5. BROOKLYN

CHAPTER 5

brOOKLYN

S ummer training camp with Coach Green is famous for being barrels of fun. And by fun I mean puke, which is what we all do at least once during the grueling week of punishment that he calls bootcamp. What's funny is that it's not the only week during the summer where sophomores and up train, but it's the welcome for the freshmen. And boy, it's filtered out a couple already.

"Congratulations on surviving the week," Coach voices from center ice, arms folded as he inspects each of us.

He does a double take when he finds me grinning from ear to ear.

Yeah, I'm soaked to the bone. My uniform probably weighs about fifty pounds more from sweat and slush. My calves throb like toothaches. My stomach is queasy, even though I've already given my offering to the barrel an hour ago. My head's still spinning around the ice as if we were in the middle of another skating drill, even though I stand in line with my teammates. Everything hurts and I'm positively dying.

But all this torture means one thing. He's not giving up on the team this year .

Neither am I.

Coach Green clears his throat and finishes taking stock of the team. He turns to whisper something to one of the other coaches, and they nod at each other before our head coach speaks again.

"The St. Cloud hockey program is still relatively new, but in its short existence it has made a name for itself in this tournament. Four Frozen Four championships in just eight years is nothing to sneeze at."

Two of those were won by Max Cassiano's first crop, and two by Aran Rodriguez's. And sure, I want to be the next Cale Makar just like any other defenseman, but Max and Aran are the ones whose legacy I want to surpass. It's impossible now that I'm starting my junior year, but maybe I can still tie them.

"But in the past two years…" Coach trails off to shake his head. "We have played worse than my kid at the mini mites."

A murmur rises from the line of players. I have to bite my lips to not scream because, honestly, comparing the Bolts of the last two years to mini mites is disrespectful.

To the mini mites.

"But now we have some fresh blood." He nods at the freshmen. "And we still have some veterans who want to fight." At this he nods at… me?

I turn to my left and there's Jamie. And to my right is Dane. Beside him, are some of the other juniors.

Wait, no acknowledgement for the seniors? Well, well, well.

Coach clasps his hands at his back. "So, we're going to do things differently this year. Normally, the captain and alternates are seniors." Except for Max's cohort, but I don't interrupt. "But this year, it's going to be a junior."

"What?" Kyle Warren shouts. He's a senior now, a buddy of Liam Roberts, and he was dead sure he'd be the next captain because apparently Liam recommended him for the job. Earlier in the lockers, Kyle was saying how, and I quote, having the C on his jersey would get him so much more tail. "But that's not right! I'm a senior." A second later he points at his other buddies. "We are seniors. Our time is finally up."

"You wasted your chance by playing worse than mini mites." Coach Green lifts up his hands like he can't freaking believe he has to repeat himself.

"Then I quit the damn team!" Kyle throws his gloves on the ice with all his might.

"That's fine. We have JV guys ready to take that spot."

I suck air through my teeth because that burn hurt even me. But for some reason this turns Kyle's ire at me.

"Or," I say in a sweet little tone now that I have his attention. "You could just man the hell up."

"You ass?—"

"That's right. You either quit the team and forfeit your scholarship, or beg some other college to take you in as a late term transfer, or you do your job. Which is it gonna be?" Coach Green folds his arms and levels Kyle with A Look. The one that typically leads to a drill resulting in offerings to the puke barrel.

Kyle mumbles something I'm glad none of the coaches seem to hear, because it'd make us all do ten-minute planks. But the little shit stays in line, so I guess he's taking the not-outright-quitting route.

Nodding, Coach focuses back on the topic. "That said. The player who has shown the most grit on and off season will be the new captain."

I nudge my defensive partner. "It's you, Great Dane."

"Nope. It's you, Blondie." He smirks at me.

"And his job will be to keep up that intensity during this new season, while also infecting the rest of his teammates—and heaven knows this won't be an easy feat." He rolls his eyes skyward as if asking for patience. "Anyway, Tatum, you're it. "

The grin wipes off my face.

Dane starts clapping even though he's still wearing his gloves. "Congratulations. Your life officially sucks now."

I don't appreciate how some of the guys in the coaching staff nod at that.

"I, er…" Kyle and the senior goons are giving me looks that say they'll try to shave my eyebrows while I sleep or something.

"Don't be too happy. Bloom, Schwartz, you're the alternates. Practice dismissed."

Dane stops celebrating. On my other side, Jamie cringes so hard he's close to turning into a black hole.

"Ah, shit."

"Is right," I murmur.

We start filing back out to the locker room. The younger guys take turns congratulating me, probably out of relief that Coach didn't go fully nuclear and make one of them lead this circus. My brain says this is going to be a shitshow, especially because the seniors have the maturity level of gnats and will try to sabotage this whole enterprise—if only by being lazier than ever.

And yet my heart hammers as hard as if I was in the middle of a game, nil-nil in overtime and during a penalty kill.

At my bench, I peel off my jersey and let it flop on the floor with a wet splat. I make quick work of removing my pads and twist around to fish around my bag until I produce my cell phone. I click on the text messaging app and…

Stop.

The thrumming in my veins dulls to nothingness when I realize I have no one to tell the big news to.

If I tell Dad that I just became only the second non-senior to be named captain, because technically Max is an outlier, he wouldn't care. He hasn't exercised a single molecule of enthusiasm for my hockey career, or me, ever since I announced that I wanted to play defense instead of being a forward like him. Which also coincided with the time he and Mom were divorcing.

Nah, he's much happier with his new wife and my half-brother, Lee, who's still young enough to look up to Dad as a hero.

