Dirty Swedish Player: A Big Stick Novel

by R. C. Stephens

  I call Daria, since she is keeping tabs on me and reports back to the managers. Coach cancelled practice this morning in honor of Oli’s upcoming nuptials.

  “Hello.” She sounds chipper.

  “Hey, it’s Nils.” I rub the scruff on my chin.

  “You being good?” she asks, sounding too cheerful for first thing in the morning.

  “I’ve been staying out of trouble. I got my eyes on a potential woman,” I answer.

  “Good. You aren’t the first professional athlete to fuck up, and you won’t be the last,” she says.

  “I wish there was some device to erase my memory or the memory of everyone who’s seen that awful video.” I sigh.

  “It’s bad, but not terrible. Puck bunny enthusiasm is way up, which isn’t a good thing. We don’t want you hooking up, but you’re being considered a superhero among men. The comments on Twitter are freaking hilarious,” she says. I wince. I may get around, but having everyone in the state of Illinois seeing my junk is downright invasive.

  “Just great,” I say dryly.

  “Aw, come on. All I’m saying is that it’s not going to be that hard to change the public’s perception of you as long as you’re committed to doing this right,” she says.

  “Actually, that’s the reason for my call. I want to volunteer my time to the AMHA. If I’m going to do good deeds, I might as well start by helping people. Right?” I say. It’s a win–win. Volunteering will clean up my image and I can even play it up that Sierra has made me into a better man.

  “Music to my ears,” she singsongs. “I’ll give them a call and try to set something up.”

  “Thanks, Daria.” I say.

  “No worries. Don’t forget your first anger-management session is this morning. And I’d like to hear more about the potential girlfriend candidate. Hopefully she isn’t a bunny.” She laughs.

  “I’m getting ready for the anger-management appointment now. And the woman I’m interested in is definitely not a bunny. She’s an architectural student I met last night at Oli’s rehearsal dinner. I gave her a ride home. It was all PG; you’d approve,” I say.

  “Good. You’re a catch. Honestly. What that video shows is that you are able to hit it home, even intoxicated. And . . . I can’t believe I’m going to say this.” It sounds like she is muttering to herself. “That big stick is going to work for you. Even the good girls like those.”

  I choke on the saliva that’s stuck in my throat. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “No, I kid you not. Go check out Hockey Hot Spot on Twitter and read the tweets. Hashtag ‘bigstick’ has gone viral. Nobody gives a shit about you being a fumbling ass. What they care about is that the legends are true,” she says.

  “So, you’re saying my dick is all over the internet?” I ask dumbfounded. It was one thing having an out of focus sex tape circulating.

  “People used the sex tape to zero in. I know that can be kind of embarrassing, but you should really be proud. You must have good genes,” she says.

  My genes fucking suck. I don’t want to be anything like my father.

  “You better head out for your anger-management session. You can’t be late. Keep me posted on your new friend. Maybe meet up for coffee with her or make some romantic gesture,” she suggests.

  I rub at the scruff on my jaw, not liking the news about my dick going viral. Some things should remain private. I have myself to blame. “I’ll think of something. You have yourself a good day.”

  “You too, big stick.” She giggles into the phone.

  For fuck’s sake. I end the call.

  I head out to my Jeep and blast music, but I’m just not feeling like myself. Sierra enters my mind. She looked so sexy in that pant-thing she was wearing last night. The way she pushes those thick-framed glasses of hers up her tiny button nose always gives me a hard-on. I need to adjust myself. I don’t understand my attraction to her. She isn’t my type, she’s too good and pure for me and yet I want her. I hate the way she watched me with such skepticism. Her hazel eyes glancing at me as if I was a bomb ready to detonate. I’ve given her good reason to fear my wishy-washy asshole personality before, but she needs to know that was in the past.

  I find a parking spot in front of the building of my new therapist’s office. I get out of the car and open the door to the building.

