Coming in First Place (Between the Teeth Book 1)

by Taylor Fitzpatrick

  The stalemate continues through half the period and another 8 shots from the Panthers, but Knutsen can only do so much, and the Panthers play dirty, coming in hot on a missed pass that’s entirely David’s fault, Goldman catching David on the way back with a stick around the shins and sending him sprawling, forcing a three-on-two.

  They don’t get a clear shot, but David’s still scrambling up when they form a screen, Lourdes maybe an inch from Knutsen’s face, crowding him into his crease when Gallagher shovels it in, and the bench is already erupting in protest when the goal lights up. They don’t wave it off, but it goes above their heads, Kurmazov gesturing furiously at the ref while Gallagher stands back and gloats, like he knows something they don’t, which he might, because the call on the ice stands even after they send it back to headquarters.

  The final score is 2-0, the Panthers sealing the deal with an empty-net goal. The mood is dark going back into the room, Knutsen not talking to anyone, a pall settling, the team dead silent. No one says a word until the media crams its way in, filling the room with noise again.

  David’s tired, drained, but that anger still simmers its way through him, keeping his muscles tight, tense. He needs a shower. He needs to go home, punch a pillow, sleep it off until it pales the next morning, the way bad losses always do. He can’t do that, though, not yet, because of course the media wants to talk to him. Of course they want to talk to him about Jake fucking Lourdes, who didn’t even have a goal, though he should have been the reason one of them was disallowed.

  They ask David about the giveaway, which he deserves to be asked about, deserves to be called out on, but they shift to Lourdes quickly enough, ask about the hit, ask about how he felt about the goal. David does his best not to give them anything, but they keep on it, nagging, someone from NBC asking how he felt playing Lourdes for the first time, as if David hasn’t ever been across the dot from his smug, smirking face, as if he hadn’t taken Gold from Lourdes’ fingertips.

  “I don’t know why you keep asking me about him,” David snaps, forgetting, for a moment, to provide the nice, polite, non-committal answer they’re expecting. “As far as I’m concerned, Jake Lourdes is completely irrelevant.”

  They muscle in closer, suddenly animated, and —

  Shit. That’s going to be the sound bite.

  CHAPTER THREE

  After that, the media’s all over the stupid Chapman-Lourdes rivalry, and David can’t blame anyone but himself. He can’t even blame Lourdes, because his only response when asked about David’s statement was a bit of a smirk and a comment that his play was showing just how relevant he was. Which was arrogant, maybe, but nothing the media wasn’t saying already, nothing David could even argue, not when he was still trying to catch up to him. Or, not even catch up, just to make his own place. Preferably ahead of Lourdes.

  November ticks into December, and things start getting better. His grandmother always told him living well is the best revenge. If that applies to playing well, then David has found his revenge. The Panthers still seem to be employing their ‘We’ll go down but we’ll destroy your goalie’s GAA while we do it’ strategy, rarely pulling a win out of the mess, but the Islanders have gotten tighter, cleaner. They’re still on the wrong side of playoff berth, and David’s pretty sure that’s where they’re going to sit all season, but if you compare them to a team like the Panthers, they come out looking good.

  Knutsen’s less likely to melt down after a bad goal than he was a month ago, everyone has gotten acclimated to one another well enough to start passing better, and the checking line is leaving players in smears against the boards, which tends to negatively impact their opponent’s offence. They’re not a good team — they’re not a good team by a long-shot — but at least they’re getting better.

  They’re all playing decent or better hockey out there. David is no exception, is instead generally held up as the exemplar, his point total slowly ticking back up to a point per game average. They’ve played a stretch of mediocre and bad teams, and David has no illusions that he’ll perform at this level when they head west for a backbreaking road trip after the Christmas break, that any of them will.

  Still, it feels good in the moment, and better because he’s creeping up to Lourdes in the standings. Lourdes’ points production is dropping, victim to frequent line-changes, maybe, David doesn’t care, is just glad it’s down. The media’s dropped their constant comparisons as well, a little less interested in Lourdes when he isn’t performing, a little more interested in David’s actual merits because he is performing, and they’ve almost shut up about the supposed rivalry when the Panthers host the Islanders almost a month to the day since their last meeting.

