Coming in First Place (Between the Teeth Book 1)

by Taylor Fitzpatrick

  “It hasn’t been a very good season,” David says finally.

  Jake looks at him, doesn’t say anything, and David looks away, takes a sip of water.

  “You’ve been good,” Jake says finally.

  “Sometimes,” David allows. “How are you?” he asks, after another silence settles, and of course Jake has an answer to that, news about his sister Natalie getting into grad school and his cousin getting married, the Panthers’ hopes, the new rookie who’s started looking a little crazy around the eyes from the pranking, and how Jake’s waiting for him to pull the most epic prank of all time, either that or punch someone.

  David listens, looking up at Jake’s face when he pauses, at his hands while he talks, until they’re the only ones left and David knows it’s past closing. The girl behind the counter comes out, starts cleaning up, stacking chairs on tables.

  “Oh,” Jake says, looking around like he’s just realised they’re the only ones there. “We probably should head out.”

  David doesn’t know what the plan is, what Jake’s plan is, but he thinks maybe he does, or maybe just — maybe what he wants it to be.

  He doesn’t know how he gets up the nerve to say it, but he’s always been brave when he has to be, took the strides to Québec, to New York, and he did them himself, and needed no one to help him get there. This isn’t the same thing, but —

  “Should we go back to your place?” David asks. He can feel his face flushing as he does, his throat tight, but he gets the words out and he can’t take them back.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Jake says quietly.

  “Do you have a girlfriend or something?” David asks, doesn’t know why he doesn’t just drop it. His cheeks are hot. He feels nauseous. He should just go. Jake’s made it perfectly clear he doesn’t want David to come over, and Jake’s nice about things, David’s noticed that about him, that it’s not as fake as it seems, so that’s probably as nice an answer as he’s going to get. He should go.

  “No,” Jake says. “I just — maybe we should try being friends first.”

  “Isn’t that what friends do?” David asks blankly.

  Jake grins. “What, you think I do this with all my buddies?”

  David blinks at him, and the smile drops from Jake’s mouth.

  “Wait, you think that?” he asks.

  “Don’t you?” David asks.

  “That’s—” Jake starts, visibly stops himself. “No. I — no.”

  “Benson—” David starts.

  “Gross,” Jake says with feeling.

  “Everyone says you were really close at the U18s,” David argues.

  “I can be friends with someone without fucking around with them,” Jake says. “Jesus, David. Is that what you thought?”

  David chews his lip, shrugs after a moment.

  “What did you think Toronto was?” Jake asks.

  “I was convenient,” David says quietly.

  Jake barks out a laugh. “You are the least convenient person I’ve ever met,” he says.

  It feels like a compliment, even though David knows it isn’t one, and David bites down the reflex to say ‘thank you’, just says, “Oh.”

  “Can we just start over?” Jake asks, and then when David doesn’t say anything, at a loss, “Like. Okay.”

  He reaches his hand across the table. “Hi, I’m Jake.”

  “I know,” David says.

  Jake snorts. “What’s your name?” he asks pointedly.

  “You know my name,” David says. He’s maybe being difficult on purpose, but it makes Jake smile, so he isn’t going to admit it.

  “You are the most infuriating person in the world,” Jake says, but he’s grinning wide at David, so that feels like a compliment too.

  ‘Thank you’, David doesn’t say. “It’s nice to meet you,” he says instead, feeling stupid about it.

  “You too,” Jake says, and David wants to kiss his smile, but doesn’t.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  David takes it as a good sign when Jake starts sending a stream of texts to him again, borderline illiterate as they are. The first one is good talk :), which makes David roll his eyes but also makes him smile, as hard as he tries not to, and it continues from there.

  what do u like to do? Jake sends the next day. David scrutinises the text for a moment, trying to figure out if there’s something he’s missing. Finally he types out Hockey., even if it’s kind of an obvious answer, then shoves his phone into his pocket.

