Delayed Penalty Part 23

It figured it was something like that. He had no real reason. Not only did that have me seeing red again, but I was suspended that very same day Leo told me.

I was p.i.s.sed about being suspended.

One by one, the games went by. Some were easier than others, like the ones we won, but when we lost it was difficult.

Ami tried everything to get me to cheer up, but I was hung up on it pretty bad.

My mind immediately went back to all those nights I spent sitting beside her bed, talking to her even though she wasn't awake, forgoing sleep just because I couldn't leave that girl.

One night, she tried to get me to have s.e.x with her, as if that would be the distraction I needed. It wasn't. I wasn't ready to give in. Though the discussion wasn't over, I wasn't ready to say anything else. And I wasn't sure that she was either.

"Ami, a lot has happened to you in a short amount of time. It's okay to not be okay. It's okay for us to struggle a little," I said, sounding a bit exasperated. She flinched slightly. I caught the movement and continued, "I just want you to know that if you need time, I understand. Ami, look at me, will you?" I lifted her chin gently to meet my gaze. Those same beautiful, bright blue eyes that met me that day she woke up found mine, familiar and full of trust. "It's just me. Just you and me, and if you don't want that, I need to know. Don't think you have to-"

Her kiss cut me off, which was fine by me.

When she pulled away, I breathed. "Okay," I said after a moment, physically making myself relax and reaching up to lightly touch her cheek.

"Okay," she repeated, placing her hand over mine. "I know that it seems like we've just kind of been together because you were there for me, but if I wanted to leave, I would have."

"That's all I needed to hear." I sighed.

Playing the point This refers to the player with the puck keeping it in position for scoring a goal.

Round 4 Stanley Cup (Game 6) Philadelphia Flyers.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010.

I was just getting ready to leave for the airport. Ami was cuddled up on the couch with my cat. She named him Zamboni. Apparently, Jerk Face wasn't a good name for a cat. I didn't really think Zamboni was either, but hey, if it made my girl happy, she could name the cat.

I watched her eating her Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal she ate every morning, a habit started by Leo. When I looked at her now, her hair hanging near her shoulders, artfully styled in a crazy way that fit her personality, and those starry blues, she looked good. She was healthy, she was in love, and she was mine. I saved her, but in reality she saved me when I didn't even know I needed saving.

Sure, I could have been fine without her, but this girl was worth it.

Just as I grabbed my keys and wallet, Ami giggled, reading a text message on her phone. "Granny B blocked the door to her room with a chair and then called in a bomb threat to save her lazy boy," she said, completely straight-faced as she took a bite from her cereal.

"No s.h.i.+t."

She nodded, milk dripping down her chin. She wiped her mouth with a smile and then spoke with her mouth full. "Yep. Good times. I f.u.c.king love your family."

I couldn't help but laugh. "I'm surprised they didn't arrest her for that."

"Oh, they did. Your mom decided to leave her in there over night to simmer down." She gave a thoughtful shrug and then added, "Poor Granny B is always getting the shaft. I don't think she'll make the game tonight."

"Don't say shaft."

"Why?" Her nose crinkled and then she smiled, knowing I was thinking dirty.

"Because. I have a game. I can't be distracted by words like shaft coming out of your mouth."

Naturally, she rolled her eyes and went back to her cereal and the movie she was watching.

Ami and I had yet to have s.e.x. We'd gotten close so many times, but it was just...it was hard and even harder after the situation with Dave. He was charged last week and sentenced. He got ten years for what he did, and I was a little bent by that. He should have gotten life as far as I was concerned, but then I looked at the bigger picture. What would be the one thing that would hit home for a guy like Dave Keller?

Hockey. Hockey would because from the time he was two to thirty two, hockey was all he ever knew. He would never play again, professionally at least. That was gone for him.

So when I looked at it that way, only through the convincing of my dad, it made it a little easier to handle.

When my suspension was finally lifted, I was able to play again. It was like a weight had been lifted. It was like I couldn't move on from what happened unless I could play hockey again.

Once we arrived in Philly, I was running late to the morning skate and tried to sneak in unnoticed. My laces were cut again. Leo.

"I tried to stop him," Ryan said, grinning.

"Yeah, sure you did." I knew Ryan hadn't warmed up to Leo, and he was only saying that because I never stuck up for him. Regardless of laces being cut, it was good just to be back around my boys and getting ready to play on home ice.

"You're such a p.u.s.s.y," Leo said, delivering a punch to Ryan's stomach. Everyone laughed but Ryan.

Whenever we were around Leo, we knew that salt would be replaced with sugar, our laces would be cut, and we'd often wonder why an NHL player did s.h.i.+t like that. It might seem like adolescent humor, but we needed guys like Leo. Every team had them for a reason.

