Chapter Twelve #2
“Perfect! I’ll let you know when we’ll be by to film, sometime after your road trip.”
She turned back to her laptop. The meeting appeared to be over.
“Do people really want to watch that?” Luca asked Chris as they headed down the hallway toward the changing room. “Us hanging out and being bad at housework?”
Chris scrunched up his face. “There’s probably some weirdos out there who would be into seeing you in rubber gloves. She’s not filming for them though. Wish she were, then I could complain to someone.”
Luca drew to a halt. “Chris?”
“She wants us to look as much like two clueless bros in their early twenties sharing an apartment as we can. Chore sheet, video games, separate bedrooms all on camera.”
“Okay,” Luca said. “I still don’t understand—”
“People are super into seeing NHL stars at home,” Chris said through gritted teeth. “They’re also super into gossip. The comment sections on the photos people posted from Halloween? They’re all talking about Tom’s house and how great it is and who might live there with him.”
“So?”
“So, when everyone finds out it’s Jax, Kayleigh wants to be able to point to us and say, ‘Look, platonic NHL roommates are a thing’!”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
Luca started walking again. “You seem angry about that.”
“Of course I am!”
“Why? PR should have a strategy in place, no?”
Chris shook his head. “There’s having a strategy, and there’s shoving people back in the closet. She should ask them before she does it.”
“You think she has not?”
They reached the locker room, and Chris threw his bag onto the bench.
“I doubt it. Jax kind of hates her. This isn’t the first time she’s put social media success and ratings over supporting queer people.
She was a bit thoughtless and…I don’t know…
out for profit about the shelter posts at the start of the project. ”
“Ah.”
“Yeah.”
Luca put his things down more gently and put a hand onto Chris’s shoulder. “We can tell her we will not do it.”
Chris grimaced. “I… She’d be so disappointed. And then she might try to mine Tom and Jax for content, and Jax would go ballistic.”
“Okay, well, then we forget the chore sheet. Everything else is true—we are platonic roommates who play video games, and I do not cook.”
For some reason, Chris’s expression darkened further. “Yeah, sure,” he muttered, and then he turned away to put on shorts and a compression shirt before stomping off toward the weight room.
Luca watched him go, at a loss for how to help.
The last few days had been so hard on Chris.
He hated when the team fought, more so when he was the one fighting.
Halloween’s occurrences hadn’t been his fault, but Luca knew he felt guilty.
In Luca’s opinion, he’d done everything right.
Howie was the one who’d thrown a fit and stormed out and had since refused all of Chris’s offers to talk.
Tom, Jax, and Phil were the ones who put Chris in an awkward position to start with.
Had none of them wanted to come out, it would have been one thing to ask for discretion, but since they’d invited the team into the homes they shared with their partners and welcomed the possibility of discovery, they had to deal with the consequences.
Chris had been nothing but unfailingly polite since the party, though as far as Luca knew, no one had apologized. It was the team’s turn to do something for him.
Mind made up, Luca changed into his workout gear, but instead of following Chris to the weight room, he followed the corridor to the coach’s office.
“Come in,” Lindy called when he knocked—a stark difference to Ben who had only ever been on the premises for practice. In retrospect, his unwillingness to be present should have given him away long before February.
Inside, Luca found her lounging in the massive chair she’d inherited from Ben. Phil perched on her desk, pointing to a play on the whiteboard.
Luca squinted at it. The play depended on the second penalty kill unit being functional, which it wasn’t at the moment. “If you want to do that, you have to apologize to Howie first,” he told Phil.
“Hi, Luca. Nice to see you, Luca. How have you been, Luca?”
Luca waved him off. “I saw you yesterday. We are losing because the team is mad at one another, not because we play bad hockey.”
“I’m glad to see you taking such an interest in team dynamics.” Lindy’s focused attention made Luca pick a spot on the wall to stare at.
In point of fact, Luca took an interest in what he’d always been interested in: Chris.
He was just too fond of his own meager pride to admit as much.
“It pains me to say it, but you were right about my role in causing discord. And right now, the team needs help to…bridge the gaps caused on Halloween.”
If she needed any elucidation regarding what had happened at the team’s Halloween party, Lindy didn’t let on. Instead, she steepled her fingers and asked, “What do you suggest?”
With every fiber of his being, Luca hated the words about to exit his mouth. He took a breath, asked himself, What would Chris do?, and said, “I think we should do a Secret Santa.”
Lindy beamed. “Luca, I love it! And I love that it’s coming from you.
I know everyone thought having a female coach would open the door for wishy-washy team building bullshit, and I hate to prove them right, but we’re trying to create an organization based on trust and mutual respect here, and a big part of that is a team that can count on each other.
I’m so glad you want to be a part of it.
On purely hockey terms, we want you here long-term, and if you’ve found a way to open up to your teammates, that makes things easier. ”
As glad as he was to hear he had job security, Luca looked over to Phil, hoping to be released from the suffering of this interaction.
Phil shrugged. “I decided to go into coaching to make the organization more friendly for the players.”
Lindy jerked her chin in approval. “Winning games is the first pillar, but a successful team is built on so much more. The players have to want to be here for more than a chance at the Cup.”
Luca found the assertion trite to the point of meaninglessness.
Phil on the other hand nodded along as if he believed every word. “They also have to trust us to have their best interests at heart.”
“Absolutely! No one can thrive where they don’t feel supported!”
Luca would feel supported if he knew how to exit this conversation. Each time Lindy turned her bright, astute eyes on him, he felt trapped in place.
“I appreciate your initiative here, Mazetti,” she said. “I know you’re going out of your comfort zone to do it, and it means a lot you would go there for your team.”
It wasn’t for the team. He could never tell her, but he’d suggested this for Chris and no one else.
“In fact,” Lindy continued, “this is the kind of initiative we’d like to see from someone willing to take on extra responsibilities.”
Luca blanched. “No. No, no. I will not be taking the A.”
Turning to Phil in mock despair, Lindy asked, “Did you curse the alternate captaincy or something? Why will no one take it?”
Phil held up his hands. “I wasn’t even on the ice for most of last year.”
“It should belong to Chris,” Luca said. “I know he doesn’t want it now, but he should have it, and he will get there.”
The humor drained from Phil’s face. In its place, something that might have been pride took over. Before Phil could do something horrible—such as express more emotions—Luca turned tail and left, citing an urgent need to get to the weight room.
The universe’s cruel sense of humor left him in the locker room three hours later, clutching a slip of paper with Chris’s name on it, while Lindy beamed benevolently at him from the center of the room in an off-center Santa hat.
He had no one but himself to blame.