  It buzzes almost immediately, and David resolutely ignores it for about ten seconds before it buzzes once more and he pulls it back out.

  duh :P, the first text reads, followed by, my other fav sport is football

  I like tennis., David sends, because that seems like what Jake’s prompting him for, and it opens the floodgates, Jake sending him random texts about his favourite book or band, and so on and so on.

  The information Jake sends is alternately asinine or obvious, and sometimes both. David doesn’t know how the fact that Jake’s favourite colour is red is supposed to inform their friendship, and he already knows Jake’s favourite foods, sports teams, movie genres, picked that up without even realising while they were in Toronto.

  He obediently replies, even if it often takes some thought. Jake sends him a text saying no hockey aloud!! :P when David offers a hockey movie that came out when they were kids as his favourite.

  He can’t think of another, because he doesn’t really waste his time watching movies. He eventually just types out the title of the last decent movie he saw, because until he answers, Jake can’t send him another question.

  David doesn’t remember until after he’s sent the text where he saw it: he had to rewatch it in his hotel room last summer because he spent half of the movie with Jake’s tongue in his mouth.

  He blushes to the roots of his hair when he realises, but if Jake remembers not watching it with him, he doesn’t say anything, just bounces along to favourite TV shows, which David is similarly stumped on.

  Eventually Jake seems to run out of favourite things, but then he just moves onto facts: sisters’ names and ages and degrees, childhood pets, things that David has no match for. And firsts — broken bone, city away from home, European country, kiss.

  ‘Real’ kiss, Jake specified — when u thot girls had cooties it dosnt count :) — then supplies his answer first, as always, jessica henry i wuz 12 she wuz 13 ;), and maybe David overstated Jake’s experience a little in his head, but there’s a pretty massive difference between twelve and eighteen. David knows Jake wasn’t a virgin to guys or girls before he had sex with David, that was obvious from his reputation and the ease he seemed to have with everything, but he doesn’t want to know.

  Jake wasn’t David’s first kiss. David was a junior hockey player in Québec, there was no way his teammates would have let that stand. And he doesn’t think girls have cooties, he’s not five, but the first time he’d been kissed was at a house party, some girl who’d pretty much been shoved at him and drunkenly went with it.

  She’d tasted like rubbing alcohol and could barely keep her eyes open, and David had wanted to be sick, wanted to push her off. He didn’t do anything because his team was there, didn’t really kiss back but didn’t pull away, not until her hand had landed on his fly in the middle of a crowded fucking room and he’d caught her by the wrist and shoved her off, too roughly, maybe, because he was the opposite of hard, and the last thing he needed was for her to tell everyone that.

  If that was his first real kiss —

  It wasn’t. Even the humiliation of kissing Jake and expecting to get punched was better than that.

  He can’t tell the truth. Can’t lie, because he’s a terrible liar. And he can’t just send nothing, because he always responds, and then Jake thinks up a new question and sends him another text. That’s how this works. Even so, he puts it off, tucking his phone away. It’s not until he gets back to his hotel room after a tight win that he checks his p
hone again, finds three texts, one from that afternoon saying, u there?, one from during the game saying, nice assist!, and one soon after saying, u dont have to answer.

  It’s humiliating, Jake letting him off because he knows the answer’s embarrassing. Of course it’s embarrassing. It’s David, so it must be embarrassing.

  He doesn’t know if he’s angry or not, doesn’t quite understand how he feels, everything tangled up in him, but there’s a stab of vindication running through him when he types out It was you., since that’s actually the truth, because Jake said first ‘real’ kiss.

  He sends it. It disappears almost immediately, but the humiliation lingers, and David turns his phone off so he doesn’t have to look at what Jake says, doesn’t have to see if Jake doesn’t say anything.

  He turns his phone on the next morning, because not knowing may be worse than whatever Jake says, though David isn’t sure of that. His phone is silent as it starts up, and his stomach’s sunk into the floor before a message pops up a minute later, like Jake put off the answering as long as David did.

  ur the only guy whos ever fucked me, it reads. idk if its the same.

