Clusterpuck (Vegas Crush #9)

32. Anaheim

32 /

anaheim

Tripp

It’s the second period in what feels like the longest game of my career.

We’re playing in Anaheim, against my former teammates, and I’ve damn near been in a fight already. There’s a new coach who seems to value unchecked aggression over clean, crisp play. The Crush are a bit thrown off kilter by the barrage of attacks. Our passing has been off, and our forwards can’t get shots off before getting railroaded into the glass. Tempers are flaring big time.

We’ve been subbing in and out, trying to figure out the right combination to take on this new approach. I haven’t found my rhythm, that’s for sure. A big bunch of nothing happening for me in this game and, for the first time, I am feeling my mid-thirties out there.

The score is zero-zero with two minutes left in the period. Viktor and Tyler are both spoiling for a fight on the back line after several sharp shots on goal, one that came with a late hit on Cal that sent an Anaheim player to the penalty box.

I head out to give Evan a break and he just shakes his head at me as he fist-bumps me, glove-to-glove. Play is fast and furious, and Viktor sees me open at the mid line from his trapped position nearly behind the goal. Somehow, he manages the long pass, straight to me. It hits my stick with a satisfying knock, but as soon as I make the turn, I get checked hard into the glass.

Pieter Romansky, a former teammate, sneers at me as I pull off my helmet and gloves. All I see is red as I pummel him, landing punch after punch as the crowd roars. Someone pulls me away and it takes a minute before words and other people come back into focus. The ref points to the sin bin and I spit at Pieter before skating off.

Anaheim is on a power play and a skirmish near the goal results in a sloppy mess that finds the goal slipping past Cal, the buzzer loud and the crowd louder as Anaheim puts a point on the board just as the period ends.

I head to the bench, still raging, and Evan points for me to sit down.

“What the hell is going on out there?” Coach Brown asks. “You guys are better than this. Why stoop to their level? Show some fucking composure out there, will ya?”

Evan looks at me. “Blackburn, what kind of grudge match is going on out there?”

“Romansky started it,” I grumble.

“Well, you sure as fuck finished it by nearly taking the guy’s head off,” Coach snaps. “Let it go or sit on the bench. Your choice.”

As the third period begins, I’m on the bench and the starters are out on the ice. They seem to channel some kind of something from the hockey gods because they are lightning-quick and managing to stay out of the way of the Anaheim attackers, passing quickly, Mikhail scoring in the first minutes to get us to a tie.

Evan comes off the ice and the French-Canadian Giroux goes out there in his spot.

“He’s pretty solid up there,” Evan says to no one.

“There’s no fucking way they’re gonna make that stuffy bastard a starter after you retire,” I answer.

“Well, maybe you’ll be a starter next year.”

“Fuck no. That’s fucking stupid. I’m retiring at the end of season. For real this time.”

Evan lifts a shoulder, dubious.

“One and done,” I assert.

“Whatever man. I think you still have a lot to give to the game.”

“So do you, man. You can’t say you’re totally ready to go.”

“No, I’m ready,” he says. “I hate leaving my family all the time. I can do some good in the Foundation and be home to see my kids grow up.”

I hadn’t been thinking about Lila and the baby until just this moment. Evan’s feelings about not wanting to leave his family to be on the road all the time made me think of Lila alone with our child, me being some stubborn-ass deadbeat dad while she struggles to figure out parenthood alongside of what will most likely a challenging graduate program. This situation of ours needs a fuck more thought, that’s for sure.

Ten minutes into the period, some quick thinking and quicker passing gets Boris an opportunity to shoot. And he doesn’t dick around, blasting a shot that nearly takes the goalie’s teeth out. It slips in and we’re in with our second goal.

“There we go,” Evan says. “Now get in there and do something good.”

I head back out, ready to rally but still feeling foul. It takes every bit of control I have not to take the bait as my former teammates continue to push my buttons. We have five minutes left in the game and an icing call on Anaheim results in a dropped puck that I take full advantage of, shooting a slick shot that slides behind the goalie and into the net. That makes nine goals on the season for me. My best record at this point in a season. I guess that’s what playing on a championship team will get you. Should’ve got here sooner.

We finish the game minutes later, delivering a loss to the home team, the guys jubilant as we head back to the guest locker room. I get a lot of slaps on the back, a lot of “way to go” comments. But I can’t shake off the shadows that darken my thoughts. It’s not just the physicality of the game tonight, not the fight. I’ve been in plenty of fights in my career. No, I think it’s the thought of Lila that I can’t shake.

Honestly, I don’t know what to do. I’m married to her. We actually got married. But she doesn’t want me. She’s being forced to have a baby. She got her teenage sexual fantasy itched and now she can walk away. Or at least she could have, if only I’d not gotten her pregnant and ruined her life.

The mood as the guys change and shower is light, buoyant, but I’m a dark cloud on the bench, dreading the hours ahead where I’ll continue to mentally flog myself for being such a colossal idiot. An idiot to accept her advances. An idiot to continue to allow myself to have what was never meant to be mine. An idiot to care about a woman who, under no circumstances, should ever care for a man like me.

