Season's Change Page 3

  It was just that the shit in Minnesota last year had been the worst time in his life.

  He had the media-ready sound bites, courtesy of his agent. I’d like to thank the Minnesota Wolves for giving me a chance to live out eight-year-old Olly’s dream. I’m excited to contribute and I think the Eagles have great energy going into the season, in an upbeat and decisive tone. No, I don’t think I’ll have any trouble fitting in. All the guys have been so welcoming, followed by an anecdote such as, hit up IKEA with my roomie Bowie, we’ve got the ultimate bachelor pad.

  What he didn’t have was any other way to talk about it. He was going to need to fucking find one, or it was going to be Minneapolis 2.0. Can’t take a joke. Doesn’t fit with the culture.

  He was freaking out, he realized. In Benji Bryzinski’s truck, in an IKEA parking lot in fucking Woodbridge, Virginia, and he needed to pull his shit together now.

  Benji knocked his knuckles against the window. Olly jumped. He was looking a little pissed-off through the glass, but whatever he saw on Olly’s face made his expression smooth back out.

  Olly fumbled the door open. So much for freaking out. Game face on. Get through the fucking shift.

  “You okay?” Benji asked, sounding like he gave a shit.

  “Yup.” Olly popped the p in a way that had always pissed his mom off, because she knew it meant he was lying.

  “Hey.” Benji wasn’t walking toward the entrance. “We don’t need to do this now, if you need a minute.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Okay. Um.” He scratched at the back of his head, fucking up his hair. It was tangled and fluffy, a total disaster. “You know Persy, the forward? He’s Swedish and stuff. He said I had to try the meatballs while we were here. Want to do that? Before we start looking at furniture and shit?”

  Olly didn’t know what would be worse: diving into IKEA, or sitting with Benji in the food court trying to eat meatballs. “It’s two o’clock.”

  “And I’m hungry.” He paused. “Well, no, but I’m supposed to be eating.”

  “Jesus, again?” They’d had lunch right before they left. Or Benji had had lunch—a giant sandwich—and Olly had made a regular sandwich and escaped back to his room.

  “I wasn’t kidding about the weight thing.” Benji blinked down at him with his slanted greeny-whatever eyes. He had unnecessarily long eyelashes. “It’s hard for me to keep it on.”

  “I can’t really see it.” They were walking now, and he could breathe again. Kind of; it was painfully hot, heat radiating up from the pavement, and it was so humid they were practically swimming. “You’re massive.”

  “My nickname in junior hockey was Rainbow. That’s where Bowie came from. Wanna know why?”

  Olly’s mind did not go to the right place. He nodded, anyway.

  “For, like, a rainbow shrimp. You know, those mushroom-trippy-looking pretty murder-shrimp things.”

  Olly took a second to parse that. “Murder...shrimp?”

  “Oh my fucking god, you don’t know about this?” Benji was looking at him like he was about to let Olly in on the best secret in the whole world.

  They made it to the food court line, which was predictably nonexistent at 2 pm on a Tuesday. Benji got meatballs with a side of smoked salmon; Olly got an apple.

  Benji pulled out his phone as soon as they claimed a table. He loaded a video of an, okay, trippy-looking rainbow-flag-themed shrimp. Which then proceeded to murder a fish and start chewing on its head.

  “That is one cold-ass murder-shrimp,” was all Olly felt capable of adding. “What does this have to do with your junior hockey nickname?”

  “I was a tiny little shrimp, but I fucked people up.” He said it with a giant shit-eating grin, then paused, skewing his mouth over to the side. “I think the rainbow thing was a joke. They’re actually called mantis shrimp. But my boy Davo always said I was pretty.”

  “I don’t know what definition of pretty your boy Davo was using,” which was a lie, not that Olly should be paying any goddamned attention. It wasn’t true now with the broken nose and the gap in his teeth and the overall proportions, but he could see how a shrimp-sized version would have been: his bone structure and his damned eyelashes.

  “Nah, you’re the pretty boy.” Benji leaned back in his chair and shoved a meatball in his mouth. “Your fucking hair. Christ.”

