by RJ Scott
“I don’t need to see anywhere else. I like this place. Can you start the paperwork? When can I move in?”
“As you can see, it’s empty, so it’s available as soon as your check clears.”
I hobbled to face him. “I’ll transfer the cash. I want to move in today.”
“Today?”
“Yep. I want to stay and not leave, right now.”
“References—”
“Phone Boston. I’ll give you a direct number, and they’ll send you something now.”
Just like that, I was renting a prime piece of real estate, thirty minutes from my parents, closer to the edge of town, and it was peaceful and huge. I called Robbie, asked him to bring my stuff over from Mom’s, and told him that no, I wasn’t worried that Mom might catch him and he should stop being such a kid.
By day three in my new place, I was totally chill, watching crap on Netflix, catching up on shows I thought I might like, and on day four, my agent phoned.
“I can’t see you getting a contract with Boston. It’s not your time right now, but I do have an offer from—”
“I’m retiring, Eli.”
He sighed. “I thought you’d say that, and I might have some gigs as a commentator for you.”
“Maybe. I don’t know what I’m doing, or who I even am now. I’ll call you when I know for sure. Is that okay?”
“Of course.”
“And, Eli?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for fourteen years. I owe you so much.”
“Awww, kid, I’m gonna miss your face.”
By day six, I’d caught up on Game of Thrones and a show about tidying houses. I didn’t really have anything to tidy in this house. I’d asked Lemmy to arrange someone to pack up and send on everything they could from the loft, and my former teammate assured me it would all arrive on the weekend. I spent a long time staring at my beard in the hallway mirror. It certainly meant that not many people would recognize me. Add a ball cap and I could be incognito. But the beard was a jungle, and I should do something about it.
“Another day.”
By day seven, I was losing my shit, the walls closing in on me, so I called a cab with no idea of a destination until we drove past the Owatonna U. Campus.
And I knew exactly what I needed.
Ice.
Security let me through after I gave some autographs and listened to him talk about how sad it was I’d ended up in Boston and how he wished I’d played for Minnesota. I agreed with him, just for an easy life, even though the Boston team was my blood. Finally, I was able to crutch through the entrance to the ice and found a quiet space behind a screen. I inhaled the scent of the place and closed my eyes. The noise of a conversation as two men approached my small hiding space filled the silence.
“I have no idea. He poured water from a bottle right on the ice and then told me to leave it.”
“That’s the kid in goal, Ben-Lar or something French and fancy sounding.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t touch it, but if someone goes all health and safety on me and warns me that…”
They passed me by unseen, and I let out a small breath. I kind of liked my quiet space and shifted a little to take the pressure off my right leg. I stayed there until a group of small kids swarmed onto the ice, and then I moved to sit in one of the seats and watched all the tiny future NHL’ers learn how to skate.
The scrape of blades on ice, shrieks, the noise of sticks and laughing?
This was home.
Three
Benoit
Kids on ice. They always amused me and swarmed around me like little gnats, making all kinds of noise and asking a ton of questions. I did my best to hang out with them and pass along what knowledge I could. I liked kids, a lot. Which was why I was getting a degree in early childhood education. If and when hockey wasn’t priority number one, I wanted to teach.
Sometimes, all it took was one encouraging word to get a child on the right track, to inspire, to guide. When I was seven, I’d had the privilege of meeting one of my idols at a signing at a local convention center after he’d retired. He’d not only signed my stick, but he’d told me he was proud of me and my dedication to the sport. That fat stick signed by Mr. Fuhr still hung on my bedroom wall back home. One person can make a huge difference in a kid’s life. Someday, I hoped I could be the one to inspire.
After about thirty minutes, I had to hand things over to the peewee coach. With a wave, I skated to the Eagles bench, took my skates off, slid my sneakers back on, and jogged down the chute, past the locker and PT room, and headed to the main doors. Tomorrow was the first day, and I had a meeting with my advisor about some classes that I hadn’t registered for but had been placed into anyway. We also had to talk about me being part of the pre-student teacher program. As I rounded the corner by the Eagles gear shop, I found some guy trying to open the door as he wobbled around on crutches. His language was colorful to say the least, especially when he lost his left crutch.