  It’s the Islanders’ second game in two days, but the team seems to feel good coming into it after coming out on top of a formidable Tampa in a close game the night before. Being in the Sunshine State is raising the team’s spirits all by itself, and even David isn’t immune to it. He takes a walk outside the hotel in the heat, baseball hat on just to shield his face from the glare rather than to mask his identity. It’s not like he’s going to get recognised here, not like the game in Ottawa a week ago, where he’d gotten a hometown salute and a mob of pretty girls in down coats waiting for him after practice, like he was a member of the home team. It was flattering, but it was weird too, and he prefers this, looking like any other winter-pale tourist soaking in the sun.

  The Islanders are varying degrees of sun-stupid when they gather for a quick practice, more a pre-warm up than anything else, because they don’t want to wear their legs out. They’re accordingly varying degrees of slow and lackadaisical, and maybe David should have taken that as a bad omen, but he didn’t.

  If their last game against Florida was a disaster, this is a bloodbath. Hamburg lets in two in the first five minutes, and that’s just a sign of things to come. By midway through the second, it’s 4-0, Knutsen’s relieved Hamburg at the net, looking murderous again, and they’ve spent the majority of the game in their zone, playing a frantic defensive game, which is not their strength. It’s not the Panthers’ either, but they don’t need it to be tonight, not with the way they keep driving in, peppering the net, forcing the Islanders to be a reactionary team instead of an active one.

  On a rare chance to get it back into the Panthers zone, David skates it in instead of bothering with chip and chase, knowing where that will lead. David’s just made it past the blue line when he’s crushed against the boards at an awkward angle that brings him down, winded, gasping, his shoulder throbbing, and he is the opposite of surprised to find out it’s Lourdes who gets two minutes for boarding.

  Their trainer checks in on him once he’s back on the bench, but there’s nothing to be done but to play through the pain. It’s nothing serious, but it’s another frustration in a game of frustrations. David almost wishes he was the kind of player who would go after opponents, who could go after opponents, the kind of player who could stack up against Lourdes. Brouwer lurks around Lourdes instead, at least until Florida’s enforcer takes him on once Brouwer’s gotten one too many cheapshots in, and the mostly empty arena rings with cheers once again, like they’ve ever fucking stopped.

  At the end of the game it’s 7-1 — David’s goal, but it doesn’t matter — and everyone shuffles into the room quietly, Knutsen and Hamburg white-faced and grim, the rest of them keeping their heads down to avoid their eyes. The Panthers had 47 shots on net, the Islanders 16, and everyone knows whose fault this is.

  David’s sore when he’s pulling off his pads, and sore when he’s showering, and sore when he’s getting back into his game day suit. He wishes they were at home, wishes he could sink into an ice bath, take some of the ache away, the throb of his shoulder and the dull exhaustion of the rest of him. Instead he just looks forward to getting back to his hotel room, locking his road roommate out of the bathroom, drawing a bath and trying to drown himself. He’s actively longing for it.

  But first he has to deal with the me
dia. He gives them nothing this time, and lets them swarm around the Kurmazov and the goalies like flies on a carcass. He gets out as quickly as he can, but he’s stopped in the hall by Jake Lourdes leaning against the wall like he belongs there, which, since he’s in front of the visitor’s room, he decidedly does not. David doesn’t have the patience for this right now.

  He considers pushing right past him, but instead he stops. “What,” he says flatly.

  “You okay?” Lourdes asks. “I didn’t mean to hit you that hard.”

  His face is serious, but David feels like there’s a smirk just in the way he’s talking, something smug. That he’s pointing out that he knocked David down, pointing out that there was a rout that David was on the wrong end of, Lourdes so magnanimous with victory.