  It blindsides him. Maybe Jake wasn’t fucking every guy he calls ‘buddy’, but he was far from inexperienced, it was obvious, and David just assumed at the time, and after. Thinking about the way it was that night at the NHL Awards, his first time but apparently Jake’s too, David’s mouth acrid with defeat, taking it out on Jake — he’s ashamed for the first time in awhile. Ashamed enough that he sends, Sorry I was a dick about it. within the minute, not even caring if that makes it look like he was checking his texts constantly.

  i like u ne way :), Jake sends back ten seconds later, and David smiles all the way to practice, only managing to school his face when Kurmazov starts giving him strange looks.

  *

  David’s getting ready for practice when his phone rings, and he looks at it askance. His parents should both be at work, and neither call him anyway. His teammates text, and Dave’s assistant always emails to arrange a convenient time for Dave to call him. He can’t think of anyone it would be.

  He isn’t any less confused when he sees Jake’s name, because Jake’s never called him before.

  “Hello?” he answers, cautious, because it could be a teammate of Jake’s prank-calling if Jake was dumb enough to use David’s full name as his contact information.

  “Hey,” he hears.

  It’s Jake, and David relaxes a little, but not much, trying to think back through the last series of texts, wondering if he said something he shouldn’t have. Their most recent texts were about the upcoming basketball playoffs, so David doesn’t think so, unless Jake’s passionate about the Pistons. He’s really intense about the Detroit Lions, considering how terrible they are, so David can’t discount that as a possibility.

  “Okay, so I can’t do this by text,” Jake says, “and like, phone kind of sucks too, but you’re like, a thousand miles away, so.”

  “So?” David asks.

  “You know how we’re playing each other in a couple weeks?” Jake asks.

  David thinks that might be a rhetorical question, but he answers, “Yes,” just in case he’s wrong.

  “So that’s one of the Panthers’ last games,” Jake says. David bites back telling him he knows that. It seems like it’s revealing too much, though it’s not exactly hard to look at a team schedule.

  “Okay,” he says instead.

  “Can I take you out?” Jake asks.

  “You want to get drinks or something?” David asks.

  “I — well, yeah, but.” Jake says, exhales hard. “I’m screwing this up. Okay, what are you doing the day after we play?”

  “I don’t know,” David says. “Practice, probably.”

  “Then could I take you out after that?” Jake asks. “For dinner, or drinks, or whatever?”

  “Don’t you have to go back to Florida?” David asks. The Islanders game is the last game of the Panthers’ road trip, and he realises immediately, embarrassed, that he just revealed he knows that. “You’re the captain.”

  “I will,” Jake says. “But there’s three days between that and the next game, and just. Dude.”

  “Dude,” David repeats, dry.

  “You’re the worst,” Jake says, and David might take offence if Jake didn’t say it like it was a compliment. “Do you want to go on a date?”

  “A date,” David repeats slowly.

  “Yeah,” Jake says. “A date. You know what those are, right?”

  “Fuck off,” David says reflexively, then winces, but Jake doesn’t seem to take it personally, laughs, low and warm, into the receiver.

  “A date,” Jake repeats. “I want to date you. Is that cool?”

  “I—” David says. “Yes. That’s cool.”

  “Cool,” Jake says.

  “I was just getting ready for practice,” David says awkwardly, when the silence stretches.

  “Oh, am I interrupting the David Chapman routine?” Jake asks. “I can go.”

  “No,” David says. “I mean, you are, kind of, but. That’s fine. I can keep talking.”

  “Cool,” Jake says, and maybe David’s imagining it, but he thinks he can hear Jake smiling.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Spring settles in New York. As the snow melts and jackets are retired to the backs of closets, David grows tense with the reminder that the season’s almost over, that, once again, the Islanders won’t make the postseason, will be on the outside looking in.