“Hey, sir! Sir, let me help you out here,” I shouted, running up to him to place my hand on his arm. “Someday they’ll have some handicap accessible doors installed here.”
I smiled at him as he turned to check whoever was grabbing his arm. Our gazes touched, and I felt this spark ignite in my lower belly. He was incredibly hot, with blue eyes the same color as the lake back home. Beautiful azure eyes under well-formed eyebrows, one with a thin scar, thick dark lashes, and lips that seemed to curl up at the edges with ease. Older than me; that was obvious by the small lines around his eyes, laugh lines. Must be he smiled a lot. That was good. I liked men who smiled frequently. I even dug his beard, to a point. If it had been trimmed down close instead of wild and wooly, he’d have been all kinds of sinful. His eyes held my attention. They were familiar for some reason…
“‘Sir,’ huh?” he asked, his voice deep and dark, like the inside of a whiskey barrel. “That doesn’t make me feel old or feeble or anything.”
I bent down to grab his crutch, my eyes skating over him. Tall, lean, hard, thick thighs and meaty calves, or I guess I should say thigh and calf. One leg was all casted up, the plaster covered with signatures and lewd drawings that someone—him, probably—had tried to scribble out. Snickering at his attempt to make a dick look like a moose, I stood and handed him his crutch. He was no taller than me and not any stockier, but his shoulders and arms were more muscled.
“I’d say the crutch is what made you look feeble,” I said as he tucked his support under his armpit. That got me a wry glance, which really worked well on him. The man was fine, no doubt. “I’m kidding, really. They’re trying to find the funding to make the rink more accessible, but money for hockey barns isn’t as easy to raise as it is for the football stadium.”
“In Minnesota? The only people who love hockey more than Minnesotans are Canadians.”
“Well, tell that to the fundraising committee,” I replied, hoisting my skates back to my shoulder. “You good to go now, sir?”
I yanked the door open, and hot, humid air blew into my face. Ugh. I was not a fan. And my new bedroom had no air-conditioning.
“I’d be much better if you’d stop calling me ‘sir.’” He hobbled through the door, giving me a fast up-and-down as I held it open for him. Okay, so he was either into guys, which made that spark in my belly begin to glow like an ember someone was fanning, or he was sizing me up to take a swing. “No one calls me that. Everyone calls me Ethan, or if you’re an ex of mine, asshole, but never ‘sir.’ That’s my dad.”
I chuckled as he maneuvered out into the late summer evening. “Okay, Ethan, do you need help to your car?”
He paused just outside the rink, a breeze tugging at his short brown hair, and gave me a look that dripped with sarcasm.
“Thanks, kid, but I’ll be fine.” I nodded. Someone ran past and shouted to someone else. We stood there staring at each other. “You know what I could use some help with?” I shook my head, my attention on that scar on his
eyebrow and how the dark hairs of his expressive eyebrows didn’t seem to grow on that short white strip. “The door to that coffee shop over there.”
He tossed that sexy chin toward The Aviary. “Oh, yeah, okay. I can get you seated in there no problem, Ethan.”
The smile he flashed me was glittering white. A dimple popped out. I felt myself flush, the warmth under my skin pleasant and tingly. This Ethan was just the kind of man who always grabbed my eye. Mature, sassy, strong, and sure of himself. My blood hummed.
“Thank you…” He let it dangle.
“Benoit,” I answered, extending my hand.
“Ah, so one of those Canadians we were just talking about?”
“Yes, sir, sorry.” The heat in my cheeks deepened.
“Yep, should have known by your incredibly attractive politeness.”
He rocked around on his crutches and slid his palm over mine. His hand was warm, his grip sure, his fingers long and scarred, rough from working hard.
Bet they’d feel incredible running up the inside of your thighs.
Oh, hell yeah, they would.
Fuck. No. No. No.
