Point Shot 01 - Two Man Advantage (8 page)

Every nerve ending in my body ignited at once. I couldn’t vacate the bed fast enough. Dan opened his eyes, hissed at the morning sun, then found me scurrying around like a demented squirrel trying to stash its nuts.

“I’m not sure yet, but I’ll let you know if I can talk him into it. Okay, yah. Give Papa a hug for me,” he said, then hung up, or so I assumed. I didn’t know for sure. I was too busy trying to shove my legs into my jeans. “You want to tell me what has you so fucking flustered that you’re trying to put on my pants?”

I looked down at the jeans, tugged them off and threw them at the man in my bed.

“You fucking miserable runt,” I snarled, keeping my back to him so he couldn’t see what was churning all over my face.

“What? I thought since you weren’t doing the holiday with your own family, you’d like to come with me to Manitoba while the Americans on the team celebrate Thanksgiving down here. It’s my younger brother’s birthday.” I heard the bed frame squeak. His feet hit the floor. I spun to face him. Clearly he was not with it yet mentally if he didn’t catch the “NFW” aura all around me. “You don’t have to, you know. I just thought it would give us time together, you know, away from the team and press and shit. The media is going to be thick at the game tonight. News is out about you being cut down. It’ll be fun. My folks, they won’t mind you being there. They know I’m gay.”

“Shit, Arou, what the fucking hell?” I asked, my boxers stalling halfway over my ass. “Why would you ask me to meet your parents? Fuck no, we are not going nowhere near that, meeting your mother—what if… Call her back and tell her I’m not coming.”

“Why? It’s not as if you’re doing anything with
your
mother, right?” he asked, rubbing his forehead briskly. He tended to do that when he was stressed. I tripped over his monstrous black Reeboks as I pushed one leg into my shorts.

“You’re making some pretty big leaps, Rumpelstiltskin,” I snorted, tugging my shorts up. “What makes you think I’m not doing the turkey and stuffing thing with my mother?”

“Because I take the time to read between your lines,” he replied. I glanced at him. Miserable little fuck was like a pitbull. Once he latched on to you, he didn’t let go unless your leg came with him. “I know that you had a bad childhood. I picked up that it centers around your mother and booze. Shocked?” he asked smugly, his arms crossing his hairy chest.

“Pfft.”

“How eloquent,” he countered. “And that’s just what I picked up when you’re not talking about hockey or getting laid, which is most of your conversation. Vic, man, if you don’t want to come to Winnipeg because it freaks you out, that’s okay. I knew coming into this it wasn’t going to be easy. Just stop lying to me and be honest for once.”

I was stunned by his accusation. That wasn’t true, was it? I never lied to him. I was brutally honest with him. No emotional shit. Wasn’t that what I’d told him when we first started? Why the hell would he want his folks to meet me? He was the only person in forever who liked me. Shit, even Jerry, the Boston screw as Dan had pegged him, didn’t like me—not really.

“It’s not important,” I said, then made a beeline to the bathroom to take a piss. Dan was blocking the door before I’d taken three steps. He’s good at that. Ask any tendie in the league—Dan Arou is a get-in-your-way kind of guy. His face still carried the creases of the sheets. It was a sight that I found really sexy.

“That’s where you’re wrong, Vic—it’s important to me,” he argued, planting his sturdy legs widely then grabbing the doorframe. “We’ve been in each and every hole the other one has for weeks now and you can’t even tell me about your family?”

“What difference does it make? Will you knowing about my past change what we have now? Fucking A! I told you about the dude in Boston. That’s all you need to know.” I shoved past him. Or tried to, I should say. He was dug in like an Alabama tick, to quote Jesse Ventura from
Predator.
His powerful arm barred me from entering the head. I glowered down at him.

“You think that’s all there is to being in a relationship?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t recall saying this was a relationship.”

I pushed around him. Or he let me push around him was more than likely the case. Standing over the toilet I was intent on the urine stream. Dan walked into the bathroom. I glanced over my shoulder. Every emotion he owned was right on his face. I returned to watching myself piss. It was much less disconcerting than seeing him trying so hard to make us work. It never would. I was far too screwed up to ever be part of an “us”.

“I know what you’re doing,” Dan said as I relieved myself.

“What am I doing, beside trying to grab a peaceful piss?”

“You’re using the pain from your childhood as a fucking barrier to being intimate with someone,” he explained. I snorted, then shook my dick a few times.

