“But how, how did we miss this block?” I toss my phone on my large pool lounger and lean back, pushing my hand through my hair. “It was fucking rudimentary, and I let it go right between my legs.”
“That one shot didn’t cost us the playoffs,” Taters answers. “Everyone had a part in that massive failure of a game.”
Yeah, but that one shot was the winning goal, which means the blame still falls on me.
“Nothing you can do about it now, though,” says Eli Hornsby, the prettiest fucking defenseman in the game. He places his hands behind his head and lounges back, accepting the loss and allowing himself to relax. Not sure how he can. I’m still reeling from our loss and drop out of the playoffs. “And what’s rule number one when we get to the cabin?” he continues.
“No fucking hockey,” Posey says before he runs, jumps, and cannonballs into the pool.
Every summer, after the season, me and my boys head up to Banff, Canada, to Silas Taters’s cabin—well, mansion, but he calls it a cabin—and we de-stress. We forget about the season, soak up the sun and picturesque mountains, and just . . . fuck around.
The cabin is the perfect place to do that, with views of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, the small-town feel of Banff, being away from Vancouver city life, and far from any sort of training facility—besides the million-dollar gym in the “basement” of the “cabin.”
But this year, I’m not quite in the mood to relax. Not when we were so close. So fucking close for our third championship win. I wanted that win. I’m not sure how much time I have left in front of the net, and after we were so close to making it to the finals, for a chance to hold the Stanley Cup over my head again and skate around the ice, knowing that my team, the Vancouver Agitators, are number one—fuck, it burns my soul.
I thought we had it this year. We were the sure win.
A stacked team.
The favorite.
And we fucking blew it.
How can they be so accepting with how the season ended?
“You’re scowling,” Taters says, splashing water in my direction.
Silas Taters, the fast-as-fuck right wing, currently has a chip on his shoulder for other reasons we won’t get into, and he’s known for using snarky quips to provoke the people around him, and doing it well. He signed the same year as I did, and I know he wanted this win just as much as I did. So, he’s either in denial, or he has a hell of a way of compartmentalizing.
I stand from the lounger and say, “I’m going to grab a drink.”
“If you’re going to do that, be a gentleman and grab everyone a goddamn drink,” Hornsby says.
Eli Hornsby, our team pretty boy. Hell, our league pretty boy. Perfect teeth, perfect nose, perfect face. He’s strong as shit, thighs for days, and the horniest motherfucker I’ve ever met. I think he’s slept with every single woman in Vancouver, plus or minus a few. He trains like a badass, parties as though it’s his job, eats as if food won’t be here tomorrow, and then does it all over again the next day. His lifestyle gives me anxiety, and he’s the one always trying to get me to “loosen up.”
“You want a chocolate milk?” I ask him.
He rubs his hand over his thick chest. “Milk does do the body good, as you can tell, but bring me a brewski.”
Rolling my eyes, I head into the house proper from the indoor pool. Taters says the space is called a natatorium, but that’s just a fancy word for a patio enclosed with sliding glass doors. It is nice, though, because you feel like you’re outside when the doors are open, but when it’s cold, you can turn up the pool heater, close the doors, and still swim.
I enter the kitchen just as Posey closes the fridge. Caught red-handed, he has a piece of bologna hanging out of his mouth and a beer in each hand.
Levi Posey, the dedicated bruiser of our group, and an absolute beast. Known as a teddy bear on the inside but a brutal devil on the ice, you don’t want to be smashed into the boards by this guy because it’ll feel as though a freight train just took you out.
“Why do you eat that shit?” I ask him.
He takes the bologna out of his mouth and says, “Honestly, I think I have a problem, and I don’t even think I want help with it.”
Posey is the king of bologna. Before every game he scarfs down a bologna sandwich with mustard. It’s vile, and how he can skate the way he does with that churning in his stomach makes me queasy just thinking about it.
“Is one of those beers for sharing?”