  I check in with the receptionist. The waiting area is pretty busy and I hate the idea of being recognized in a place like this even though I made a public statement about being sorry for my actions saying I would seek treatment. My therapist is a young guy named Fisher. He asks me a slew of personal questions about my childhood. Talking about my alcoholic father and abandonment isn’t as easy as I thought it would be and I find myself answering one word answers.

  “Tell me something that makes you angry,” he says, holding a pen in his hand and a notepad on his lap.

  “When idiots piss me off,” I answer.

  He chuckles. “What makes you feel passionate?”

  “Uh sex?” I say.

  “Other than sex,” he grins and begins to write a whole lot of shit on his notepad.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What makes you happy?” he asks.

  What is with these weird fucking questions?

  I smile. “When my team wins a game.”

  He smiles, too, and writes on his damn paper.

  “What are you writing there? Am I incurable?” I ask tilting my chin to his paper.

  He shakes his head. “You’re just fine. These are just get to know you questions.”

  He then goes on to tell me he is a little unconventional. He’d like to have phone conversations instead of regular in office sessions, and then he says, “I’m sure you’re a busy guy, but we need to understand what gets your anger going.”

  “Fair enough. Phone calls would be great.” I smile, knowing I need to play nice.

  “So, unless you have any questions for me, we will be meeting in a couple weeks.” He waits, staring at me with an easy smile.

  “No questions,” I say twiddling my thumbs in my lap.

  He stands and walks to the door with a slight bounce in his step. “It was great meeting you. I’ll be getting in touch soon.” He waits for me to leave. Wasn’t I supposed to have a full hour to figure out my life? I guess the movies have it wrong.

  I stand, taking the cue.

  “Bye, Fisher,” I say, and leave feeling very awkward. I walk to my SUV. Inside my car, I check my phone to see I have a few text messages from Daria. She’s arranged for me to head over to the AMHA after my appointment. I need to find a woman named Zelda.

  I enter the AMHA into my GPS. It’s close to ten a.m. Traffic is light and I make it there in no time. Scoring street parking is an added bonus.

  I enter the building and walk over to an information desk. The woman instructs me to head up to the third floor. I walk around, asking people where I can find a woman named Zelda. The young woman I ask smiles at me and points to the left, where I see an office door with the name Zelda Ealson on it. A middle-aged woman sits behind her desk. I give a little knock on the door to alert her I’m here.

  She stands and walks up to me with a professional smile. “Mr. Karlsson. So happy you could make it. Pleasure to meet you.”

  I shake her hand. “Pleasure is all mine.” I smile back.

  “Have a seat.” She points to the one chair opposite her desk. The office is small, and I have little leg space.

  “It’s pretty cramped in here, sorry.” She frowns. “We have two floors in the building, but it isn’t quite enough space. We’re only a local office,” she explains. “Daria mentioned you are interested in doing some volunteer work?”

  “Yes, I am,” I say, feeling very out of my element. “What can I do?” I’ve never been about giving back. I learned early in life that I needed to fend for myself to get by. I made my way into the NHL where I make a shit-ton of money, but I’ve never thought about helping others.

  “I hav
e a few ideas up my sleeve.” She smiles with a blush. The sex tape comes to mind. I curse inwardly, hoping she hasn’t seen it too, or the many dick pics that are apparently circulating social media.

  “Sure. I’m all ears,” I answer with a friendly smile.

  “Great. Firstly, we are going to be running a local fundraiser. We have a lot of departments here, one of them being our youth helpline. We have volunteers who come in to run the line, but we also have paid social workers who monitor the high-risk calls . . . threats of suicide, drug addiction, and overdose,” she explains.

  I cringe. As fucked up as I was as a kid, I never turned to those things or had those thoughts. Just the thought alone makes my blood turn cold. I was high-risk for trouble, but hockey kept me grounded. What about all the youth out there who have no one and don’t have something to fall back on?

  “What can I do? I want to help,” I say, and I mean every word. Something about the conversation sparks a ripple of emotion in me. Passion?

  Fisher had asked me what I was passionate about. I had nothing. After talking with Zelda for a few minutes, I’m feeling overwhelmed, excited, and sympathetic. Fucking passionate that no kid should have to feel bad or low.

