Season's Change Page 7
“Block and fucking tackle, bud.” He swallowed a giggle. Didn’t manage to keep the next one in.
“I should have just gone to the stupid store,” Benji mumbled. “But I asked Poiro where to go and when I showed up at one place, it was so terrible I walked right out.”
Olly wanted to give him a hug and promise to help, but he didn’t think he could get within five feet of Benji without spontaneously combusting. There was treating your teammates like furniture, and there was living with Benji fucking Bryzinski of the broad shoulders and thick thighs and cheerful grin and giant fucking cock. Olly couldn’t pretend it didn’t exist right now. It was fucking—displayed. And Olly already knew how good it felt to be pressed up against Benji’s chest.
“We’re going to get through this,” he said, to himself as much as to Benji. “Just...hold your jacket over your arm. I’m going to call someone and we’re going to fix this after the game.”
Benji’s face shifted immediately to panic. “Shit, I’m supposed to have dinner with Krista and fucking Robbo. I cannot be wearing this then. Can. Fucking. Not.”
“Do you want to change?”
In a total rookie move, Benji had left his trash-bag suit crumpled up in the middle of his floor. It was unsalvageable.
* * *
The chirping was unspeakable. Even Coach O got in on the action, which was how Benji knew he had fucked up.
He deserved it, so he tried to be a good sport. Olly had called a fancy-ass store from the plane, and worked some “I’m a professional athlete and it would be a personal favor” witchcraft that would result in someone bringing suits to the hotel.
He’d had to let Poiro take his measurements standing in the aisle of the jet, with a pack of twenty-two assholes hollering encouragement. Benji thought of himself as an open-minded guy, but that was not an experience he ever wanted to repeat. Poiro had really gone for it—Benji hadn’t had another guy that close to his dick since the Frozen Four after-party at the Q, where things had gotten a little sloppy with one of the forwards and no less than three Tri Betas.
And there were cameras waiting for the bus as it pulled up to the stadium. He stuck his jacket in front of his dick and tried to stay as close to Soko’s back as possible.
“You disgrace,” Soko told him, hip-checking him out of the way. “Go give them a money shot. Maybe you’ll get new career in porn.”
The good news about Pantsgate was that it had distracted him from the upcoming game. Benji didn’t get nervous about games. He got hyped, or he anticipated, but he hadn’t been nervous since he’d played his first international tournament with the NHTC. If a kid from a trailer park at a glorified truck stop could fly to the freaking Czech Republic to play hockey for the US of A, anything else was icing.
But Benji was nervous about playing Robbo. He’d sent Benji a few texts to the tune of hope ur ready to play w the big boys lol. Benji wasn’t great at writing and stuff, but even he was better than that.
“McMeade is really your brother-in-law?” Yelich asked, as they were filtering down the hall to the dressing room. They’d have a quick skate, then go back to the hotel to nap and (hopefully) Benji would get non-obscene pants.
“Guilty.”
“I don’t want to insult your sister but she’s got pretty bad taste, eh?”
“I don’t disagree, my man.” He had to be the only player in the league who would throw his teammates in front of his sister. Literally anyone, even Poiro, would be better than Robbo. He was bad news. Dirty player, rumors about pills, and that was on top of cheating on Kris. Benji had no idea how his contract had gotten renewed. NAHA rosters did not have players like Robbo. Guys like Soko, sure, who didn’t mind dropping the gloves. But Soko could play hockey, even if he was never going to the All-Star game.
Fuck, even Benji himself, after one of the last stupid fights he’d ever gotten into. He could still remember his NHTC coach: “you’re borderline at best, one wrong move and you’re out, there is no fucking place on this team for a fucking goon. I didn’t want you here in the first place so if you want to keep playing fucking hockey you had better work harder than you’ve ever worked in your fucking life.” Then he’d kicked over a trash can.
Benji had been legitimately worried Coach was going to give himself an aneurysm—also he had nowhere to live if he got kicked out, since he wasn’t welcome back home and Krista was couch-surfing in Pittsburgh—so he’d gone back to his billet fam’s house and googled “how to stop getting angry” on the desktop computer in their living room. He’d been a work in progress for a while there, but it was under control: fighting was verboten in the NCAA, and he’d gotten through two years in Hershey doling out big hits and only dropped his gloves once or twice.