  Olly choked on a bite of his apple. “I’m from Minnesota,” he managed. He didn’t think Benji had even seen him with his hair down. He couldn’t imagine it touching his neck when it was this hot outside.

  “Whatever you say,” Benji said, shoving his last meatball in his mouth. “Ready to do this thing, then?”

  Olly wasn’t, exactly, but the sooner they got it over with, the sooner he wouldn’t have to be doing it anymore. So they acquired a coffee table, a console for their future TV, a bed for Olly, and a mattress that he wouldn’t have to re-inflate every night. By the time they were in the kitchenware section, with Benji consulting a list that he’d pulled out of the pocket of his shorts, Olly was feeling unexpectedly...settled.

  There was no way that Benji was as aggressively pleasant as he seemed, though. It was impossible to go to IKEA without at least one total meltdown over Scandinavian design. Especially not if your family was Finnish, and you had national pride at stake.

  They tussled briefly over the bill, which Olly won. Colorado had called him up four years ago and he was on his second contract; he’d almost forgotten what it felt like to think about money. Until last season, anyway, when he’d been pretty sure he’d been headed for early retirement.

  But now he had a fresh start. If he could just keep it the fuck together.

  Chapter Four

  Benji invited some of the boys over once they had a TV and an Xbox. He was weirdly proud: he’d never owned a gaming system before. He could have bought one while he was in the D-League in Hershey, but it was more fun to let his billet sis, Darcy, kick his ass at Pro Hockey 21 in the living room, than to get one for his suite in the basement.

  Darcy wasn’t allowed in the basement, because she was a smoke show seventeen-year-old and hockey bros were dogs. Not that Benji would have laid a finger on her, even without the warning from Coach that the Deveraux were taking him on as a personal favor because they’d heard what an upstanding young man he was, and that if he fucked this up over pussy, he was DOA. (Not that he was allowed to put Darcy and pussy in the same sentence.) The ominous text from an unknown number that turned out to be Andre-in-the-NAHA, and the lecture from his billet dad, Marc, in the car on their way home for the first time, his dark-skinned face set in serious lines—those had really been unnecessary.

  Billetcest was a big ol’ nope to begin with; but more than anything else Benji hated disappointing the people who believed in him. Coach believed in him. The Deveraux believed in him. And they were the family he’d dreamed about when he was a skinny kid in a trailer park, from Alise’s hug-ambushes to the fatherly lectures from Marc to the three floofy little dogs. Maybe his dream fam hadn’t had Pomeranians, but close enough.

  Olly was in the kitchen, fidgeting with the snacks like a total mom. He was no Krista—there was no white wine whatever with fruit chunks floating in it—but he had the same uptight will-everyone-like-me thing going on. He had put the tortilla chips, like, in a bowl.

  “Buddy,” Benji said. “Stop fiddling.”

  “Sorry.” He almost flinched. Olly was a twitchy little fucker.

  Benji loved how hard they were working in camp. And he was playing well. Things were clicking with him and Emilio Dvorak, the Eagles’ all-star D-man who he’d been replacing last January, so there was a chance he’d be Mils’s other half on the Eagles’ first defensive pairing. Wild.

  Olly was the opposite: the deeper they got into the preseason schedule, the tighter he got wound. And he wasn’t playing well. Not in an objective w
ay; he could skate circles around Hershey’s first line. But he was not doing what the Eagles were going to need him to be doing.

  Probably the first thing the Eagles needed him to do was to chill the fuck out and get out of his head. He was a beautiful skater, fast as hell to begin with and then adding enough technical ability to make scouts cream their pants. Benji had binge-watched his highlights from his first two years in Colorado a few nights ago. Olly could do the damn thing. He just wasn’t.

  “Get a beer and come here.”

  The door to the refrigerator clinked, followed by Olly appearing with a bottle of some craft brew bullshit and a Miller Lite for Benji. He sat on the farthest edge of the couch and stared at his beer.

  “Why are you freaking out right now?”

  Olly winced. “Is it that obvious?”