“Right, uhm, so inside we go.” I ran from Ethan to The Aviary, yanking on the door so hard it was a miracle it didn’t rip off the hinges.
Ethan made his way over, giving me the oddest glance as he turned sideways and thumped into my hangout. Thankfully, the place was pretty empty. The staff was just rolling things out in preparation for classes starting tomorrow. The heady smell of brewing coffee reached me, making me yearn for a cup. I’d become horribly addicted over my years here on campus, and according to Jacob and Hayne, come the end of senior year, it would be the only thing keeping me functioning.
Ethan stood just inside the door, assessing me rather openly. “Why don’t you join me for a cup? My treat to thank you for your kindness to a wobbly old man.”
The thump-thump-thump of my pulse in my ears was a warning that this man right here was not at all on the agenda. Studying and hockey. That was it. No flirting with sexy older men, no staring into pretty blue eyes, or admiring the way his biceps flexed and bunched as he hitched along on his crutches. No. No. No.
“I have to go do… this thing.” I waved a hand in the general direction of Saturn, ducked my head, and bolted like a greyhound. No shit, I ran all the way home, my skates bruising my back.
“Dude, it’s like a hundred and forty out there. Why are you running?” Ryker asked when I exploded through the front door. He was in shorts and sucking on a juice box.
“Just had to get some distance between myself and temptation,” I muttered, hiking up the stairs to my room.
Ryker followed, chattering away about chicken fingers. The man could wax poetic about chicken for days. I was not in the mood to hear his dissertation on which chicken tender meal had the best sides.
“… Jacob that it really comes down to the spices used in the batter.”
I nodded and shut my bedroom door in his face.
“Dude!” he gasped on the other side. I opened the door a crack.
“Sorry for being rude.” Damn my courteous Canadian heart. “I just, uh, need some time to meditate.”
“Oh, cool, yeah, sorry. Goalie mind stuff. Got it.” He flashed me a smile that made hearts all over campus flutter. “Your mail.” He handed me several envelopes after tapping his brow with them. A soft pink envelope drew my attention. Probably some sort of ad from that store in town where I’d bought hair care products. I tossed them all aside to deal with later.
“Thanks.” I smiled back and eased the door shut slowly. Once I heard Ryker going down the creaky steps, I kicked off my sneakers, placed my tiny squirt bottle on top of the little dorm fridge in the corner, stripped to my briefs, turned on the fan, and threw myself onto the bed. The sun was far from setting yet, and I was too agitated to nap. I could have meditated or done some yoga to loosen up the tension in my shoulders, but that would have been too sensible.
Instead, I pulled up a streaming app and began watching Mad Men because Jon Hamm in those 60s-style suits made me straight up bug nuts. I binged a whole season, the only thing pulling me from my Don Draper adoration was when the people in the attic—Hayne and Scott—decided to start sexing it up while some classical music blared. I rolled my eyes to Drake hanging over my bed.
“Some people have some terrible taste in mood music,” I muttered just as Hayne cried out that he needed something deeper. I didn’t lie there listening to the rest. Within seconds, I had my earbuds in and was deeply involved in some wild fantasy that involved me and Don Draper. Things started out okay, but somewhere along the way, as I worked my dick with more and more speed, Don morphed into Ethan with the blue eyes. Ethan was smoking a cigarette as I blew him, his hand resting on my face, his sapphire eyes hooded.
Joan Holloway was there, in a red dress that did all manner of wonderful things to her sultry figure, taking notes while I tried to cram Ethan’s dick down my throat.
“Don’t forget your ten-o’clock meeting with Coffee Bright Coffee Filters, Ethan,” Joan said, her legs crossed and her high heels as red as her lips. “Oh, and why don’t you fuck him now? I think that would be what the customer would like to see in the ad copy.”
“Yeah, fuck me, Ethan,” I panted around the cock in my mouth, wondering if someone were sketching out a commercial with this blow job featured in the drawing. If so, I bet they’d sell a lot of coffee filters.
“I’ll fuck him when he learns what’s important in life,” fantasy-Ethan said, all growly and two-pack-a-day smoker voiced. He patted my cheek and took a swig of the whiskey that had miraculously appeared in his hand.