But Benji most certainly could fight. You could take the boy out of the trailer park and give him a six-figure salary, but the trailer park was a lot harder to take out of the boy.
“Are you okay?” Olly asked, when they were getting suited up for morning skate. Taking Poiro’s goddamned pants off had been a whole thing.
“Yeah, bud.” He paused. Might as well admit it; he might need someone to back him up on the ice later, and Soko was hovering on Olly’s other side. “Just worried about fuckin’ Robbo.”
“Fucking goon. We’ve all got your back.”
Soko leaned over. “Even after we all see your dick, rookie.”
Benji made a face. “You’re my boys, but it’s, like, damned if I do, damned if I don’t. ’Cause of the sis. I know he’s gonna come after me. He’s hated me since day one and fuck if it isn’t mutual. But Krista’s gonna kill me if I fight him.”
“It’s hockey. Fights happen, the wives deal.” Soko shrugged.
Kris had been sending him parallel texts like Benji you have got to be the bigger man here, you know it’s not his fault. Because it was always someone else’s fucking fault, whether it was the Union coach or Benji or the new girl in his DMs. It had to be exhausting, coming up with that many excuses for a piece of fucking pond slime.
“If he doesn’t want to get his bell rung, he could try not stirring up shit,” Olly said. “I haven’t even played Pittsburgh that much and I still know he’s an asshole.”
“Have you ever been in a fight, Oliver?” Poiro snarked. “Or are you too scared to risk your pretty face?”
“I have three older brothers. If I couldn’t throw a punch, I wouldn’t have survived.”
They started fighting in French again. Benji didn’t know if Poiro picked all these little fights to distract Olly before he skated, or if he was genuinely just an argumentative piece of shit.
Soko reached over to grab Benji’s shoulder. “Will be okay. I don’t have to sit at Thanksgiving dinner with sister. Neither does Milsy or roommate. We take care of it.”
“Olly’s not going to fight Robbo.”
“Calm down, papa bear. He’s a NAHA player, too.” Soko narrowed his eyes at Poiro and Olly. Yelich had somehow gotten stuck between them going down the tunnel, and was looking nervous at the increasing pace of French insults. “Although face too pretty to break. We won’t let it come to that.”
Benji realized, with a flash of absolute clarity, if Robbo touched Olly in the game that night, Benji was ending him. And not one single person on the fucking ice was going to stop him.
* * *
But first, he had to survive putting Poiro’s pants back on, keeping the national sports media from getting a clear shot of his dick walking to the bus back to the hotel, and meeting whoever had the job of being a concierge shopper in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia.
That turned out to be a petite Black man named Loic. He was wearing makeup: fake eyelashes and the whole shebang, like Soko’s extremely Russian wife.
And he was dragging a rack of garment bags
behind him. Benji had never been so happy to see another human being in his entire life.
“’Kay, darling,” Loic said, sweeping into Olly and Poiro’s room. “Let’s get this situation handled.”
Poiro looked like someone had butt-ended him in the back of the head. Olly was trying to hide behind his phone.
“I really need some help,” Benji told him.
Loic flicked his eyes up and down Benji’s body, widening briefly when they landed on his extremely visible block and fucking tackle. “This is going to be tough, because hockey players all have asses and such big thighs. But you’re so fit, and your hips are so skinny, it really throws off the ratio. You’re going to be a lot more difficult to deal with than the baseball players I work with.”
“I can basically only wear sweatpants and basketball shorts.”
“And that is a crime against humanity,” Loic informed him. “We’ve got a time crunch, so I’m going to try to be respectful of your delicate sensibilities since you don’t know me yet, but I need you to take off all of your clothes. Right now.”
Poiro made an oof noise, like he’d been about to say something and Olly had elbowed him in the diaphragm.
