“Cauler?” Kovy asks in a way that says they know, they’ve just been waiting for me to say it.
“No,” I say firmly. No way am I admitting Jaysen’s antagonism gets to me. “It’s not anything you can control. It’s just. Sometimes I need a break from hockey. Can’t get that hanging around hockey players all the time.”
It feels like the wrong thing to say. This is why I usually don’t talk. Nothing I say is ever right.
Zero hums. “I’m gonna let you in on a little secret, Mickey. We’re more than just hockey players. I’m also a psych student and a volunteer firefighter in the summer. Maverick here? He writes Dragon Age fanfiction—”
“Bro!” Kovy says.
“—and already has a job lined up with a game developer after graduation. And a bunch of us are also huge nerds who play D and D once a month.”
“I’m a halfling barbarian,” Kovy says, tilting his chin up proudly.
“If you spent any time with us, you’d know all this. Because we hardly talk about hockey outside of practice. We need breaks, too.”
Kovy sucks air through his teeth with an exaggerated wince. “Yeah, about that. Tonight might be a little hockey-centric. Just ’cause we got some things to work out.”
“Great,” I mumble.
The hockey house is right on the lake. So close I can hear the water against the shoreline as we head through the front door. It’s nicer than the lax house, with an actual entryway and an arch that opens to a living room with a big sectional and one of those curved TVs. The floor looks like wood but feels more like plastic when I take off my shoes. There are so many sneakers piled at the door, I doubt I’ll be able to find mine when I leave.
Zero and Kovy head right for the stairs, but I trail behind, taking the place in. I catch a glimpse of a clean kitchen, white cabinets and stainless steel, granite countertops and sliding glass doors out to a porch over the water.
If I stayed here another couple years, I would live in this house. One of the rooms we pass on the second floor would be mine.
I wonder how the hockey media would react to that. If at the draft combine I told every team that interviews me that I’m staying in school another three years. All because I got drunk one night and decided the campus was too pretty and my captains too nice to walk away from.
Talk about a James family scandal.
It sounds like people are wrestling above our heads, and my heart does this anxious kind of fluttering when Kovy opens the door to the attic, as if I’m about to be faced with a room full of strangers. Colie’s straight-up cackling up there. I’ve heard it enough at practice to pick it out from all the other laughter coming down the stairs.
Half the carpet in the attic is painted like a rink. They’ve got a game of three-on-three knee hockey going. My knees hurt just at the memory of playing with my sisters on the concrete floor of our basement as kids. I wonder if Mom and Dad still have the collection of mini sticks we built up over the years.
The team’s crowded onto couches on the other side of the room, cheering and shouting as they watch. The freshmen are all packed onto the smallest one. Jaysen’s head is thrown back, laughing so hard he’s got his hands clutched in his own shirt.
For the love of god, please kill me now.
There are cases of beer stacked on the floor and a few half-empty bottles of vodka scattered around.
Dorian’s the first to notice us. He shoves his fist in the air and shouts, “His Majesty has arrived!”
My face gets hot when they all look at me and start cheering. Doesn’t help when I catch a glimpse of Jaysen’s dimples before his smile vanishes at the sight of me.
“Put him on the rink!” someone shouts. The knee hockey game has ended with our interruption. A few of the guys who were playing lie breathless on the floor while the rest of them go for the alcohol. “He’s used to being that close to the ground!”
They all laugh again. I roll my eyes. Zero shoves my shoulder and says, “Join the rest of the rooks on the shitty couch, if it pleases Your Majesty.”
Jaysen keeps his eyes on me as I make my way over, a hint of that burning rage from earlier sparking in them while I try to keep my expression blank. My eyes feel too wide and my mouth is dry, my heart still doing that sick-butterfly thing like a ten-year-old faced with his first real crush.
I blame the alcohol.
I sit on the arm of the couch and try not to act too surprised when Dorian leans over and punches me in the shoulder. “Glad you showed up, bro,” he says with his standard level of excitement.
“Sure,” I say. Like I had a choice.
Zero claps his hands to get everyone’s attention, but it takes a minute or two for the giggling and snickering to die down. “Here’s the deal. Season hasn’t even started and we’re already off to a rocky start. We’re taking the NCAA this year, but only if we learn to operate as a cohesive unit. There’s rivalries and cliques and crap attitudes all over this team, and we gotta get over it. So we’re gonna play a little game, hash out some of this tension. Maverick, would you like to demonstrate?”
Kovy busts out a massive grin. “Of course. Colie? If you’d join me?”
Colie staggers to his feet and almost trips over some of the guys in his haste to get to Kovy. They face each other, holding each other’s hands in the space between them. Some of the guys wolf whistle and catcall them, and Colie bats his eyelashes at Kovy to play it up.
Zero’s smirking the whole time he explains the rules. “This game is all about honesty. Getting your issues out into the open, listening to what others have to say.”
Ugh, god. I can hear it now.
You never smile.
You think you’re better than us.
Your dad was a better hockey player than you.
I don’t need to hear it all again.
“For every negative,” Zero continues, “you have to say something positive to balance it out. When someone says something about you, you can’t argue it. You take it in, accept it, and move on. Boys?” He motions for Kovy and Colie to start.
Kovy adjusts his grip on Colie’s hands and puffs up his chest. “Colie, when you flop around in the crease thinking you look like Dominik Hasek, you actually look like a halibut in its death throes.”
“Of course,” Colie says without hesitation, even though it’s not at all true. “Sometimes your morning breath is so atrocious, it makes me dream about drowning you in mouthwash.”
“I don’t doubt it. That new painting you’re working on for your portfolio is superb, bro. I’d go to an art museum to see it.”
I didn’t even know Colie was in any art classes. Is he majoring in it? I’ll have to ask Jade.
“I appreciate that, Kovy. That play you made in practice today was a beauty. You should try it in a game.”
“I think I’ll do that.”
They let go of each other and find spots on the couches so the next pair can go up. I wrack my brain for any compliment I could give Jaysen and come up with nothing. I can almost feel his eyes boring into the side of my head, thinking about all the things he wants to say to me. It’s mostly petty things for the rest of them, like, you took my clothes out of the washer and left them on the counter so they smelled horrible, and you’re a hockey player, how is your ass so bony, and you still owe me five bucks from that road trip to Boston freshman year. Even when they do get more serious, like a consistent problem in practice or actual hurt feelings, they’re followed up with some over-the-top compliment so things don’t get too heated.
It’s obvious Jaysen and I are the real reason this is happening. Barbie and Dorian stick to each other like glue, and the upperclassmen are closer with the ones they came in with, but the team’s not really cliquey.