“Great,” I said as I turned to face him. “I’m sleeping with the Manitoba version of Dr. Phil. In case you didn’t notice, I’m all about the intimate. Ask your ass—it’ll tell you how intimate I’ve been with it.”

Dan smiled. My internal organs kicked around inside my gut like mules. I’d heard a few country songs that talked about a lover’s smile being able to knock you off your pins. I had never experienced it until now. I leaned against the shower stall, my palms growing damp and my heart skipping a few beats. I swallowed. Arou covered the distance between us in a couple of strides. He took my face in his hands and lifted it upward toward the recessed light in the ceiling.

“Shit, you’re even paler than usual, Kalinski,” he said with a sense of awe. I jerked away from him as he chuckled like the moronic asshole that he is.

“You’re such a dickwad,” I told him, peeled off my shorts, then stepped into the shower. His merry blue eyes watched me turn the water on. The water exploded over my tight neck muscles as I looked over at him. “You coming in or what? Oh, I see the problem. Let me lift you up and over, Stumpy.”

I grabbed him under the arms. He growled and struggled like a Tasmanian devil with PMS as I hefted him kicking and struggling over the side of the tub. He shoved the door closed so violently it cracked in the upper right corner. I pushed Dan against the wet tiles. His dark eyebrows were knotted but his mouth was plaint when I pressed my lips over his.

“You coming with me tomorrow?” he asked as our hands and mouths moved hungrily over flesh. “It’ll be okay, Vic, but if you seriously can’t, I’ll respect that.”

“I’ll go,” I panted as he sucked my earlobe into his mouth. To be honest, I wasn’t sure I could go four days without Dan Arou. Not even a top-notch meth cook could manufacture something as enslaving as the man in my arms.

Chapter Nine

Rader Arena had doubled its attendance since the last home game. I sat on the bench between my line’s left-winger, Heath Goodman, and the center for line four, Mario McGarrity, my eyes roaming over the fans. One chick was holding up a sign that read “VK for the KO!”

“That bitch is jumbling up her sports analogies,” I said, nodding at the blonde with tits big enough to get her airborne. That was probably why her girlfriends were hanging on to her arms as they all bounced up and down. They were the ground crew tasked with keeping her Earthbound.

“I’d like to jumble her analogies,” McGarrity said, drawing a couple of grunts of agreement from the boys on the bench. “Then come right on her chin.”

“Nice, McGarrity,” I chuckled, giving the tape I had applied to my stick in the dressing area another inspection. “So tell me again how you got saddled with such a fuckwad combination of ethnic names.”

“Dad was Scots, mother was Italian. They compromised,” the olive-skinned ginger at my side said by rote.

“Maybe your father should have come on your
mother’s
chin and spared you the indignity of being a skirt-wearing Italian.”

“I’d rather be an Italian in plaid than a fucking Pole,” he slung back so perfectly I tapped my helmet in respect for the quick zing. I just caught Dan’s laugh before we had to stand for the anthem. Some fat man in a pinstriped suit and a comb-over waddled out onto the ice on the arm of one of the ice crew. “Speaking of dumbasses,” Mario whispered as the singer began to belt out his “Oh Say Can You See” line, “That’s the son of Ron Rader, the owner.”

I leaned out to see. Wow, the kid was not only rich but incredibly ugly and incapable of carrying a tune.

“RDR should have spurted on the old lady’s chin that night,” I said to the side to ensure the theme of the night carried onward. Mario snorted. Coach Lambert gave us both a sharp look. Once the slaughter of the anthem was over and slight applause had been bestowed on Girth Rader, I looked down-ice to watch Dan and his line squaring off against the first line of the Waconia Wasps.

The first five minutes weren’t too bad—you know, considering it was us playing against any team over midget age range. Joe Billie for the Wasps had the puck behind his own net. Lines quickly changed. Dan dropped down beside me, sweaty, panting and grumbling about Frank Hickok, the backup goalie, getting a free pass on an elbow infraction that should have been called. Yeah, we were challenging backup twine-herders now. That was how much fear this team generated.

“Yeah, I saw that,” I said glancing at him to make sure nothing was disjointed on his face. It wasn’t. “Hey, Mario,” I shouted. McGarrity paused, straddling the boards, to look at me. “You get a chance to rattle the goalie, don’t pass it up. The fucker got a wing up into Hockey Smurf’s face.”