  “Good. For starters, I’m hoping you can be the face of the campaign. A representative of sorts. I read a little into your background.” She winces. “Coming from a small town. Teaching yourself how to skate. Stealing your first pair of skates.” She blushes about the last part and looks apologetic.

  “It’s fine. I haven’t kept that part of my life a secret. I want to help you out here. This is important to me.” The words feel weird and stringy on my tongue, but they are truthful.

  “We can get a photographer in for some shots. We will also be running some televised commercials during mental health week. We have a few large sponsors—Spartan, KTV, LGM and Fido Foods. It would be great to have you speak on the commercials.”

  “I haven’t experienced mental health issues,” I say. At least, I don’t think I have. “Unless anger falls under that category.”

  I laugh. Zelda looks at me sympathetically.

  “You’ve struggled, but that isn’t the focus. The focus here is an open dialogue about mental illness,” she says.

  Something hits me. The fucking sex tape. She doesn’t know about it or else she wouldn’t want me to be her face. I bite my lip. How do I say this politely? My manners stink.

  “Ma’am, with all due respect, I don’t think I’m the right person. I’ve recently caused a shit storm . . . um . . . I mean, I’ve been viewed negatively in the media and—”

  “Nils—may I call you Nils?”

  “Yeah.” I sit back uncomfortably, rubbing my sweaty hands up and down my jeans.

  “I’ve seen it,” she says flatly. My cheeks burn. Fuck me. Is there someone in the city who hasn’t seen the fucking tape? “I don’t care about it. You’re here now. You clearly want to clean your rep. We’ve all made mistakes, you’re living with consequences, and trying to make yourself better,”

  “How much did Daria reveal?” I ask. My jaw is wound so tight I think it may snap.

  “She begged,” Zelda says, and her lips tug down. The corners of her eyes crease sympathetically. “It doesn’t matter. We need you like you need us. You can help us bring in the needed funds to make a real difference.”

  “I’m in.” I nod.

  “I appreciate that. I also thought it would be good if you could run some of the high-school-age programming we have. A lot of the kids in the city look up to you as a hockey player. Having you as a mental health advocate will get their attention. Your teammate, Oli, conducted a few lessons and it went very well. The feedback we got from the teachers was phenomenal.”

  “Sign me up.” I pat her desk for effect.

  “Great. I’ll need you to train for a few hours. One of the volunteers who has been with us for many years is in right now. I’d like to introduce you and maybe you can get started today?”

  “My schedule is clear for the next couple of hours.” I grin. Before I leave her office, I write the AMHA a healthy cheque, knowing it’s going to a good cause. Zelda is speechless for a few moments before she thanks me profusely.

  I follow her down a long narrow hall. She reaches a cubicle.

  “Sierra?” She begins. My heart picks up pace at the mention of her name. “I have Nils Karlsson from the Chicago Blackhawks here. He’ll be volunteering with the high-school-age groups and will need to be trained. Sierra will be training me. This is so perfect. I can’t see her since Zelda is blocking my view of her small cubicle. “He also just made a very generous contribution to the AMHA. Please let Stacey know to include his name in the weekly newsletter.” She says giving me her back.

  “Um . . . no, please. I . . . uh, don’t want to be mentioned. Can we keep that part quiet?” I ask.

  Zelda turns to me with her brows raised and a crease in her forehead. “Do you not want to be recognized for your charity work? I thought you were trying to clean up your image?”

  “Um . . . not that way. I, uh . . . did that because I thought it was important. Not because . . .” I’m at a loss of words.

  “Fair enough, Mr. Karlsson. It was a pleasure meeting you. Sierra will take it from here. I’ll be in touch about the ad campaigns.” Zelda gives me a firm handshake and leaves. I take a step into the cubicle to see Sierra.

  She stands abruptly from her desk and adjust her glasses. Her dark hair is in a messy bun on her head. She’s wearing a heather grey T-shirt and a pair of light blue jeans, and she looks completely adorable. I remember the first night I saw her at our parents’ house. She was cute then. I had to remind myself repeatedly that she was my stepsister. I wasn’t supposed to look at her that way.

