Page 45 of Two for Roughing

It was probably good to show his face at this sort of team event every once in a while, regardless of how disinterested the prospect left him. Damir let himself be dragged from the hotel to a ludicrously pricey gin bar with enough strobe lights and free floor space to double as a nightclub. He even paid for a round of shots provided by a robot arm that drove up the wall of bottles behind the bar, collecting drinks from different gin bottles at an alarmingly slow pace.

Three rounds later, and Damir still eyed it with distaste.

What a dumb gimmick. Of course, three separate guys filmed it for Instagram. With a sigh, Damir ordered himself another nice, big glass of water.

His quads were sore. He’d played twenty-three minutes and should have spent some time in an ice bath after the game. But he didn’t like asking for complicated, time-consuming treatment during away games. Being in other teams’ arenas made his bones itch under his skin. If he had to go through the torture of an ice bath, he wanted it to be under the low ceilings of the Alliance Arena with the limescale in the showers and the outdated version of the team’s logo on the carpet in the cooldown room.

It might have been good for him to ask for it anyway.

An ice bath in the Twisters’ fancy facilities couldn’t be as bad as watching his teammates get drunk on overpriced liquor.

Fulls and Matheson, the rookies, snuck illegal drinks every chance they got. Damir already knew it would be his job to get them back to the hotel and keep the coaches from finding out what they’d been up to.

Ketchup leaned against the bar, explaining something to the overworked and irritated bartender at great length with excessive hand gestures.

Rocky let go of his habitual scowl, trying to chat up girls at random. The operative word was “trying.” He did better when he didn’t talk, not least because keeping his mouth shut hid the gap in his teeth.

Lissy had done twice the number of shots as everyone else in half the time. He dragged their goalies, Henderson and Petterson, as well as the team’s bottom D-pair, Cerny and Galveston, to the dance floor in an attempt to improve morale. A valiant effort for a mismatched group in Damir’s opinion. Petterson had the third-highest save rate in the league, and Henderson was top ten as well, though he started less often. They still struggled to buy a win, largely because of Cerny and Galveston, who blocked shots as well as Swiss cheese on skates. No one could say Lissy didn’t try his best. He’d pulled his hair out of its customary man-bun, and everyone involved would be lucky if he didn’t get arrested for public indecency based on how closely his hip motions mirrored the helicopter.

If Damir weren’t an A, he could sneak out, go to his hotel room, take a hot shower, jerk off to Kilian’s voice message, and pass out.

As it was, he ordered a few more waters for the rookies and roped Ketchup into making sure they drank them, which distracted Ketchup from his quest to discover whether the bartender had ever played MMORPGs. In an act of charity so great Damir should automatically receive the Lady Byng, he asked the girl Rocky was stammering his way through an introduction to whether she liked sports. It turned out she really liked CrossFit, which made Rocky light up and rediscover he could use full sentences.

Damir left them comparing the effectiveness of different kinds of burpees and steeled himself to enter the dance floor.

Not for the first time, he wished he could find this atmosphere enjoyable while sober. Or, barring that, be someone who could relax by getting drunk.

Lissy and the two defensemen were smack in the middle of the floor. It would have been easy to find them by virtue of their size alone, but to make it even easier, Lissy had decided this was the time and place to teach a Czech man how to do the Macarena.

“Does he know we had this dance in Europe too?” Damir shouted to Cerny over the music (decidedly not the Macarena).

Cerny shrugged. “I did not want to spoil his fun.”

At least Lissy’s mission in cheering up their struggling D-pair and the goalies had proved successful. Galveston and Petterson both had their phones out, pointing them at Lissy and Henderson, who had gotten in on the dance.

Henderson was too nice.

Someday, he had to learn that all of Lissy’s ideas were terrible.

“Denny!” Lissy cried. He’d just executed the jump with a quarter turn at the end of the dance sequence, turning him to face Damir. “Just who I needed!”

He advanced before Damir could escape, brandishing his phone. Up close, Lissy reeked of gin. His beard scratched against Damir’s cheek, and Damir couldn’t help but flinch away.

“You have to take it, Denny,” Lissy attempted to whisper. It came out more of a shout, since the pounding of the music and the alcohol in his bloodstream made him physically incapable of discretion. “I’m too drunk to talk to Coach.”

Damir took the proffered phone, where a number of missed calls from Coach Simmons were indeed displayed.

Once again, Damir thought longingly of his quiet, private hotel room.

Damir passed the phone back to Lissy, patted him on the chest, and pointed toward the exit and his own phone. Miraculously, Lissy was not too drunk to understand simple sign language and pressed a wet, boozy kiss to Damir’s cheek.

It took stepping out into the fresh night air for Damir to realize how bad it was inside. One inhale, and his head cleared. A second, and he felt ready and willing to fulfill his duties as alternate captain.

Coach Simmons’s phone rang twice before he picked up. “Denny! Where are you boys?”

Damir squinted up at the sign above the bar and read it aloud before explaining, “At a gin bar down the street from the hotel.”

After a brief pause, Simmons sighed. “And I’m guessing that’s why Lissy’s not answering his phone, eh?”