  David’s sore, and he’s pissed off, and he’s sick of him. He hasn’t talked to Lourdes since they were drafted, has never said more than a few sentences to him in his entire life, but he’s still sick of him, he’s so sick of Jake Lourdes and his shadow that he could scream.

  “Are you serious right now?” David asks. “You come by after a fucking rout to say sorry for hurting me?”

  Lourdes looks confused. “I’m not going to apologise for winning,” he says. “If that’s what you’re asking for.”

  David grits his teeth. “I’m not asking for anything from you,” he snaps.

  “Okay,” Lourdes says, puts his palms up, placating, and David wants to punch him in his stupid face. Even more because he seems to genuinely mean what he’s saying, in which case, he’s as stupid as he looks. David has no interest in his apologies.

  “Look,” Lourdes says. “I really am sorry, okay? I know the media’s been, like, obsessing about us and everything, but I really didn’t mean anything by it. I don’t even get why they’re doing it. You don’t play anything like me.”

  David’s torn between vehement agreement, because at least someone’s finally noticed that, and arguing, just because the idea of agreeing with Lourdes leaves a bad taste in his mouth, especially when his shoulder’s still throbbing with his heartbeat. “Fine,” he says, instead.

  Lourdes frowns. It’s almost a pout, pink bottom lip jutting out. David bets some girl told him he looked cute like that and he kept doing it, but it just makes him look even more confused. David wonders if that’s his natural mental state. He wouldn’t be surprised.

  He would never make assumptions about a player’s level of intelligence based on play style — Brouwer destroyed everyone at Scrabble once Farmer somehow convinced him to play — but David would be shocked if Lourdes had cracked a book since he graduated high school. Unless magazines count.

  “We cool?” Lourdes asks.

  “We’re fine,” David grits out, and Lourdes looks content with that. He goes to clap his hand against David’s aching shoulder before hesitating.

  “Um,” Lourdes says, pulling his hand back and stuffing it in his pocket. “Cool. See you in February?”

  “Looking forward to it,” David says, and he is, just for a chance to wipe the Panthers off the ice.

  When he gets back to the room he shares with Howard, he doesn’t have the energy for a bath, doesn’t have the energy for anything, just changes into pyjama bottoms and goes to lie down on the far bed, which Howard, thankfully, takes as a sign to leave the room.

  He doesn’t want to do anything but sleep, but once the lights are out and the room’s quiet, he’s wide awake, sore, and pissed off, everything in him still clenched tight. He finds his bag in the dark, swallows a couple of Advil dry, rotates his shoulder slowly enough to shake some of the stiffness but not enough to make anything worse. His jaw’s held tight, and once he notices he’s clenching it he struggles to relax it, which is a losing proposition.

  The worst thing, the worst part of the whole night, the bloodbath, the dirty hit, the dark mood that’s hovering over the entire team, the worst fucking thing is that, after all that, Lourdes still made David look like the asshole.

  After all that, David’s the one lying in the dark, thinking about it, while Lourdes is probably out celebrating with his team, getting fistbumps for his two points, picking up pretty girls not because he’s a hockey player, but because he’s got a stupid, dopey smile David bets works for him just as well as everything else does. The worst part is that David’s lying here, dwelling on it, and Lourdes has as good as admitted he doesn’t think of David at all.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  David doesn’t forget about Lourdes’ promise to see him in February, the opportunity to exact some sort of righting of the scales, but what he and Lourdes both did forget was that All-Star Weekend falls in January.

  David, second in the rookie points race, gets invited for the rookie game and would never even consider turning it down. Lourdes, still first in the race, inevitably gets invited as well.

  It’s in Pittsburgh, and the Penguins have two decent enough rookies this year that they let them captain the teams. They turn the tradition of picking their teammates into a joking competition that the local reporters and those not successful enough to cover the real All-Stars are making a cute little narrative out of, from what David can gather. The arm wrestle for first pick definitely works toward that, getting a titter from the journalists and most of the rookies. David feels uncomfortably like he’s getting picked in gym class, except he was always picked first, and this time he’s pretty sure he won’t be.