Loic narrowed his eyes at the peanut gallery, managing an expression shockingly like the Eagles’ goalie coach. “Like I said, darling. Time crunch, especially since I am not literally a magical fairy godmother and we’re going to need to find the time to alter something, because that masterpiece of an ass is not going to play nicely in standard sizes. Distractions will not be tolerated.”
Benji dropped trou.
As quickly as he could when he was wearing pants cling-wrapped to his ballsack, anyway.
Fortunately, Loic’s suit selections were a lot less flamboyant than what he was wearing himself. They were also less ridiculous than the shit Poiro wore, so maybe Benji wasn’t the only Eagle who should be considering a personal stylist.
Loic stuck him in a basic gray number. Poiro held up a hotel notepad with 3/10 scribbled on it; Olly used the other notepad to hit him. Loic hmm-ed and tweaked something with how the waist of the pants fit.
Poiro gave an outraged squawk over God knew what while Loic skimmed Benji into a white shirt that felt like it was made of the cheeks of baby angels. Benji was retroactively embarrassed about the button-ups that he’d bought at Walmart in college. Okay, he’d kind of known his suit wasn’t up to the standards of the other guys in the league, but he hadn’t thought there could be that much of a difference in shirts.
“Are they always like this?” Loic asked Benji, as the squawking continued.
“Sometimes it’s in French. Other than that, yeah.”
“I can’t tell if they’re fighting or flirting.”
“Me neither, dude.” He was glad that he didn’t bring out Olly’s inner seven-year-old, though. He liked regular Olly.
“If they ever fuck,” Loic said, slipping a navy blue jacket over his shoulders, “please call me. I would pay so much money to see that.”
“Sure, bud. I do want your number, anyway, since I apparently don’t even know how to buy a fucking shirt the right way.”
“Anytime.” Loic swung around to face him from the front. “Well, you’ll do for today. Gentlemen!”
He gave an authoritative clap.
“Navy’s boring,” Poiro whined immediately.
“It’s classic,” Olly countered. “You look great, dude.”
“It’s a first step,” Loic agreed, reaching up to brush an invisible speck of dust off Benji’s shoulder. “Go check yourself out, big man.”
The full-length mirror was on the back of the bathroom door. Benji blinked at the rich fucker looking back at him. The suit looked good. He looked like a NAHA player, like someone who stepped off private jets to go, he didn’t know, drink expensive scotch and fuck supermodels.
He also looked like a stranger, from his fancy haircut to the way the color of the suit made his eyes go all green. The room tilted; he couldn’t help wondering how many months of rent on the trailer this perfect suit would have paid for. Also he didn’t like either scotch or women whose hipbones poked him while he was fucking them.
“I guess it’s fine?”
“It’s better than fine.” Olly appeared next to him in the mirror. He was still wearing his suit pants and button-down, cinnamon-colored hair falling out of the knot he’d thrown it in at the rink. The reflection of his blue eyes met Benji’s in the mirror. “It’s okay to have nice things.”
Benji shook his head. No way was he getting into emotional shit with Poiro and a personal shopper in the room.
“You look good. Pinky swear. Buy the fucking suit.” He gave Benji a crooked smile, and held up his hand.
Suit approved, Loic disappeared to “go full Project Runway on those pants” in one of the hotel’s business services rooms. Benji should go back to the room he was sharing with Soko to nap, but he’d ended up sprawled on Olly’s bed in Poiro’s sweatpants and T-shirt (which fit a lot better than the suit), and he was too comfortable to move. It already felt like the day had lasted forever, and they still had a game. He picked up his phone, shot off a quick text to Soko to let him know he was napping in Poiro and Olly’s room.
Poiro had his headphones in and was watching something on his iPad, looking about a second away from dozing off. Olly was sitting at the desk, watching tape.
“Get over here,” Benji told him. “Nap time.”
“Maybe in a minute.” He narrowed his eyes at his iPad.
“Pretty sure it’s a contractual obligation, bud.”
“Well, you’re in my bed, so.”
“Um, it’s way more comfortable than my bed.”
“It’s the exact same bed.”
“But I’m here, and it’s all the way on the other side of the hotel.”