  He gets an email from Dave, a typically curt one that just serves to arrange a time when David will be free to talk tomorrow. David replies with a time an hour before practice — enough time to discuss anything important, a small enough window that David can beg off with prior obligations if Dave gets off-topic, as he does sometimes, asking about David’s life like a few years of being his agent gives him the right to pry.

  Dave calls, punctual to the minute, and gets through some compliments about David’s play, notes for improvement that David can’t find fault with, before he gets down to business.

  “I don’t know what your plans for the summer are,” Dave says, “but the camp in Toronto’s meeting again. Hell of a wait list already, but they give preference to repeat visitors. You want me to book you a spot?”

  David already knew that it was returning; Jake had sent a text the night before with u doin toronto in july? im gonna :), and David figured that must have been what he meant, replied with I don’t know., because it was true.

  When it comes down to it, the camp wasn’t the best for him, too abstracted to properly cater to everyone’s distinct needs, and David’s finally found a trainer outside the team whose style he likes. He’s based in New York, will be around all summer, and he knows what David specifically needs.

  The best thing for David’s growth, for his career, would be to stick around, especially since Kurmazov is spending the majority of the summer in the city, has three young kids he doesn’t want to uproot. He says it’s bad for them socially, whatever that means. He offered to spend some time working with David, and David wants that, but then, Toronto isn’t until July, and David has yet another empty postseason, the months ahead stretching out to the point of snapping before September.

  Even so, he should be staying in New York.

  “Sign me up,” he says, and doesn’t think about the reasons why.

  *

  The season winds down with a whimper. There isn’t anything left to vie for, and the games are fundamentally meaningless. Management starts sending emails about a family night for the final game of the season. At first it’s wives and girlfriends and children, the usual crowd, but then parents and siblings start getting pulled in. It grows to the point where Eisler’s sister and her husband are coming in from Germany and Kurmazov’s parents are coming in from Moscow, plan on staying for a month to help him and his wife with their daughters.

  Kurmazov asks him if he has anyone coming, and looks sternl
y at him when he shrugs.

  “You have to ask,” he says pointedly, like he knows David hasn’t said a word, and David feels cowed enough by his expression that he calls his mother when he gets back from practice.

  She picks up on the second ring, which is a promising enough sign, and David manages to stumble his way through explaining the event.

  “I can’t ask for time off with this little notice, David,” she says.

  “It’s in ten days, and it’s just for one night,” David argues. “How is that not much notice?”

  She sighs, drawn out.

  “Kurmazov’s parents are coming from Moscow,” David says, well aware his voice is bordering on a whine, embarrassed but unable to contain it. “Benson’s whole family is coming, like ten of them, from California.” Once again he’s the kid at Lake Placid tagging along with a teammate’s family, who look at him with pity when they think he isn’t looking.

  “Well, you’ll be coming to Ottawa for the summer,” she says. “I’ll see you soon.”

  “I’m staying in New York,” David says. “Spending a month in Toronto. I don’t have time.”

  She’s quiet for a minute. “I imagine you’ll come for a visit when you’re in Toronto, at least,” she says, finally.

  “I don’t know,” David says, “it’s pretty far,” and feels a moment of sharp vindictiveness when it quiets her again.

  “I can’t make the effort if you don’t,” she says.

  “Then don’t,” David says. Thinks of hanging up, but says “Bye,” first, because he doesn’t want to give her an excuse to call him childish again.

  When Kurmazov gives him an expectant eyebrow the next day, all David can do is snap, “I asked,” and trust Kurmazov to drop it. Thankfully, he does, and doesn’t say any more about it, not about his own family coming in or anything, at least in David’s hearing. It should be mortifying, to be so obviously pitied, but David isn’t anything but grateful.

  *

  Three days before they play the Panthers, David gets another call. He reaches blindly for his phone, wondering if it’s his mother offering to come, wondering if he even wants that. It’s Jake again, though, and David picks up, one set of questions replaced with another — if asking someone out requires a phone call, breaking the date surely does as well.