Parker (Face-Off 1)

He hates when I use his real name. Jamie’s parents were just as bad as mine, but at least mine didn’t name me after their favorite whiskey. So, he always counters back with Charles in Charge, the name of a TV show that was popular before we were even born. Jamie swears, I look like one of the girls from the sitcom.

“How is work, Jameson?” I say with a devilish smile, taunting him, as I rip my chip bag open. “Have you heard anything about the promotion?”

After graduating from Drexel University with a degree in software engineering, Jamie got a job with a firm in downtown Philly where he’s the lead engineer. He’s now up for vice president of software applications.

“No, not yet. They said I would hear back by the end of the week. I want the job because it pays more money, but I’m also in the middle of designing an app that’s still in beta, and I don’t want to lose any progress my team has made over the last month. But it’s more responsibility. I would be an idiot to turn it down if they offered me the position.”

“I hope you get it. If anyone deserves a break, it’s you.”

With a sly grin, he looks at me and starts to hum “Movin’ on Up,” the theme song to The Jeffersons, a popular sitcom from the seventies. We watched tons of ancient television programs while living with our foster parents. They never once put on anything we wanted to watch.

He’s right about one thing; we sure have moved on up and managed to escape the hell we lived in for five years before we turned eighteen and moved to Philly.

“You’ve got a visitor.” Jamie nudges me in the arm to get my attention, almost knocking the chips from my hand.

Midway through stuffing my face, I look up and make eye contact with the one person I was not expecting to see while I was shoving food down my throat. Alex Parker. His smoldering grayish-blue eyes are practically burning a hole through me.

He winks at me from behind the Plexiglas and presses his glove against the barrier separating us, looking so damn sexy in his uniform that my breath catches for a second. Sweat drips from his forehead, his chest rising and falling, as if he just came off the ice.

I was so consumed with eating and catching up with my friend that I hadn’t even stopped to think about Alex. Not that he is my concern. Well, technically, I will have to deal with him at some point, especially since Mickey has decided to work out of the New York office for the next two months. Now that Alex lives in my apartment building, he has become my tenant, and therefore, he is also my responsibility.

Alex mouths something to me, and the girls behind me start shouting. Their screams are so loud, my eardrums are ready to explode.

He tugs at his jersey, moving close enough that I can read his lips. Put your tits on the glass.

My mouth opens in surprise, as I’m horrified and appalled by his words. I practically choke on the chips in my mouth.

That motherfucker!

Alex

“Fuck!” I mutter as I punch the cinder-block wall on my way into the locker room. My gloves are still on, so it doesn’t hurt, but the sting from that loss hits me where I feel it the most.

I went from a winning team, so close to the Stanley Cup, to twenty-fifth in the league—only five away from last place. At the rate these amateurs play, it will not be long before we make it there.

Lowering my head to the ground, I avoid making eye contact with the rest of my new team. I’m disgusted with myself and how I played tonight. My game was completely off. I don’t mesh well with my teammates. The dynamic among the players is strained, nothing about it at all organic, and the coaching staff is worse than what I had in my youth hockey leagues before my dad took over as my coach.

It’s nights like these when I miss my dad the most. He was the reason I made it this far. Without him here to guide my career and share this with me, none of it matters anymore.

Behind Charlotte’s row at the game tonight were two women who would jump at the chance to come home with me. The blonde kept pulling up her shirt and exposing her flat stomach and red bra. Charlotte would’ve killed the girl if she knew what she was doing behind her back.

Then, I told the twenty-something girl to put her tits on the glass. Of course, I was joking. Well, not really. But, when I saw the flicker of anger in Charlotte’s eyes, her hands balled on her lap, I knew she understood what I’d said. I bet she thought I was talking to her.

After I strip off my uniform and skates, I head to the showers and stand under the water for ten minutes—maybe longer—trying to wash the stench of this loss from my body, wash away the guilt over what I did to my previous team.

My teammates back in DC were not thrilled with me after the scandal involving the owner’s granddaughter. She was barely legal, a little fact that would have been helpful before we hooked up. Thank God the videotape from the elevator at The Ritz-Carlton had a time stamp, or she could have lied her ass off, pretending that she was only seventeen when we had sex.

She looked at least early to mid-twenties. It never even occurred to me that she could be younger. A few of the guys on the team had daughters, some of whom were close in age to the girl who I assumed was a puck bunny. Of course, she was wearing a flowery dress the day she made a public statement to the news outlets. Not the tight miniskirt, high heels, and a shirt that could pass as a bathing suit top that she had on the night we met. There was nothing sweet and innocent about that girl.

Once my skin starts to prune, I leave the showers with a towel wrapped around my waist and consider my next drink. It’s been fifteen hours since I passed out with a glass in my hand, only to wake up three hours later for practice. I bought a bottle of Macallan that is calling my name, waiting for me to come home and drink myself into oblivion.

Tyler Kane, the captain and star center of the team, stops me before I reach my locker, keeping pace with me. I don’t speak to him as I take a seat on the bench. I’ve barely spoken to any of my teammates since we met this week. I’m not ready to accept that this is all real and that I set everything in motion. Part of me hopes the Caps will change their mind and that they will reverse the deal even though I know there is zero chance of that ever happening.

Tyler runs a hand through his short blond hair, still wet from the shower. “Hey, Parker, a few of us are going out later if you want to come with us.”

I slip a fitted tee over my head and look at Kane as I shove my arms through. “Nah, I think I’ll pass. I’m just going to go home and crash.” With my bottle of whiskey.

“It’s just Donovan and Nichols tonight.” He points at Carter Donovan, our goaltender. Like Kane, he’s a good player on a shitty team, and now, they’re recruiting me. “We’re going to Scores, a strip club on Delaware Avenue.”