“Câlice!” Poiro snapped, ripping out an earbud. “Shut the fuck up and get in the bed, Oliver. If you can nap on him on the plane, you can nap on him now. Some of us are trying to sleep.”
Olly was actually blushing as he shut his laptop and padded over to his bed. Benji rolled over to the far side of the bed and made himself as small as possible. Which wasn’t very small, but hey, he was trying. Not hard enough to get up, though.
The mattress dipped as Olly climbed in and got settled, and that was the last thing he remembered until an alarm went off an hour later. Then Loic was swanning in with the new suit, and the entire team was giving him sarcastic claps on the bus yelling shit like “way to glo up, Bowie!”; and it was time to play fucking Pittsburgh.
Chapter Ten
Olly jigged his knee on the bench, watching the Eagles and the Union fly by on the ice. The game had been even so far, with a handful of scoring chances on both sides.
Soko nudged his shoulder. “Stop worrying.”
“I always worry.”
“Okay. Worry about scoring goals.”
Olly sucked in a breath as the Union’s captain steamed toward their defensive zone. As calmly as if he’d been doing it for years, Benji got his stick on the puck and sent it back up the ice to Luke.
Yelich whistled. “He’s really fucking good.”
“Will be All-Star if improves offensive production,” Soko agreed. High praise, even if he had clearly adopted Benji as his personal rookie.
The Eagles defense had an answer for everything the Union could throw at them in the first period. Their offense, on the other hand, was struggling. Olly liked Luke’s hockey but he wasn’t a natural center: his defensive mindset needed work.
The first period ended scoreless; so did the second. Coach O pulled Luke aside in the locker room. They both looked tense, until finally Coach O shook Luke’s shoulder and rounded everyone up.
“We’re going to shake up a few things,” he announced.
The bottom dropped out of Olly’s stomach as Coach O rat
tled off the line changes. He was moving up to 2C with Luke on his right and Logan Beverly at left wing.
“Hey,” Benji hissed in his ear. “You got this, bud. I’ve seen your highlights from Colorado. Get out there and do your fucking thing.”
Olly tightened his fingers on his stick. Nodded. His vision was flickering at the edges of his visor, and he couldn’t suck in a full breath, but it was time to man the fuck up. His team needed him. He could fall apart later; the shift came first.
The Union coach had decided to change things on his side, too, except his new plan involved sending Robbo out to act like a human wrecking ball. Olly wasn’t prone to getting in the refs’ faces, but found himself getting dragged away from a linesman after a no-call on a blatant slew-foot against Bevvo. “Shut up, shut up, shut up,” Luke was chanting in his ear. The good news was that Olly was angry enough that the anxiety had faded away.
But the shit with Bevvo wasn’t the real problem. The Union forwards couldn’t get around Benji, and Robbo was there to fuck him up.
An attack fizzled out in the Eagles’ defensive zone. Robbo pulled off his gloves and tugged on Benji’s sweater. Benji backed away, hands up; Robbo followed, smirk on his face and mouth moving. Olly couldn’t hear over the rushing in his ears. He didn’t know who hammered in between them first, him or Milsy. But Mils shoved Olly and Benji back; dropped his gloves; and hit Robbo like a freight train.
“Fuck,” Benji panted, trying to pull away from Olly’s restraining arm. “Fucking shitfucking goddamn!”
Robbo was already down, dripping blood onto the ice from a cut under his eye.
“You’re okay, bud.” Olly skated Benji backward. “We’ve got you.”
Mils glided toward the box, shaking out his right hand and aiming a fuck you toward the Union bench. The Eagles tapped their sticks.
“Shit,” Benji said. “I can’t believe he actually did it.” He shook his head. “What the fuck, Ols? You can’t fucking fight Robbo McMeade.”
“Can and would, buddy,” Olly told him, and headed toward the face-off dot in their defensive zone. He won it, too, Luke and Bevvo moving around him like they’d done it a hundred times. Olly fed the puck to Bevvo, who took it up the ice and snapped it back to Luke. He twisted free of a Union D-man and buried the puck top shelf.