After showering and getting dressed, I pull the gold band from my locker, slipping it on my finger. It’s a joke, really. This is no real marriage. It’s a sham. It’s my fault. I thought I was doing the right thing for her, for the baby. She stood to lose a legacy if she’d made another choice. But what does she lose now, if we continue this way? It’s like purgatory. I’m still attracted to her. I still want her. But that doesn’t make a marriage work.

A bus waits for us outside, ready to take us to the hotel for the night. It’s a short ride, the guys loud and ready to party. They ask if I want to go out, but I say no. Not tonight. Instead, I trudge up to my room, tossing my bag on the floor just as the hotel phone rings.

“Yo,” I answer.

“Mister Blackburn, this is the concierge. I just wanted to let you know that you have a visitor waiting for you at the lobby bar.”

“Do you know who?”

“I’m sorry, I did not get a name.”

“Okay. Um, thanks?”

“You’re welcome, sir.”

I hang up, unsure who the hell would be waiting for me in the bar. I suppose it could be my brother, who works in hedge funds in San Francisco.

I head back downstairs, craning my neck to scan the lobby bar until I find a familiar person.

Lila.

She looks so beautiful it makes my mouth dry and my heart ache, her long, brown hair loose and wavy down her back. She’s wearing yet another black dress that hugs her body like a second skin.

She sees me, and I can’t read the look on her face. A little bit hopeful, I guess? I have to mask my surprise at seeing her.

“Hey. You here with the GMs?”

She shakes her head. “Uh, no. I, uh…Well.” She shuts her mouth, her cheeks flushing a lovely rosy red.

I feel my mouth twitch into something like a grin. “That was not a sentence.”

She sighs. “I know. I’m just nervous. Sorry.”

“What would you have to be nervous about?” I can’t imagine what it could be.

“Do you want to grab some dinner?”

“Yeah, sure.”

She nods and picks up her bag, telling the bartender she’s ready for a table. As we sit, she says, “I watched the game at the bar. Nice goal.”

I lift a shoulder. “It was okay, I guess. That game was garbage.”

“It looked intense. Like, I thought you were going to get ejected. Why’d you fight that guy?”

“I’d just had enough.”

“Enough of what? The game gets physical like that sometimes. And aren’t all those guys your former teammates? Your friends?”

My teeth grind together. “They were. They called me a money-grabber. None of them liked that I retired and then took this contract.”

“The contract you took just so you could try to get your name on the Cup.”

“Right. And for the money.”

“So, they thought, what?”

“That I was greedy. That I wanted to go make a grab for the Cup by riding on other players’ coattails.”

“Mmm,” Lila hums. “And what do you think of that perspective?”

“I think…” I sit back in my chair, thinking. “I think I’ve worked my ass off in this league since I was eighteen years old. Half my life. And I think they can fuck off. I had an opportunity, and I took it.”

“And the money? Did you really need it?”

“No,” I answer truthfully. “But also, who knows? I have literally no other skills, Lila. Hockey is it for me. I didn’t go to Yale and get my degree like Aiden Kennedy. I won’t go run the team’s charitable whatever like Evan. I don’t have an opportunity to join my superstar drummer fiancée in the music industry like Cal. So, I need to have enough money to live on after I’m really out of this.”

“And what will you do once you’re really out of this ?” she asks, making air quotes.

“Fuck, I don’t know. Go lay on a beach with a beer in my hand? Run a taco shop on a boardwalk? Rent a boat and sail off into oblivion? Fuck if I know. Boats are expensive. And so is beachfront property.”

Lila looks less than impressed, her pretty mouth slanting downward in a judgmental frown. “Don’t you want more for your life?”

“More like what?”

“You’re a pro player with a solid career under your belt. You’ve been mentoring guys all year. You could coach? You could go work with kids. You could even be a consultant for management or go into scouting. You know what to look for in young players. You could work in development. Teams have to keep adding talent or the championships become fewer and farther in between, until they are forced into a rebuild.”

“I’ve thought about all of that, but I just can’t see what’s behind the curtain. Like, I’ve been on the road as a player for so long and I’ve come to this dark cave, and I have no idea what I’ll find when I step inside. There was a time when I thought I might have a son, and I might teach him the game. I might coach his youth team. But my ex ruined that dream for me a long time ago. And this…experience—well, it hasn’t helped.”

Lila scoffs. “Why bother marrying me if you thought this was all a big scam or whatever? You suggested it. You made me think we could figure things out. But it seems pretty clear that you don’t want this. Don’t want me .”

All I can do is stare at her. At her perfect face, her perfect lips, her big, brown, soulful eyes. I can’t tell her I do want her. Desperately. Deeply. I want her, and I want our child. And I think I might love her. I definitely already love our kid.

I don’t know if I can tell her that, deep down, I think we’ve always belonged to each other. I tried to press it down, to ignore it, to pretend it couldn’t happen. But here we are and we’re so close, but so far away and I just don’t know where to go from here, because I can see just how much she doesn’t want what I want.

She doesn’t want marriage and family with me, and even though I know that, I won’t say all the things I feel because it will only open the door for her to say she doesn’t want me to come with her to Ohio.

And I can’t take that.

I won’t live through the rejection a second time.

So, I get up and leave the woman who I think I’m in love with, the mother of our child, alone at the table.

She doesn’t bother asking me where I’m going.