The locker room was lively and bursting with energy, having made it this far in the playoffs. It was loud, and it was meant to be. Invigorating, it paced the mood of the room.

When a team found what we had, what we worked for, whether we were in a bar, on a plane, on the ice, or in the locker room, we had a noise about us. It was the type of noise that no one necessarily heard but they could feel it.

We were half-naked players, shouting for tape, laughing, cutting laces. After everything that happened that first round, the fight, the suspension, trading Travis, our team had been shaken up.

But now we'd found our noise again.

Leo shouted at Ryan and Shelby, nasty references that no one would admit were funny, but you couldn't help but laugh at how they were delivered. Jeff Westby, our veteran player, traded stories about who's best and who bagged who. It set the motion of the day, a comfortable noise that all of us had been looking for to gain focus-that little bit of edge to take on the Flyers.

Suddenly, Ryan blew up at Leo, the noise still present but in a different way. "That's it, Leo, you cut my f.u.c.king laces one more time..."

He didn't get to finish because Leo reached down with his pocket knife and clipped the fresh laces.

"You better run," Ryan warned before he took off after Leo.

Drew glanced over his shoulder when he heard Leo screaming like a girl in the showers. "He's something else."

"You have no idea."

The talk around the room quieted when Coach walked in. Laughter halted. O'Brien wasn't always yelling; sometimes he let us have fun. All right, he was almost always yelling. That was exactly why we shut up when he walked in.

Following him across the room, he walked to the white board. His tone was the usual, calm and conversational, maybe subdued, but it often began that way, and we were never quite prepared for it. We only ever saw the screaming side.

We waited quietly.

"What we gotta do is work these guys. Get in their heads," he said, pointing to Leo and then to the Flyers center he had written on the board. "This is a key guy. He holds the puck and knows how to make plays, like Leo." His voice picked up speed. "If ya give him that f.u.c.king blue line, he'll own your a.s.s!"

Because of his song and dance, we mouthed the last few words with him. Leo and I looked at each other and smiled.

Coach yelled the line-up we'd been waiting on. I had barely played this series, and I understood why once the suspension was lifted. I had put my team in a tough spot going after Dave like that during a game. Coach had his reasons and I understood.

"Orting, Carson, Sono, Mase, Keith, and Breezin." Each name brought a cheer, each player congratulating me that I was back.

During warm-ups, our noise continued, cultivating us into what we would become tonight. We came out in a single file to the ice along the narrow rubber path, our heads down, focused on what we wanted.

The Zamboni drove off the ice and we burst on. For a while we skated easily, then formed a line to practice shooting. Our fans cheered; the Flyers fans booed.

"It's really good to see you back out here," Leo said, standing next to me as we all took shots. The Flyers were on the other side of the rink doing the same thing. I looked into the stands when Leo said that, and Ami caught my eye. They had finally arrived, all sporting their Hawks gear.

She smiled down at me, a wink from starry blue. She was wearing my jersey, sitting next to Callie and my family. "It's good to be back."

Leo took over, singing along loudly with the music playing in the arena. "You're the worst singer in the league."

Leo laughed, taking a wrist shot at the net. "Hockey players sing?"

"You apparently think so." I swung, smacking the puck off the wall, completely missing the net. "Though I have other ideas about that."

"My milkshake brings all the girls to the rink!" he shouted, giving his stick a rub and winking at Callie who was watching us.

"What's with you two these days?"

Leo sighed and rolled his eyes. "She's just...well, you know. She f.u.c.ks all of us, and the one time I try to ask her on a date, she gets all f.u.c.king weird about it. I just wanted to have dinner with her, and she f.u.c.king shot me down." He pointed to himself exaggeratedly. "Me...she shot me down." When I looked down, I noticed his hands were inside his pants.

"What are you doing?" Shaking my head, I looked away. Leo always had his hands in his pants. It was as if he thought his d.i.c.k would fall off if he didn't touch it constantly.

"My cup is nowhere near where it should be." He dug deeper trying to fix it.

"What the h.e.l.l, man? Stop touching yourself. Go to the locker room to fix that."

I skated away from him.

"Hey, come back."

"No. Get away."

Skating around, the sounds of our warm-up playlist blaring, it felt good to be back.

Coming off the win at home gave us the momentum we needed. The locker room had the noise, and Ami gave me some love before the game, but this being the last game of the series against two strongly matched teams. Anyone could win, and the Flyers had home ice advantage.

Play started quick and left no time for setting up plays. Just when we would, play would stop and then start again. We weren't backing down, though. We stiffened and pushed back. The game turned to center ice.