And Mom? She hasn't contacted me in years. All my attempts to reach out to her have gone ignored and last I knew of her was through the tabloids. Apparently she's moved to Monaco to live with some guy from the royal family. Ridiculous.

Then there's Liv. She's never enjoyed hockey, but she used to make an effort because it was what made me happy. Except I made her hate my guts because I was trying to impress Liam Roberts back when I was a gullible little turd.

I slide the phone back into my bag and lean down to unlace my skates, sighing. It is what it is. Hockey's my only constant. Friends and family… not so much. It's why I got the weird tattoo I did. I've never told anyone what it represents because I know it's cheesy—they can just think it's some abstract stuff. But when I'm down in the dumps like right at this second, I look at the lines and remind myself I at least have one of the three things going for me.

After removing my undershirt, I run my finger across the lines that start at my inner wrists. A thick, fully black line for hockey. A fainter one in the middle that represents friends. And then a lighter one for family. The three lines run around my arms, over my elbows and triceps, to the back of my shoulders, and the meet in twin downward curves at the middle of my back. If I hold my hands at my back you can see that the lines make a giant heart.

Because these are the three things that are most important to me. Two are incomplete, which means I pour my entire heart into only one. Hockey.

I smack my face hard to snap out of the sentimentalism. After undressing, I haul my ass to the showers. The icy spray of water helps me clear my head. I'll have to rearrange my semester schedule to make more room for hockey. It's not like practice will necessarily increase because I'm the captain now, but there are some admin duties associated to it that I'll have to accommodate. And maybe I should start paying more attention to plays, stats, how they all mesh with my teammates. That all is probably part of the infecting Coach wants me to do.

"O'Malley's to celebrate the fact that this year is going to suck but maybe not as bad as we thought?" Dane asks from the shower stall behind mine.

"Sure," I return with a snort. "But I'll catch you there. I need to do something first."

"And what's that? Squeal into your pillow?"

"No, squeal into your momma's pillow."

Somehow the lazy joke still gets me a round of chuckles, even though the mechanics are weird. Shouldn't I be making his momma squeal into her pillow? Whatever. I need to be more serious this semester, and being the biggest clown in the team isn't going to help my case.

First step, finish showering and get dressed. Step two, high tail it out to the admin building. I was going to take two electives this semester and I'm thinking it should now be zero.

*

Once I get to the admin office, I discover that the ticket machine is down. Like maybe it gave up after the place packed up with people like me, changing their minds at the last minute. Or complaining about something. The line moves pretty quickly, though, until I'm only three people away. That's when a little racket starts at the front.

Wait. I recognize one of the voices. I lean out of the line and a slow smile takes over my face.

It's Liv.

"I'm telling you it wasn't my fault. I'm a hundred percent sure I clicked on protein biochemistry and not on—" She pauses to read her schedule. "Reproductive biology I."

I stuff my fist against my mouth so I don't burst out laughing.

One of the two people ahead of me moves over to another booth. My blood starts pumping like I'm on the bench, waiting for the line change.

"Are you sure?" a softer voice retorts to Liv.

The person in front of me moves to the third booth that is now freeing up. I step forward and stand behind my former best friend as she throws her hands in the air.

"Can we please focus on what matters? The question is whether you can please, with a cherry on top, fix my schedule, and not on who made the error—which by the way, wasn't me."

Over her shoulder, I see the admin guy give her an eye roll. But then he catches me glaring at him. This gets Liv's attention because she turns around.

All the papers she had on the counter slide with her turn and crash down, but for a second neither of us moves. Other than she widens her eyes dramatically upon my sight, that is.

She cut her hair up to her jaw, shortest I've ever seen it. But the eyeliner's back and so is the obscure band T-shirt. I blink as I process what I'm seeing. She used to wear baggy band T-shirts and this one's cropped. Her chest casts a little shadow over the sliver of her stomach, right before the waistband of her jeans. I don't dare to meet her eyes again in case she thinks I was just checking her out .

And, uh, she'd be right. I didn't mean to. It just happened. But I don't know what that says about me.

So before she can react, I lean down and pick up her stuff. Right at the top is a printout of her schedule. My lips twitch at the reproductive biology I, which makes me wonder if there's a II, a III, or more. The puns I could make with this knowledge would be chef's kiss. And then my eyes snag on an elective.

Spanish I.

Her eyes meet mine as I hand her the papers. I hold them a second longer, buying myself some time to try to read her mind.

My brain plucks a memory from the box I try to keep shut. It's of Olivia and I during the first few weeks of the freshman fall semester. We were hanging out at the library, her studying for some bio class, while I did business school coursework.

"This sucks," I said with a whiny voice. "You want to open your own company so why couldn't you just major in business too?"

"Because," she said, her eyes still tracing a line on her textbook. "I need to know what I'll be selling at a molecular level first. I'll figure out the business side later. Or you can teach me."

I sighed. "Fine, but that means we'll never be together in class."

She hummed as her attention finally pulled toward me. I lay on the table, head resting on an extended arm as I looked up to her. Her hair cascaded around her face while she said, "Let's just take an elective together, then."

I smirked. "Now we're talking. But what?"

"I don't know… Spanish? You always said you wanted to learn more, and it's not like I'm great at it."

I stretched myself upright to sitting, suddenly excited at the prospect, and offered my hand out to her. "Deal? "

"Deal." She shook my hand, two hard pumps before letting go.

The Liv of the present looks at me like she wishes I'd self combust. She rips the papers from my grip and turns back to the admin guy, not noticing that she's given me a paper cut.

I lick my index finger while staring at the back of her head, a new plan forming in my mind.