“Fuck you, Kalinski!” Arou bristled. Mario gave me a two-fingered salute then went racing across the ice for the face-off. “I don’t need you or McGarrity to stick up for me.” I watched him running his tongue over the inside of his top lip over and over.

“Bleeding?” I asked. He spat into a towel the trainer had given him. “Let Lou have a look at it,” I said, waving at the trainer. Lou, who looked like Danny Devito only not as handsome, grabbed Dan, tipped back his head and lifted his top lip as if the man were a racehorse. Arou’s teeth were coated red. I stood up, climbed over the boards as the line change came, then skated down to speak with Frank Hickok. The refs were already buzzing around me like incensed horseflies.

“You like cheap shots? Good, me too.” I smiled as I sailed around the back of his net, arriving at the face-off circle to Hickok’s immediate left feeling rather chipper. Georg Pepperpopperpooperman, or whatever the hulking Finn’s fucking surname was, glared at me over the puck about to be dropped.

“Hey, Kalinski, I heard that you like to suck dick,” Georg said.
Wow, such wit. Let’s see if we can ramp up the insult party just a bit, shall we?

“Congratulations, that was a nasty crack. Speaking of nasty cracks, I saw your wife the other day.” I know that was pretty insulting. It was supposed to be. Results, people. You’ve got to focus on the results.

Blah, blah, blah,
the skating Sequoia said. I snapped the puck away from Pepperpopperpooperman, snaking it backward and to the left. It should have been picked up by someone in gold and blue, but it wasn’t. Shock to the system, I know. One of the Wasps was trying to nudge the puck away from his skate. I poked the puck away from his foot, whipped around sharply, slapped the chunk of rubber at Hickok, then backed off. The two teams were piled up like cordwood in front of Hickok. The puck was bouncing around the goalie’s skates. Hoping to clear a lane for one of my teammates, I dropped a shoulder and shoved the first Wasp I saw.

He careened into his goalie, pinning Rick Vesterman, the Wasp D-man, under his tendie. I raised my stick, caught Vesterman’s stick and pulled hard. The stick jerked up under Hickok’s mask, tugging it off his square head. Two more Cougars arrived—day late and dollar short, assholes—to add to the melee in the crease. Whistles were blowing the puck dead. Arms, legs, sticks and men were packed into a small area. The net popped off its moorings. I wiggled through the crowd, leaped upward and fell to my side while executing an elbow-drop on Hickok’s face that Hulk Hogan would have popped a boner over.

“That was for Dan Arou,” I hissed at the goalie, who was fishing in his mouth for a couple of teeth. I broke from the scrum, tugged down my sweater, then bowed to the audience and players on each bench. The fans were on their feet. Coach Lambert had to be held back from coming onto the ice. I think he might have been slightly pissed off. I peeked at our bench.

Dan was sitting on the bench, the inside of his lip being stitched, looking around Joe at me as if I had handed him Mark Messier’s gilded jockstrap or something. The ref and a linesman found me lingering by the sin bin. They shook their heads—the linesman escorted me from the ice. The fans booed the call as the ref began relaying the ejection on Kalinski for unsportsmanlike yadda-yadda-yadda-ya. I bet Hickok won’t ever lift a stick to my—to Dan again.

* * * * *

The Syracuse airport grew smaller and smaller. My anxiety grew larger and larger. Dan reached over the armrest to place his hand on my tapping fingers. I jerked my hand back. He held on. The chick in the flight attendant costume was blathering on about where to put your head in case of a crash. I knew where my head was going if the plane went down. I was burying my face in Dan’s balls, just to make sure I got one last bit of pleasure before I got splattered then fried.

“Vic, if you don’t relax you’re going to faint,” he whispered.

“I might have a slight thing about flying,” I confessed while fixing my sight on the back of the seat in front of me.

“No shit? You’re afraid of flying?” Arou mumbled, squeezing my fingers gently. “And I didn’t think Victor Kalinski was afraid of anything.”

A kid behind us started whining. Cold sweat appeared on my upper lip. “I’m not afraid of flying, I’m afraid of crashing,” I corrected him.

“Well, once we get up high enough, you can get a drink.” I peeked over at him. He was smiling. The shithead. “Until then, why don’t we talk?”

“Can we just
not
talk so we can hear when an engine falls off?” I closed my eyes then swallowed eighteen times. A rivulet of icy fear trickled down my spine. Arou chortled then pushed his seat back an inch. Why? I don’t know. He certainly didn’t need to accommodate his long legs.