Zero leads us the rest of the way to the locker room, and Cauler crowds against me as the door closes behind us. I can feel him against my back, hovering over my shoulder as he says, “I’m a great hockey player, huh?”
I roll my eyes, even as my heart clenches with his voice almost right in my ear. “Gotta play nice for the cameras.”
He laughs again. Sometimes I can’t tell if he’s mocking me or if he just really enjoys seeing me get taken down a notch. Probably both.
“Nice of you three to join us,” Coach says as I sink into my borrowed stall. I don’t respond, keeping my eyes on the whiteboard he’s used to draw up a new play.
“Wannabe sports reporter was attempting to render him comatose,” Zero says, motioning to the muted TV on the far wall playing a delay of the interview. I hardly recognize myself on the screen. The flush in my cheeks from almost ten minutes of ice time can’t hide the sick dullness of the rest of me. The dark bags under my eyes, the hollowness in my cheeks. I watch myself bullshit my way through the questions, and I have no idea how no one else has caught on all these years. My mask is nowhere near as good as I thought it was.
I take in every one of Coach’s words and I know I’ll be able to pick up the new play when I step on the ice, but I don’t exactly pay attention. My heartbeat is a too-fast flutter, breaths too shallow to fill my lungs. Sweat pools in the fingertips of my gloves until I pull them off and wipe my hands on my soaked jersey.
Does that make you feel threatened?
I close my eyes. Of course it makes me feel threatened. I’ve only been told I’d be the top pick since the day I was born. It’s like whatever comes of my career after that day doesn’t matter as long as I’m picked first just like Dad and Grampa.
How am I supposed to play normally, on the same line with the guy who has a good chance of taking away everything I’ve worked for? The thing I was literally made for. Every pass I send him has a chance of ruining my life.
I open my eyes to find Cauler looking right at me. He doesn’t turn away when I catch him staring. Just tilts his head and lowers his eyebrows. I don’t know what he thinks he’s seeing.
We watch each other, Cauler solid and calm and me struggling to keep it together, until our teammates jostle us to our feet for a cheer before heading back to the ice. I score once in our 3–0 win, but my celly’s nothing more than a sigh of relief toward the rafters.
Doesn’t matter that Cauler has the assist.
* * *
MY HEART SURGES when my phone lights up on the bus ride home, and plummets when I see it’s Delilah in the group chat. I don’t know why I expected it to be Cauler.
Delilah’s message is just a string of exclamation points and emojis and i’m screaming in the preview. I sigh as I open it. She sent an article with a picture of some old dude in a suit smiling, the headline only showing “Former NHL All-Star Com”—before it runs out of space.
It takes me a second to make the connection between that cut-off statement and Delilah’s excitement, because I honestly never thought I’d see the day. I click the link, and sure enough, it’s an article about a retired NHL player named Aaron Johansson coming out as gay.
He talks about hockey’s macho culture, the rampant homophobia, the fear. He’s been retired for more than twenty years and is just now comfortable coming out to the public because of people like Harrison Browne, Jessica Platt, Yanic Duplessis.
I don’t bother with the comments. I’m sure there are plenty of people screaming their support like Delilah, but there’s always gonna be the trolls. I’m not that much of a masochist.
I skim through the article again, waiting to feel something. Some kind of camaraderie. Relief. Excitement. Hope. I exit back to the group chat as my sisters’ comments flood in, all of them saying how awesome it is. I should be agreeing. I should be living. Instead, I say:
Mickey: Talk to me when an active player comes out
Yeah, it’s nice we got something. But I want more. I don’t want to be the guy to find out firsthand if the NHL means it when they say hockey is for everyone. I’m no pioneer. I’m not brave enough. I’ve heard the way some people on campus talk about Sid and Karim, very obviously and openly bisexual. But people act like Bailey’s some kind of, I don’t know, voyeur in their relationship? Like their attraction to each other nullifies their attraction to her. If you’re a guy and you’re into guys, that’s all people see.
All five of my sisters see my message, but the steady stream of replies dies instantly. After a few seconds, it shows Delilah typing, then stopping. Then typing again. And stopping. She doesn’t actually send anything for a few minutes.
Delilah: Can you not with the hetero hot takes?
Let me have this
For a second I consider sending back I am bisexual you jackass how haven’t you noticed I am so obvious, but instead, I back out of the chat and go to share the article on Twitter.
Huge step for men’s hockey, I say. Because, objectively, I know it is.
Cauler’s the first one to like it.
EIGHT
We open our regular season with a trip to Colorado. I am at peak anxiety right now. I keep trying to tell myself that this pinnacle season is just like any other season of hockey I’ve played in my life. Being on a different rink in a different jersey doesn’t make a difference. It’s still hockey, and I’m still one of the best young hockey players out there.
But so is Cauler. I can’t let him be better than me this season.
I sit between Dorian and Barbie on the flight to Denver. Technically I’m supposed to have the aisle seat, but since I’m apparently so freaking small, they stuck me in the middle. The plane is mostly quiet aside from a few whispered conversations, and Cauler is asleep across the aisle, slouched in his seat with his hands folded on his stomach, head tilted back, mouth hanging open. Next to him, Zero highlights a line in his textbook.
I’ve got a short paper due by midnight, my laptop open in my lap and dozens of research pages I keep clicking through without a real plan of action.
Dorian is fidgeting beside me. Drumming on his knees, raising the shade to peek out the window for a second before closing it again. He cracks his knuckles and goes back to drumming and tapping his foot.
It’s extremely distracting.
I manage two painful, probably incoherent paragraphs before he pulls his headphones down around his neck and says, “You ever been to a concert?”
I shake my head.
“We’re going to see these guys in a couple weeks.” Dorian holds his headphones out to me. I look at him skeptically. “C’mon, they’re good!” He yanks up the leg of his joggers—the same black with ROYALS HOCKEY written down the leg in purple the rest of us are wearing—and twists to show me the black tattoo on his calf. A bomb with a flower in place of the wick. “They got a song called ‘Flowerbomb,’ so.”
He settles back in his seat while I put the headphones over my ears. When he hits play on his phone, I swear my eardrums rupture. There is a man. Literally screaming at me. I pull the headphones away from my ears and glare at Dorian until he grins and apologizes. Barbie huffs a laugh.
“You listen to this shit, too, Barbie?” I ask him once the music is turned down enough that my ears aren’t bleeding from it.
“Excuse you?” Dorian scoffs. “Shit?”
Barbie shrugs. He’s got his hat pulled down over his eyes, voice sleepy. “Hard to avoid it with Dori and Cauler around. It grows on you.”
“‘It grows on you,’” Dorian mocks him. “As if you didn’t fanboy when you realized it was Ahren screaming in the background of ‘Beltsville.’”
“I prefer my pop punk and banda, thank you.”