Chapter One
Garrett
In hindsight, I should never have done the naked photo shoot.
Nor should I have agreed to use a bath toy to cover the parts they couldn’t show. I was only copying what another player had done before, but maybe using a plastic hippo had been a bad idea. Because I got toy hippos thrown at me on the ice all the time, and some of those suckers were big.
Also I was the subject of a hundred hockey memes. Some of them funny, some downright weird.
Of course, hindsight is a beautiful thing and not immediately handed out to wannabe hockey stars alongside their skills with skates and a puck. But, at moments like on my birthday, I regretted the Burlington Dragons encouraging me to do the ESPN Body Issue at all. Seven years ago, and I’d only been twenty and flattered, hell, I was young and fit, no scars, no bruises, I was fast and winning, and I had no cares that my naked body would form the basis for a hundred online memes and jokes.
Take tonight, for example, and the fact that when I’d arrived for practice, my stall had been papered in printouts from the photo shoot, with crudely drawn genitalia where the hippo had been sitting. Then to top it all, the big sign which was crooked and held up with hockey tape read Hippo B-day Hooly. I turned to face the team, and none of them would look me in the eye, all apart from our goalie, who couldn’t quite keep a straight face.
“Assholes,” I said, and as soon as I acknowledged what they’d done to my stall, some of the guys collapsed in laughter, or at least the older Burlington Dragons players did. The younger guys, the rookies, sat with their mouths hanging open and probably waiting for me to blow a fuse.
Johan Dinquis, Mark Reid, and Graeme Stokes. Aka Dinksy, Reidsy, and Stokesy, were three big guys, two D-men, and a decent backup goalie, and they weren’t laughing at the display in my stall at all. They all seemed a little nervous, and I wondered if they’d been told to do this to my spot, being the newbies and all. I crossed my arms over my chest and raised my eyebrows, waiting for one of them to crack. It was Dinksy who made the first move; for some reason, he was the most terrified of me, which didn’t bode well for the team as he was often paired with me to work on his defense.
“Loki made us do it,” Dinksy blurted, and then hid his face in his hands when he realized what he’d done. Not only had he broken the sacred code of pranking, being that no player ever admitted shit. But he’d also dropped his two teammates, plus one of the veterans and the most obvious suspect in all pranks, in it with him. Reidsy and Stokesy elbowed him from each side, and he let out an oof, but still didn’t peek from behind his hands.
“You broke the code, dude,” Loki said in all seriousness.
Dinksy went scarlet. There was silence in the locker room, so much that I could hear tape being dropped in the corner, and then the laughter started. I didn’t know where it began, but it was infectious, and finally, I gave the newbies a break and sat back in my stall surrounded by naked pictures of myself, and laughed until I cried.
Dinksy was still scarlet when he showed his face, but he did smile when Loki came over and gave him a proud attaboy while rubbing his fine blond hair until it stood up with static. Nicki Lecour, or Loki as he was known, was the team prankster, and I wasn’t sure if the pranking had come first, or the nickname had, but he kept us on our toes.
One by one, the guys paraded past me, a chorus of “Happy birthdays,” making me smile. Gotta love the Dragons as a cool place to come to work each day.
The practice was predictable; somehow, I was involved in everything and got a face full of snow at every opportunity. Post practice, it was harassment as I showered and dressed, each individual just having to ask me loudly where we were going after, which they all freaking knew anyway.
When I was dressed and ready to go, there were a few gifts collected there, and I opened them one by one. There was my favorite candy from five different people, a bobblehead of himself from Loki, a cool Canadian team Olympic puck from the captain, and a cranberry-colored sweater from the newbies. I pulled the sweater on, put the puck into my jacket, and threw the bobblehead back at Loki, who caught it mid-air and then snorted a laugh. Then I hid the candy in my bag and locked that zipper, because nothing was sacred in that locker room.
Which left only one intriguingly wrapped gift in shiny silver paper, with a blue bow, and perfect corners. There was no card, so I wasn’t sure who to yell at when I opened it. The scent of flowers hit me so hard I had to hold the contents at arm’s length. Inside was a scarlet shape, a bar of soap or something. It was the kind of thing that went into the bath, then melted, fizzed, and changed the color of the water. I picked it up, but it felt weird to touch, and my skin pinkened.
“Is someone saying I stink?” I faced the team, but no one was staring at me as if it was a gift from them, so I rooted around and found a small card, pulled it out in triumph, and waited for someone to finally claim they left the gift.
“This one is your blood,” I read out, and turned it over, checking for clues as to the sender, but there was nothing, and I shrugged. My fingers itched where I’d touched it, and when no one was looking, I dumped it and the card into the trash, washing my hands and hoping I wasn’t allergic. I had a photo shoot next week, and the last thing I needed was hives.
“Beer,” Loki clapped me on the back.
I glanced to see what he’d stuck on my new sweater, pulling off the post-it that said kiss me and slapping it onto his forehead. He pouted before pocketing the note, and I damn well knew I’d make sure to check my back throughout the rest of the day and into the evening.
Birthday drinks, albeit lite beers, were at The Lair, a bar just down the road from the Dragon’s arena, and named as a connection to the team because the couple who owned it were huge fans. It wasn’t one of those bars that were trendy; it was rough, ready, and catered to exhausted hockey players and stray fans; precisely what I needed. Trendy bars meant attention, as Garrett Howell the player, the one who did the naked shoot, the one considered nothing more than a body, the gay one who was “like, so pretty.” But, in here, I could just be Garrett Howell, hockey player, tough, skilled, fast on his skates, a scorer, a team player, and most importantly, one of the guys. As we neared the back, Coach was already at what had become our table, a line of beers waiting, with a stern expression.
There was no way he’d bust any of our balls for one beer, and the stern face was for the poor newbies who shuffled past him to sit right at the other end. Coach nodded at me, and then when we were all seated, we each took a frosty beer.
“Happy Birthday, Hooly,” he declared, and everyone chimed in, taking a sip of beer, and that was it, my birthday celebration was a done deal, and talk moved on to current trade rumors.
“You hear that Detroit is looking to reinforce their defense and free cap space?”
The question was a general one, but everyone looked at me. My best friend Kyle played with the Detroit Arsenal, but he hadn’t mentioned cap issues in our messages. I’d known Kyle since I’d been billeted with his family, the Pressgroves, in Michigan. Only fifteen, I’d moved a thousand miles from Vancouver to live with them, and coming from having no family and a history of foster homes and landing in such a close-knit family had been unsettling.
Befriended by the dark-haired hockey player who would be one of the other forwards on our Junior team went some way to let me experience what a real family was like. His mom, aka Mamma P, had taken me under her wing as if I was her third son, and to this day, I thought of her as my mom. She cared it was my birthday, worried about me, called me every week without fail, and I loved her. Also I considered Kyle and Bobby my brothers, maybe not by blood but certainly by love and shared experiences.