My balls drew up. I hurried to grab the base of my dick, but there was no stopping the orgasm. I thrashed around in my bed, gasping and sweaty, one earbud lying on my shoulder so that the whimpering mewls of Hayne being driven over his own precipice slid into my ear. I shuddered and rolled to my side, briefs soaked with spunk, back slick with sweat, Joan of the red dress and amazing figure shaking a well-manicured finger at me inside my head.
“You really need to focus, Father Morin,” Joan chastised before she and Ethan dissipated into nothingness.
“Okay, no more thirty-something guys in suits and fedoras,” I panted as I pulled the pillow over my head to drown out Scott hurtling toward a blown nut. It was going to be a long, long, long year.
Canceling my subscription to that streaming service helped me rediscover my monk status. How weird was I that I stroked off to some show about ad men instead of over online porn like everyone else in the world? People say we goalies are odd, and sometimes I balk at that. There’s nothing odd about wanting pristine ice under your skates. There may be something odd about tugging one off while you fantasized about some guy you met once wearing a hat and sipping whiskey while you sucked him off. It had been two weeks, and Ethan and his blue eyes were still trying to seduce me in the night. But my iron will was now totally in control.
“Sex drives are for wimps,” I whispered as I hunkered down into my butterfly stance, our first official team scrimmage about to begin. September had stolen in uneventfully, the stickiness of August easing day by day. Our first game wasn’t until the end of October, against the Buffalo State Badgers, but we were still on the ice daily, as we were now in-season. Training, working, on-ice time with the team and alone with our goalie coach, this all added to a full schedule of classes. Now, I also had two days a week in a local elementary school as a pre-student teacher—or a practicum—under the guidance of a mentor teacher. I’d done my first day just yesterday, and as nervous as I’d been, the second graders had been amazingly welcoming.
The first puck fired at me went wide, and all thoughts of instructional methods, TV dramas, and beautiful blue eyes faded from my mind. I locked down on hockey, on the hiss of a puck flying at me, the slice of my skates as I shifted to throw up a blocker, the thud of a frozen chunk of rubber hitting my chest at over eighty miles per hour. The pucks kept coming, and I
found that place that goalies go to in their minds. It’s a tight place; nothing is admitted into it unless it’s the soft sound of water, spring water that dribbles into the lake, feeding it as the ice crusts over the surface, thickening, holding me up as I breathe in air so cold it scorches my lungs. That is the place where I go, hockey at its core, pond hockey back home on that tiny circle of thick ice.
Ryker tried, and he failed. I threw him a look as he skated around my net.
“Head standing right there!”
I nodded at his compliment and then locked my sights on the next man coming at me. The puck on his stick, the rush of his breath, the slight way he moved his shoulder to try to pull me into going left, all of that fed into my brain in a millisecond. Then he pressed down on his right foot, and I knew he was going to take the shot early. The puck was launched from the blue line, his stick bending nearly to breaking. I threw up my catcher, snapped the puck from the air, and rolled my hand down and over, showing the team the puck resting there snug as a bug.
“I am a brick wall!” I shouted at the Eagles, and they all hooted and whooped.
Yeah, this was my year. Nothing was going to distract me. Absolutely nothing.
After the last man had taken his shot, we broke up for some light work with our respective coaches. Sam Gagnon and I did some paddle work with Coach Upton, nothing too heavy, just the basics to ease us back into the proper mindset. Our goalie coach was top-notch and never lost his temper or yelled. He was beyond patient, especially with the freshmen who were trying out for the team. Sam and I were both seniors and would be gone in May. There had been a lean couple of years for goalies, but this year we had five who were trying out.
They didn’t worry me too much. I was the starter and would remain so throughout the season. My eyes were firmly locked on the prize: the Owatonna Eagles traveling to Detroit and winning the Frozen Four championship in April. Then graduation, followed by summer hockey camp and the Edmonton training camp. I had to make sure I got this team to Detroit and the championship.