  “Yeah, bud. It’s obvious.”

  “I can’t fuck this up.”

  Benji didn’t think Olly was talking about their little get-together. He pivoted. “Lot of pressure.”

  He nodded. Took a swig of his fancy beer.

  “Have you thought about seeing a, like, therapist? Not just the sports psych, but someone a little more comprehensive.”

  Olly dribbled beer down his chin. He did shit like that a lot when Benji talked. “See a what?”

  “A therapist.”

  “I’m not crazy.” Now he sounded pissed. And they had people coming over in five minutes. If this relationship was going to work, Benji had to improve his timing. Olly had more going on than just hockey and video games and wheeling on girls.

  “I’m not saying you are. Sometimes it helps to talk to someone. That’s all.”

  “Like you would see a fucking shrink.” He sounded more disgusted than pissed, which was okay because Benji could get pissed off instead.

  “I did see a fucking shrink and it was super fucking helpful, actually.”

  “You what?”

  “Hello? Sports are about the mental as much as the physical. Buddy. Come on.” They’d all had sessions with a sports psychologist at Quinnipiac, this badass lady who went to the Olympics for soccer. She’d looked him in the eye in their one-on-one and told him she thought he should talk to someone in the counseling center. To, like, unpack his childhood. And get a lock on the anger issues, because Benji’s career goals did not include becoming a busted-up enforcer with twelve concussions, no knuckles, and a pill problem.

  So Benji had gone to see a therapist, the same way he stuck to the meal plan and never slacked off in the weight room. And fuck if that fluffy dude hadn’t helped him a ton, and also turned him on to yoga and mindfulness apps. And given him, like, validation for blocking his mom’s number and never speaking to her again, which Benji hadn’t known he needed until a hippy-dippy man with soothing music and a bottomless tissue box had given it to him.

  Meanwhile, Olly was staring down the neck of his beer bottle as if it was going to show him the answers to why am I so fucked up or how do you put the puck in the net. “I’m not crazy,” he repeated after a while. “I got this.”

  “Sure, dude. But it doesn’t mean you’re crazy. It just means there’s someone who can help with something you might not be the best at. Same reason we work with figure skating coaches sometimes.”

  “Maybe you do.”

  “Oh, fuck you. We can’t all skate like, I don’t know, a figure skater who started playing hockey.” He’d teed it up on purpose, so Olly would summon up the little smirk he got around his blue eyes, when he successfully nailed a chirp. Seriously, though, Olly’s edge drills were a thing of beauty. Maybe Benji could teach Olly how to be a human, and Olly could teach him how to skate like a Minnesotan.

  “My mom was a figure skater. I can even jump.”

  “Jesus, all the fucking advantages.”

  “You’re a lefty. Don’t talk to me about natural advantages.”

  Benji rolled his eyes tolerantly. “Okay, bud. I’ve got one thing and you’ve got, like, everything else.”

  The door buzzed. Olly hunched down into his shoulders again. Shit. Benji heaved an internal sigh and went to welcome the flood of Hershey Howl players and dudes from Russia and Scandinavia to apartment 505.

  It was a fun afternoon, fucking around playing NAHA on the Xbox. Benji lost basically every time, but Olly’s Detroit Wheelers reigned victorious. And he seemed okay if he had the game to focus on.

  Also, Benji needed to spend less time worrying about Olly, and more time thinking about his own shit.

  * * *

  Olly lay in bed, not sleeping. That wasn’t new. He couldn’t remember when it had started—maybe after he’d gotten hurt in Denver. But it had gotten bad in Minnesota, like everything else in his life.

  And like everything else, moving to DC hadn’t fixed it.

  “Have you thought about seeing a, like, therapist?”

  He rolled over, shoving his face into the gap between his pillows. Benji had delivered that shot with his usual wide-eyed sincerity. Olly had taken it like a bullet, felt it lodge somewhere under his collarbone.

  Benji hadn’t meant to hurt him; Benji didn’t have a malicious bone in his body. People loved him. His phone lit up 24/7, and he was on FaceTime with some former billet family member or coach at least once a day. He was the only one who could have pulled off the Pro Hockey get-together for all the boys hovering on the verge, right before the first roster cuts.