  “Nils. I wasn’t expecting to see you here?” Her tone is accusatory, as if I’m here to destroy her life. Her brows are furrowed and she’s looking at me like she doesn’t know what my angle is.

  “I’m here because I want to volunteer,” I say. “Besides, shouldn’t you pretend to be excited to see me, fake girlfriend?”

  She rolls her eyes. “You’re incorrigible.”

  “I’m not. I’m reforming myself,” I say.

  She laughs.

  “What? I can’t take back the past, but I can change who I am going forward.”

  “If you say so.” She shrugs and pinches her lips together staring at me as if I’m feeding her a line. I don’t know why but what she thinks of me matters, and I don’t like that she thinks poorly of me—not that I can blame her.

  “Follow me. We train in the School Intake Center. It’s much roomier than my little cubicle,” she explains, and she turns back to her desk and picks up a folder. My eyes drop to her ass. Shit. I should not have looked. Her ass is perfect. It’s round and her hips are curved. Sexy AF.

  “Lead the way.” I extend my hand for her to go first. I don’t let my eyes drop to her ass again. She can’t be anything more than my fake girlfriend.

  For the rest of the afternoon, I listen as Sierra goes through the basics. When we get to the gritty details about bullying and teen suicide, my blood runs cold and I shiver. She pauses to watch me for a moment, and something softens in her gaze, she gulps as her cheeks flush, but then she blinks twice and it gets locked down just as quickly as her emotions rise.

  “Okay, let’s see how much you’ve learned. Stand up front and give me a mock lesson,” she says.

  “Do I look like I can be a teacher or role model?” My self-doubt is running pretty high right now. How did I volunteer for this?

  Her gaze sweeps over me from top to bottom causing nerves to build inside me. I want to know what she thinks of me. I want her to see me as something more than a jock who gets around. “Hey, I’m not the one who hired you. Zelda thinks you’d be good for the kids and she’s rarely wrong.” Her words do little to stifle my insecurities, but I can’t hold it against her after the way I treated her back in college.

  “I don’t know anything abo
ut kids or how to be a role model,” I admit. Fuck. She must really love hearing those words from my mouth. I’m waiting for her to just rub it in.

  “No, I guess you don’t, but I just taught you what to say. You basically need to follow a script like you would for a commercial,” she says, referencing a commercial I did a couple years back.

  “You saw it?” I ask, my tone laced with surprise.

  She laughs. “Don’t flatter yourself. Everyone saw it.”

  Fuck. This girl really hates me.

  I get up and walk to the front of the classroom, where there are whiteboards and blackboards. I say everything she taught me. I’m here to do better, but I know I need to change the way I think of myself before I can change the way others see me.

  Sierra watches me intently. She definitely isn’t the same girl who left Minnesota seven years ago with her head bowed. She’s more confident, and surer of herself. That makes me happy.

  Fisher’s words ring in my head. “What makes you happy?”

  Seeing Sierra doing well makes me happy.

  I finish my lesson, and then I ask, “How did I do?” I wait nervously because suddenly, her opinion fucking matters.

  “Honestly?” she asks. “You nailed it.” Her brows are creased. I feel just as surprised.

  “I nailed it?” I ask, needing the confirmation.

  “Yeah.” She nods narrowing her eyes on me like she’s processing some sort of complicated math equation. “Send me your schedule and I’ll pencil you in on the days we have high school kids coming through,” she says, and she leaves the office.

  “Sierra, wait!” I call after her and she turns to me. I don’t know what I wanted to say; I just don’t want her to leave. “Uh . . . sorry. Nothing. I’ll send you my schedule,” I mutter like an idiot.

  She nods.

  “Actually, wait.” I look at the watch on my wrist. It’s noon. “We have a lunch date,” I smirk. “You aren’t canceling on me.” She flinches and it takes me a second to catch on. “You said you had an early morning class today. I’m guessing that was bullshit.”