Jesse

When my mom found out I got into an Ivy League college I’m sure she was picturing pretty brownstone buildings with big fancy gates like Yale or Harvard, and this school has those too. But not the building for the College of Life Sciences where I take my Sport’s Nutrition classes. It looks more like a doctor’s office, with tiny square windows and iron railings. I don’t care what it looks like, but I could see how disappointed she was when I gave her a tour.

I get off the bus and lug my bag to my professor’s office for our meeting. I haven’t told anyone about it. My captain would only stress me out if he knew I’d ended the year with a D in my major, and I’d planned on making it up this semester before anyone found out.

My stomach flips as I wait outside Professor Williams’ office. What if she’s kicking me off the course? I’ll never be able to get onto another major now and I’ll lose my scholarship and my place on the team.

More importantly, my dad will fucking kill me.

Professor Williams opens the door and she can’t hide the little sigh when she sees me.

I follow her into the room crammed wall-to-wall with books. The desk covered in stacks of papers and framed photos of her family. Her book on sport’s nutrition is face-out on one of the bookshelves and still intimidates the shit out of me every time I see it.

I sit in the soft white chair opposite prof’s desk and put my bag down on the floor.

“Do you have hockey practise today?”

she asks, looking at my bag.

I nod.

She once asked me if I have to carry all my equipment around with me and if it’s heavy, and I thought that was kind of nice, that she at least pretended to care.

Prof steeples her hands on the desk and looks at me and I look away. There’s something about this woman that makes me feel like she can see right through me. Like she knows about the crusty socks under my bed I keep meaning to clean out, and the plate I forgot about on the windowsill where the pizza went so mouldy it melded itself to the plastic.

“, I wanted to talk about your plans for the future.”

I take a deep breath. I do not want to talk about this.

“What is it you want?”

she asks, and when I don’t answer right away, “where do you see yourself in five years?”

I don’t even know where I see myself in five minutes. What the fuck am I supposed to say?

I shrug and she sighs, letting her hands rest on the desk.

“You minor in sport’s training, isn’t that right?”

I nod.

“Your professor tells me you’re good at it and you enjoy it.”

Something changes on her face because she looks hopeful. Did I smile?

“Sure, it’s… fun.”

“Maybe you’d like to go into training or coaching or something?”

“I’ve got a little sister, Sam, she’s thirteen, I taught her how to play hockey, and she’s really good.”

Prof raises her eyebrows and I tell myself it isn’t patronising. She’s nice. She cares. She’s trying to help.

“What can we do to get there ? Have you scheduled a meeting with our careers advisors yet?”

I shake my head.

“This is your senior year, the sooner you start planning for your future, the better the position you’ll be in when you graduate.”

Prof looks at me in the silence and I let my gaze wander to the window behind her head. That patch of concrete across the street looks promising right now.

“What do your parents say?”

I snort before I can stop myself.

“Nothing, I mean, my dad wants me to play professional hockey.”

“And is that a viable option?”

She asks the question like she genuinely doesn’t know, and for a second, it’s nice having someone think it could actually be a possibility.

“No,” I say.

“Has your Coach told you this?”

I nod. “He said I could try out for the ECHL, but you make $500 a week and hockey is not a long career and there’s no guarantees. You could get injured and have to retire at twenty-five.”

Prof slow nods and frowns into the wood pattern in the desk.

“And what do you want ?”

I want to escape this conversation. I want to be out on the ice and check people into the boards. Where no one asks me questions or expects me to have an opinion.

I shrug.

Her sigh is bigger this time and she doesn’t try to hide it.

“Here’s what we need to do, you need to pass this course to stay in college and on the hockey team, it’s part of your scholarship, am I right?”

I nod. It’s my entire scholarship.

“So I really need you to buckle down and bring your grade up by the end of the fall semester, do you think you can do that?”

I nod because that’s the right answer, but I have no idea if I can do that. That’s what I’ve been trying to do already.

“I’d suggest getting someone to tutor you. Maybe a classmate? Maybe someone on the team?”

I chew the inside of my lip, trying to imagine one my classmates offering to tutor me. A teammate would be even less likely, they’d probably be just as clueless as I am.

“Yes Professor.”

She lets me go and I lug my bag five minutes up the street to the arena for practise. It doesn’t give me enough time to really dwell on our conversation, but as I’m passing school busses and pick-up trucks, it does make me think about what I actually see in my future. I have no idea what kind of job I’m going to have, I’ve never known that. But I do vaguely see myself being married with kids. That’s the one thing about my dad’s life I do look up to. But that conversation with Professor Williams has forced me to realise that I’ll have to take all the other shit from my dad’s life too if I don’t start getting serious about a career that isn’t construction. Do I really want to be so tired after work that I don’t have the energy to play with my kids? To have to take jobs miles away and miss putting them to bed and having breakfast with them in the morning? I only stop moping when I see the arena.

I love being in a hockey arena. The chill air. Everything painted in the team colours. The cubbies in the locker room with everyone’s skates hanging up. The motivational quotes on the walls and Coach’s white board with his barely readable notes and drawings.

Coach Rolands pops his head out of his office door when he hears me come in and tells me practise isn’t for another forty-five minutes.

“I know, sorry Coach, I just want to work out for a bit.”

He looks me over and asks if everything’s alright.

“Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?”

He lingers like he’s going to call me into the office and make me tell him what’s wrong.

When he nods and closes the door again, my whole body sags with relief. I do not want to talk. I just want to work-out and forget about everything.

Jones comes in about fifteen minutes later and sits on the bike next to mine.

“You’re here early, love the enthusiasm Engels,” he says.

Tell him, he’s your captain, and your friend, tell him you need help. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. Maybe I can just figure it out myself? Buckle down with the books. Pull more late nights. Drink less. Wake up earlier to study. Actually set foot in the library. I know I’ve had enough of people being disappointed in me for one day, and it’s not over yet.

The team starts showing up for practise. The locker room getting noisy. To people on the outside, it probably looks stupid, but it’s the best feeling ever. I fucking love this team and I’m pissed that I won’t get to play here after this season and wear this jersey with pride.

We run through the usual drills. Neutral zone passing, 3 on 2 defence drills. Me and my line mate Clarke defend the goal with our crazy goaltender Petroski, while each line comes at us and Petroski screams at us to cover his ass in about three different languages.

By the end of it all I’m sweating, but I’ve got a smile on my face, and I’m not thinking about the future anymore. Thank fuck.

We hit the locker room to change and I see an opportunity for that tutoring prof talked about.

“Hey Clarke, you’re majoring in sports nutrition right?”

I try to keep my voice down and my tone casual.

“Yeah, why?”

Jones looks over, so I shrug and think of something else to say.

“Do you think prof is hot?”

“She’s a bit too uptight for me.”

“Don’t talk about Sunita like that,”

Petroski says.

I forgot Petroski has the same major as me, he hardly ever turns up for class, though he seems to pass, maybe I should ask him to tutor me? He’s looking at me and Clarke right now like he’s going to kill us and bury the bodies somewhere no one will find them, so maybe not.

I should probably study, but I don’t have any books with me and the library is like a thirty minute walk from the rink and I’m exhausted and need to refuel before I even think about reading a book.

It’s a good kind of tired you get after practise. Pumped tired, where you couldn’t sleep if you tried, but you don’t want to do anything either. You’re just… satisfied.

I’m grateful when Jones says he’s going back to the house and asks if I want a ride. I can eat and maybe take a nap and wake up feeling refreshed. And then I’ll study.

His car still has that new car smell and I try not to feel jealous as I sit in the passenger seat and think about messing with the dials on the stereo. Jones has it hooked up to Spotify on his phone and some rap playlist is pumping through the speakers.

“We’re making the play-offs this year Engels,”

he says. He’s not looking at me and I wonder if it was meant to be a question.

“It’s our last chance.”

He glances at me now and I think that look means it’s my last chance. He’ll have chances to win the Stanley Cup one day. He won’t give a shit about the Frozen Four when he’s inducted into the Hall of Fame. But me… this is the highlight of my fucking life, right?

“I know.”

Jones throws his head back and groans, “I’m fucking starving!”

“I’ll make some stir fry when we get home.”

He laughs, “what would we do without you?”

Starve? Order take-out every night? I still can’t believe no one else’s mom taught them how to cook before they left for college. Like, not even stir fry? What kind of helpless fucks are they?

After we eat, I take a nap and when I wake up it’s dark outside and Jones and Clarke are playing on the PS5 in the living room. I gulp some OJ from the carton and run back upstairs to my room and the lock the door – one good thing about living away from home, you get a door with a lock on it.

After I flop back on the bed, I open the app and start scrolling. The guys you don’t match with don’t pop up, but that doesn’t mean they can’t see you before they swipe left. I’m still not happy you can see my tattoo in the picture I chose, but it’s the best one by far and every other one made it look like I had no arm or was doing something weird with it out of frame. Fuck it. If anyone I know brings it up, I’ll ask them why they were on a gay hook-up app anyway.

All the guys on here are generic as fuck or posers. You can tell they spend hours in front of their bathroom mirror, getting the right angle so people on the internet will compliment them. I get it. It’s how we judge each other on apps like this. It’s just about how you look. Maybe one out of ten guys I talk to even asks to see my face. And then it’s only if we’re going to actually meet up. Most of the time, I just ask someone if they want to video chat and jerk off. They don’t care what my face looks like then. If it’s really that ugly, they can just put something over that part of their phone and stare at my dick instead.

A nerdy-looking guy in a t-shirt who looks like he wandered onto the wrong app pops up and I hesitate before I swipe onto the next guy. In real life, I’d look twice, but this isn’t about looking for a boyfriend. I never want one of those. I like girls as well and that’s who I see myself ending up with. I want kids and marriage and all that stuff. That’s the main reason I don’t tell anyone about this. If I was just into guys, then yeah, fine, but I’m not. This is just about sex. I like to fuck guys sometimes, so what?

College isn’t the right place to meet my future wife. While I’m still playing hockey, that’s all they’re going to see. As soon as they realise I’m not making it to the NHL, they’ll drop me for one of my teammates – a pretty boy or someone more talented, like Jones. So for now, I’ll get guys out of my system. Isn’t that what college is for? Experimenting?

I swipe past the cute nerd and go for the first generic six pack who pops up and ask if he wants to video chat. When he says yeah, I double check Jones and Clarke are still glued to the game downstairs before locking the door again and taking off my pants.