselves?”
“Least you’ve got Luca. He’s a real adult.”
In every aspect but cooking, Luca was far more functional than Chris ever would be.
He remembered to use the windshield wiper thingy on the shower walls to prevent mildew.
Before he went to bed, he picked up whatever he’d left in the living room and put it away.
He even took Chris’s dishes with him. When they were on the road, he met a new beautiful, intelligent woman every time they went out with the team.
Luca said he wasn’t ready for a relationship, or at least he’d said so last season when Chris asked why he didn’t pursue anything more with the many, many women who wanted to date him.
(Of course they did. Some women were down to date Chris just because he played in the NHL.
Luca was in the NHL, but unlike Chris, if his hockey career tanked, he could coast on all his sponsorship deals with companies who probably begged him to take their skintight athletic wear or luxury watches. Who wouldn’t want to date him?)
Maybe he’d changed his mind this season.
Maybe he’d left the apartment on their last day off to go on some kind of super-secret European morning date.
Maybe he’d start having a girlfriend over at their place. Chris would have to make himself scarce, hiding in his room while they shared fancy red wine that smelled like sour sadness as they watched arthouse films Chris didn’t understand.
That sounded terrible.
“What’s up with you?” Howie asked. “You’re not usually like this.”
“What am I usually like?”
Chris expected the usual answer, “dumb as bricks” or “too stupid to be sad.”
But Howie ended up saying, “You keep the rest of us from getting down on ourselves. Seeing you upset feels wrong, man.”
Surprised, Chris looked over at him. “Thanks. I’m glad I can help. Today’s been… Hey, is that glitter?”
He’d been about to tell Howie that he worried Phil would stop hanging out with them; and Hayes would fuck everything up again; and Mooney would kick his ass, rightly so; and Luca would start dating; and everyone would leave Chris behind.
Luckily, he’d spotted the weird shimmer peeking out of the top of Howie’s shirt in time.
Laying all his worries on Howie would have been pointless and embarrassing.
Howie flushed red, a bad look on someone with his mess of dark copper curls and pasty skin. He tugged the neckline of his shirt up.
“Did you go out last night?” Chris asked. “Without us? During training camp? How did you have the energy?”
“Dude, shut up,” Howie hissed, looking around.
Chris frowned. “Are Hayes and Vanderbilt still pressuring you to hang out with them?”
“No.” Howie’s whole face was red now.
“Then what’s the problem? You’re allowed to go out by yourself.
Or with other friends.” Chris tried not to let on how much the thought of Howie having other friends stung.
That would be psychotic. People were allowed to have friends outside the team.
Chris was allowed to have friends outside the team. He just didn’t.
“Right,” Howie said unconvincingly. “I know. It’s chill.”
Chris paused his bike to look at his friend properly. Howie stared straight ahead. His shirt slid down again, revealing a definite trace of glitter on his collarbone. Served him right for cutting the necklines out of his T-shirts. “Howie?”
“Promise not to tell anyone?” Howie whispered.
A sinking feeling overcame Chris. “Of course.”
“I went to a place in the Castro.”
“Oh.” Chris knew enough about San Francisco to understand Howie meant a gay bar or something. But people went to gay bars for all sorts of reasons, probably. Maybe. Chris had never been, so how was he supposed to know? “Did you. Uh. Did you like it there?”