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When I had the bathroom aired out, I used the toilet, splashed some water on my face and hair, washed up, and jogged downstairs. I’d shower after morning skate. Right now, I had to locate my child and our cat, make sure all was well, and get breakfast ready. I found Kyleen and Goldberry on the floor under the table, sharing cat treats. After I told her not to eat the cat’s food even if they did taste like cheese crackers, she pounded off irate and the cat stalked off with its fluffy golden tail in the air.
Eggs sounded good, so I pulled a carton out of the fridge and started cracking. My phone pinged again, pulling my attention from the food. Easing over to the outlet beside the microwave, I pulled the charger out of my old cell and started checking notifications. Most were from the team, which was weird this early. Well, I guess eight was early since most of us had to be at the barn by nine. I texted Coach to let him know I might be late due to having a sick child last night. He hit me back, saying it was okay. He’d had six kids, all grown now, but he recalled those days well. Plus, he had had his wife to help shoulder things. All I had was a woman in her early seventies and an incredibly supportive school system.
“What the hell is this?” I asked as I whipped eggs with one hand and scrolled with the other. A dozen links sat in the team chat thread, all linking back to the Watkins Glen Gladiators. Seeing that name brought up the vision of Baskoro Huda. Not a bad mental image at all, to be sure. We’d been giving each other some real shit via text since we’d swapped olive branches a few weeks ago. Most dealing with our insane love of all things geek, a term I fully embraced.
Kyleen was singing along to a cartoon show she liked while I thumbed over one of the links and clicked it. I was taken to the Gladiators website. The video started playing, the thumping sounds of “2 Legit 2 Quit” flowing out of the crummy speaker on my phone. I stood there, bowl of eggs on the counter, whisk dripping egg on my stocking feet, amused and really impressed with this video. Also, I was damn impressed with Baskoro’s skill at rapping. Sure, Liam Polkman was there too, but my sight remained locked on the man with the long dark hair and hip-hop fashion. He was sexy as hell. Those lips and soulful eyes…
“Daddy! What is that song?!”
I glanced down at Kyleen, knelt down, and showed her the video that flashed from Liam and Baskoro working the hell out of their song while video of them in net was neatly dropped in on the downbeats. “I love it so much! Who are the goalies? They are good. Are you that good? Why don’t you make legit songs?”
Great, so my kid thought Huda was more legit than her father. “I’ll work on a legit video,” I told her. She squealed and begged for my phone to watch the video over and over until I had to make her turn it off so we could get dressed and out the door. Since we’d missed the bus, I had to drive her to school, walk her into her class, and then run like all of Satan’s hellhounds were on my tail. I arrived at the end of morning skate, got a look from Coach that said he was not thrilled but wouldn’t ride me too hard about being late. This time.
“How’s my best beetle buddy?” Crispy asked after taking a shower, which I still had yet to do as I totally missed ice time. At least I had smeared some deodorant on so no one would smell my manliness while watching game films of Hershey for an hour.
“She’s fine. The child just needs fiber,” I confided, dropping down into a chair in the video room, the others on the team filing in with wet heads and phones in hand.
“Ah gotcha. I was the same way as a kid. Hated vegetables until I started playing hockey and my coaches all drummed it into my head that chocolate, even though it was made from a bean, was not as healthy for me as green beans.”
I snickered, then tried to stifle a yawn. “She’s fine. We spent all morning listening to MC Hammer.”
Crispy chortled. Ooni took the seat on my left, his sleepy gaze touching on me briefly. “I think that video was directed at you,” Ooni said in his lilting Finnish accent.
“You think?” I replied and got a chortle from our captain. “We need to fire back. I should head up to PR after this and talk to them. I mean, we can’t let them get the upper hand. We did beat them the last time we played.”
“I’m all for giving the Gladiators shit, but I am not rapping. The only rapping I do is Christmas presents,” Crispy announced just as Coach sauntered in carrying a cup of coffee and a Danish.
“We’ll come up with something,” I vowed and racked my brain the entire time I was supposed to be studying up on the Hershey defensive pairs.
***
I was back home, resting after lunch, when I finally had time to reach out to Baskoro about the video. Plenty of our fans had commented—most saying that the video our goaltending tandem team would release would be much better—but I’d not said a word online. While it was all good fun, and the Gladiators had not mentioned me in particular, the snippets of lyrics that had been harvested made it plain the Watkins Glen tendie team was giving the Wilkes-Barre tendie team some static. Bring it on. As soon as our PR department came up with something cooler, and I had faith that they would, this little stunt would be old news.
Still, it behooved me to lob a return salvo across Baskoro’s bow. We’d not really talked hockey much in our texts and messages, which was fine because just talking to him seemed weird. We’d spent so much time disliking each other that it was just…weird to be chatty now. I couldn’t put a finger on it, but then again, maybe we didn’t need to. The shift from enemy to friend had to be strange and awkward. So we kept it light, no work-related talk and nothing too personal. Mostly it was nerd stuff, with a small spattering of kids and baby chatter. Hockey, it seemed, was off-limits in this tender new friendship or whatever the hell it was that’s sprouting between us. Maybe friendship was too strong a word. Antagonistic rivalry with a subtle but simmering undercurrent of lust. Or was that yearning to have him pin me to the wall and do terribly dirty things to me purely on my side?
Smirking down at my phone, I typed out the opening shot.
If only you could stop pucks as well as you lip sync to 90s songs, you would have beaten us. ~ M
It was stupid how much I had started to look forward to his texts, images, and stupid ass memes. He had a dry sense of humor at times and was really witty. His meme game was on point too. I swear the man had a meme for every occasion. It took several minutes for his reply to flow in, but it was worth the wait.
Jealousy does not become you. ~ B
I roared, then checked myself as my aunt was “watching” Judge Judy in her recliner and I didn’t want to wake her up from her nap. She’d need all the energy she could muster. Despite my asking her a dozen times a week if she wanted help with Kyleen, she flatly refused. For the most part, Aunt Zada kept up, and with Kyleen in school all day, it was much easier on her. I still carried around a massive boulder of guilt in my gullet about saddling her with so much childcare. We could have afforded daycare when Kyleen was younger, but the woman flatly refused. Yes, we had made it through the preschool years, but my poor aunt had been run ragged. I often wondered how she did it. Lord knows the child wore me out and I was decades younger than Zada. But my aunt swore that keeping active was the best thing for her.
Did you forget how to make words? ~ B
The ping pulled me out of my mental meander.
No, I was just counting up the wins that we have over you so far. ~ M
It took you that long to count to one? That explains a lot. ~ B
Did you know that your team has lost three games so far? ~ M
Did you know that your team has lost four games so far? ~ B
Ah, so he was following my team just like I was now keeping tabs on his. That felt bizarre, but also sort of right. I had no clue what it meant, but I chalked it up to making sure I had ammo.