We were working them below the goal line, and they knew it. You could see it on their faces, the victory they so badly wanted being take away.

s.h.i.+t got rough, too.

"Get back on the f.u.c.king bench, you p.u.s.s.y!" Leo yelled at their center. He was all kinds of worked up, and after the hits he was taking out there by their defenders, he had every right to be.

I got out there and rocked a few of them, but they were big guys. They kept coming until they were slapped with a major.

We were sloppy for a while, constant possession changes, until Leo swooped back and stole the puck from Sealy as he moved to the net beside me. Laying it safely in the corner, Leo reached up with his stick and hooked Sealy, getting a penalty.

But we couldn't deny that the tempo of the game had been set, the mood set, our control, absolute.

Unlike other sports, you were never really in possession in hockey. The puck was always up for the taking. You couldn't strip the ball from another player in basketball. It was a foul. You couldn't run with it up ice like you can in football.

With the puck changing teams more than six times a minute, nothing could be done to change it. When it wasn't in possession, twelve men were fighting for it to gain control. Then it started all over again.

The goal was to be sharp, be fast, and think. Just like anything, the way of the game was won and lost was by your dedication to make it work.

We needed one goal to tie it up with thirty seconds to go in the third period.

Circling center ice, Leo grinned and looked at me. He was going for it. I gave him a nod, one that said, "You got this?" He nodded back. He went wide then crossed back over the ice before he made it to the crease. When he got there, he stopped and spun around. His stick went with him, but the puck remained at his feet. Sealy, watching his body and stick, didn't see the puck at his feet. He didn't see him sweep his stick between his legs either and tap the puck in.

We ended up in overtime and the format was slightly different in the playoffs. There was no sudden death. You went into another twenty minute period and the first team to score won.

That was when we got aggressive.

Remy took a shot first, missed, and knocked one off Sealy's stick, and then Leo got possession again, only to have it stripped away.

The Flyers put in Arkady Vadim, one of their veteran players. The guy was a f.u.c.king maniac on the ice with speed, tricks, and consistency. Since starting in the NHL back in '03, he'd never missed a penalty shot or shoot-out goal and was nicknamed The Closer. The entire bench groaned and hung our heads when we realized who they put in. It wasn't good.

My eyes caught Ami's. She was sitting to the left of our bench with my family and Callie, all with the same nervous energy swirling in their eyes. She noticed me looking right away and gave me a thumbs up and a smile.

I winked back and looked back to the ice and then the jumbotron to check the score, as if it might have changed.

Vadim circled and then went in for the kill, guys hacking at his stick with no control. He didn't do any tricks. His mission was speed and accuracy. Cage, a little jittery facing Vadim, watched the puck and play around him, his eyes constantly darting from the puck to his stick with fierce body movement. Cage was poised, ready, knees bent, stick center.

When he got to the crease, he went up like he was going to take a slap shot but then swung a fake and then tried to just tap it. Cage read him well, played the pipes, and deflected it off his s.h.i.+n pads.

All of us were on our feet cheering on Cage. Play stopped; a fight broke out between Sono and a Flyer and was stopped by the refs.

"You're up," O'Brien said, nudging me forward. My brow lifted at his words.

No f.u.c.king way, I thought. He was putting me in during overtime in the Stanley Cup? I knew my s.h.i.+ft was coming up, but he thought I could do it. Leo skated to the bench, his time up, and then Coach motioned for me, Remy, and Leo to get back out there. He was throwing in his first line.

"No f.u.c.king way. You serious?"

"If you don't want the chance..." he smirked, "...I'll give it to Ryan."

I barreled over that wall quicker than I ever had before.

As I circled the ice, I couldn't look up at anyone as they announced my name. The crowd intensified. Never had I heard them this loud. I couldn't look up because the nerves were so intense right then I thought for sure if I made eye contact with anyone, I'd choke.

I could hear my dad beating against the gla.s.s but couldn't look. Here was his boy, the little boy he gave up a career at playing in the pros for, playing in his first Stanley Cup game.

The final countdown was there with thirty seconds in this overtime period, each excruciating second longer than the last. I felt like I couldn't breathe, let alone make a shot if it came down to it.

With my jaw set, my eyes moved from the ice to Sealy, ready, rocking from side to side in front of their goal. Taking a deep breath, I envisioned the route I wanted to take. I wanted it. All I had to do was get the puck in the goal somehow. I wanted it bad. I wanted it for so many reasons. I wanted to win this Cup for our team, for my family, and for Ami. I wanted to show Ami that good things did happen to people. Life wasn't always bad, sometimes good things did happen, and they could make all that bad s.h.i.+t simply...fade.