  He isn’t. Samuelsson, who beat Petersen in the arm-wrestling match, chooses Lourdes. That’s no surprise to anyone, least of all David, though Lourdes plasters on a mock-humble shocked expression that raises David’s hackles. He contents himself with being second, at least, hopefully beating Lourdes in the game, even if it’s a contest that fundamentally means nothing.

  Except when it’s Petersen’s turn, instead of going with David, he picks Markson. Markson, from David’s cursory research once the picks came out, is middle of the pack maybe, and not even from David’s draft year, having spent his post-draft season still in the minors. From the lengthy shoulder slapping hug that follows, David gathers Petersen went with friendship over strategy, and even if the game’s pointless, even if it means nothing, that’s still stupid.

  The only hope he has, then, is to get overlooked again, for Samuelsson to go for goaltending or defence next, but Samuelsson is picking smart, unfortunately. He says David’s name, giving Petersen a triumphant look as he does, and David goes up to the front, jaw tight, tighter when Lourdes slaps him on the back, hard, like he’s trying to prove his strength. It rattles through David, burns when he keeps his hand between David’s shoulder blades, like he has any right to touch him.

  “We got this easy, huh, Chapman?” Lourdes says, and very aware of the cameras on him, David doesn’t shrug his hand away, just says, “Sure,” and keeps his eyes forward.

  There’s a loose practice once the teams are established. Not even a practice, really, just everyone strapping on their skates and grabbing a stick, both teams on the ice. You’d never know there were two teams from the way everyone is mixed up, players sticking with people they were teammates with in the NHL or in Juniors, nothing holding the current teams together other than a stupid, theatrical arm-wrestling match’s result.

  David tries to do something productive with his time, even if no one else seems interested, more excited about socialising, talking about their weekend off and plans for partying rather than actually playing hockey. Lourdes is no exception, leaning against the boards at centre-ice and talking to Markson and Petersen, whom David would like to point out aren’t even on their team.

  When David skates past them, wondering if the opposing goalie cares so little that he’ll let David practice getting a few shots off on him, give him something to work from tomorrow — the fact he’s currently sitting sideways in his net gives David some hope — Lourdes gestures him over, and David reluctantly stops.

  “This is Gabe,” he says, gesturing at Markson, then, apparently not dissuaded by David’s best �
��and I care why?’ look, “He was my road roomie on the Knights. Petersen’s his little lady.”

  Petersen gives Lourdes the finger without taking his hand off his stick.

  “Okay,” David says slowly.

  “Gabe’s awesome,” Lourdes says, and slings an arm around Markson’s shoulder. “You better look out for him tomorrow. We’re going to go out tonight before we’re enemies, though, if you want to come.”

  Markson rolls his eyes, grinning at David like they’re sharing a joke. Or maybe more like the joke is on David.

  “Right,” David says. “No, because I actually want to play well tomorrow. Maybe it’s different for guys who are only rookies because they weren’t good enough to play the year they were drafted.”

  Markson’s smile drops, as does Petersen’s, and probably Lourdes’, not that David’s looking at him. David feels dimly guilty, because Markson’s never done anything to him. And besides, David and Lourdes are the only rookie players from the last draft. Markson’s far from the only player to spend post-draft time in Juniors. If the Islanders were a better team, David probably would have too.

  He doesn’t say anything, though, bites his tongue and skates to the end of the rink. He figures he’ll apologise to Markson tomorrow when he presumably doesn’t have Lourdes hanging heavily off of him, plastered to him like a second skin.

  After practice and a few more minor media things, everyone heads back to the hotel. There’s a catered dinner, but most of the players skip it, breaking off in groups to find restaurants with something a little less like the hotel food they eat all the time.

  David’s not inclined to bother going out. Heading back to his room after a mediocre meal, he passes Lourdes in the hall, talking to yet another opposing player. They’re saying something about enjoying the Pittsburgh nightlife, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Something alcohol-soaked, he supposes.