“Oh, that’s cool. Was I supposed to, I dunno, get them something?”
“I signed your name on the card. Drink your coffee. You look like shit.”
Since I wasn’t entirely clear if he’d been joking about signing my name, I let it go. “If you had the roommate I did, you’d count yourself lucky you were even able to make it down to breakfast.”
He arched his eyebrow.
“Hairs. Likes to turn the television up to full volume. I’m amazed no one complained.”
“Likely he had players on either side, and they wereexhausted enough to sleep.” He winced. “Sorry about that. Bad luck.”
“Yeah.” I probably shouldn’t have been badmouthing my roommate, but Lous couldn’t have been ignorant of the guy’s attitude. Or how he’d helped us lose the game last night.
Lous eyed me. “We’ve got a good team. And we’re finding our footing with our new coach. You new guys are finding your grooves. We’ll be fine.”
“We should’ve scored last night.”
“Laval’s a good team. Overall, we didn’t follow what Tori told us.”
“Wedid.” I had to defend those of us who hadn’t fucked up. I’d struggled to follow Tori’s—and Coach’s—directions. My glance strayed to Claus and Jack. Whatever they were discussing was damn intense. Not once had I caught them looking my way. Quite possibly they weren’t even discussing me. Or my ill-advised relationship with Jack.
That was so fucking over.
Yeah, but he texted you last night. Dollars to donuts he wasn’t texting Hairs…
Another of my mother’s very weird expressions. An English one, though. “Ontario’s a bilingual province. Tonight I’m going to turn on the French newscast.”
Lous chuckled. “You think he’ll be in your room for the newscast?”
“Probably not. He’ll go out again, right?”
“Yeah. You not going to?”
I shrugged. “That’s not really my scene. Even when I was nineteen and newly legal, it wasn’t my jam.” I wasn’t going to explain about how I didn’t want to disappoint my dead mother. That felt like it might be oversharing. A little too macabre for nine in the morning. “How hard are they going to work us in practice? We didn’t get that much sleep last night.”
Lous grinned. “Just you watch.”
I winced and, yeah, four hours later, when practice ended, I regretted even taunting the fates by asking for an easy time. The fates were cruel and never granted me any wish I made.
Things hadn’t been helped when Hairs and Leaps had missed the bus and their rideshare had gotten snarled in traffic. Traffic! In fuckingBelleville. The two had shown up almost twenty minutes late, and to say Amy had been pissed would’ve been the understatement of the century.
Coach had been pissed too, but his had been a more-contained rage. He hadn’t raised his voice. He’d made Hairs and Leaps bag skate after practice, and he’d warned them that this was the one and only time they could be late like that without being benched. But he hadn’t shouted. Likely he’d heard how the last coach yelled, berated, and treated players badly. Hell, I’d heard the stories.
I’d thought, because Coach was fair and didn’t yell, that players would want to do their best for him. Christ knew I did.
But shits like Hairs, Yanni and Leaps just didn’t seem onboard with the program.
Well, Hairs and Leaps. I still didn’t have a good read on Yanni. If the glares he kept shooting my way were any indication, I was in trouble too. Did he think that he and Leaps deserved to be higher than the third line and third D pair? Did they think I hadn’t earned my spot?
Or maybe I was just being paranoid.
Coach had us gather around him. “Pull more shit like you did last night and that loss column will be so long that we’ll get first pick in the draft.”
Right. Bottom of the pile.
He wasn’t wrong.
“Don’t party too much tonight. We’ve got tomorrow’s skate to get our shit together and then a game to win. Laval’s a goodteam. Belleville is beatable.” The Ottawa farm team was quite capable—but they were also well able to blow substantial leads.