  Half the team was in Charlotte tonight, for their second preseason game. Olly was trying not to read into it that he hadn’t gone to either of them, shove down the insistent fear that he wouldn’t see his name on the roster tomorrow. Benji had been at the first game, and more than held his own: he’d gotten a sick stop on Ryan Stewart. In a preseason game. Still: Ryan Stewart.

  And Olly had seen him carry a yoga mat onto the balcony to do sun salutations and mindfulness.

  “I did see a fucking shrink and it was super fucking helpful, actually.”

  But then Olly thought about...talking. About Minnesota. Himself. Expectations, pressure, the way there was an iron band tightening around his chest; how every day it was harder and harder to get a lungful of air. How his lungs seemed to lose more of their capacity, every goddamned time one of his shots dinged off the pipe. Every time someone knocked him off the puck because he was underweight, because he’d been fucking up all summer. Every time he saw a coach look at him, and write something on a clipboard, like we’re paying how much money for this?

  Olly couldn’t fuck this up.

  He couldn’t.

  He was fucking it up.

  He staggered out of bed and barely made it into the bathroom before he threw up.

  * * *

  Olly’s group was skating in the second slot at practice the next morning, but when Benji asked if he wanted to carpool, he agreed to drive. If he stayed home, he was just going to get worse. He could still feel bile at the back of his throat.

  He could have done something useful—extra reps in the weight room, stretch—but instead he pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head and went to lurk in the stands. It was a random weekday. Not many spectators, other than the local beat writers. Benji’s group included Dewitt and Luke Chen, of fucking course: the big guns on offense.

  Olly bounced his tennis ball off the concrete floor, catching it over and over while he watched the boys run drills. He felt about as nervous as he had before he played in the Western Conference Final, his second year in Colorado. Fucking hell, that had probably been the apex of his career.

  He didn’t see it getting any better from here, sitting alone in the stands watching other guys play better hockey than he could.

  He bounced the tennis ball faster, until he lost control. It went rolling down the aisle and landed at the feet of Danny Olenyik. The damned head coach.

  “Järvinen,” Coach Olenyik said. “I was hoping to fin
d you.”

  Not good.

  “I came in with Bowie.” Olly dug his fingernails into his palm, hung on to the discomfort.

  Coach O folded himself down onto the bleacher next to him. They watched the guys whipping around cones. Benji lost an edge and skidded into the boards, his yelp cutting through the cold air of the rink, followed by a laugh.

  “I don’t understand how he skates as fast as he does,” Coach O said.

  “It’s like someone strapped ice skates on a bison.”

  Coach O snickered, which wasn’t something Olly ever thought he’d hear from a head coach. “Were you saving that for a special occasion?”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “Fair, fair.” Coach O watched Luke Chen blaze through the cones, followed by Logan Beverly, one of the other top-six wingers. Two players of color on one NAHA team was unusual to begin with; add Olly’s orientation, and they were...

  The muscles in Olly’s shoulders wound tighter. At least he wasn’t getting screamed at, yet. Olly wasn’t some dainty doll. He’d been yelled at by coaches or his dad or his brothers his entire life.

  But Coach Barnard from Minnesota had really loved to let loose. One of Olly’s last memories of being a Wolf—after they’d all known he was on his way out, after they’d missed the playoffs and nothing mattered—was Coach Barnard right up in his face. Inches away. Screaming. Olly’d had to wipe the spit off his face. He could still feel it, the trapped way he’d let his eyes go unfocused and concentrated on trying to breathe.

  He dug his nails into his palm again, harder; swallowed against the roil in his stomach.

  “How do you think things are going?” Coach O asked, after Benji had successfully navigated the cones.

  Olly thought about lying. But fuck, nothing he was doing was working. “Not great.”

  Coach O nodded. “How’s the living situation?”

  “Benji’s good. Everybody loves him.” Olly was so goddamned pathetic, his head coach was checking on his housing like a concerned fucking dad.