Power Play (3 page)

They ended up at Sidelines, a sports bar a few miles away, which thankfully wasn’t very crowded since it was the middle of the week. He and Misha took a table near the back, and Max perused the menu as he tried to make some kind of small talk. Why he thought adding alcohol and a social environment to his and Misha’s already awkward relationship was a good idea was anyone’s guess.

When their server came by, Max ordered a beer and some cheese sticks, because he could only imagine how much worse it would be if he drank alcohol on an empty stomach.

“The appetizers are buy one, get one free right now,” their server, Kyle, said.

“Oh.” Max looked at Misha, who’d ordered a beer instead of the vodka Max expected him to drink. Maybe it was too early in the day for hard liquor. Then again, after that practice, maybe it didn’t matter. “You want to split some chicken nachos?”

“No, thank you.”

Max’s Midwestern gene kicked in. “Did you even eat lunch, though?” He turned red and wondered what the hell he was doing. It shouldn’t matter if Misha ate lunch or not.
Stop being polite, Max.

“Maybe he doesn’t like nachos,” Kyle suggested. At Max’s look, he shrugged. “What? He might not. We have other stuff.”

“I don’t eat meat,” Misha said, by way of explanation.

Kyle tapped his pen on the notepad. “We do have vegetarian nachos. They’re made with beans. You want those instead?”

“Sure,” Max said, handing over his menu. If Misha didn’t want them, he’d put them in a box and bring them to work the next day instead of a sandwich. Or he’d forget and leave the box at the restaurant, which is what he usually did with leftovers.

“So why are you a vegetarian? Animal lover or health nut?” Max asked once they were alone again. He realized how it sounded and winced. “Sorry. That’s probably not any of my business.”

Misha just shrugged. “It’s all right. Neither really. My father was a butcher.”

Max nodded. “Of course. Your father was a butcher, so you don’t eat meat. Is that like, the Russian version of teenage rebellion?”

That got him the slightest of smiles. “Maybe a bit.”

All Max knew of Russia was secondhand information from movies and playing hockey with other Russians. “You’re actually Russian, though. Right? From Russia.”

Misha gave him a strange look. “Yes.”

“It’s just, one time on the ice, I called this guy a Russian, and he got pissed,” Max explained. “He hit me.”

“Did you call him a communist? Or a Marxist?”

“Huh?” Max scowled. “No. I think I just called him a cocksucking Russian. Russkie maybe.” Thinking about cocksucking suddenly made Max remember the trip he took a few years before to Mexico. It was supposed to be his honeymoon, but after Emma left, he decided to just make it a trip with some friends, instead.

He showed up at the all-inclusive resort determined to get laid and drink a lot. And that’s exactly what happened—only Max found himself on his knees blowing the very hot male bartender instead of hooking up with random hot girls, as was the plan.

I went to Mexico and all I got was a sunburn and cocksucking lessons.
After the upheaval of the past few years, that was a surprise, but not entirely an unwelcome one. So he liked blowing dudes. Lots of people experimented on vacation…. Didn’t they?

With drugs, usually. But okay.

“Then why was he insulted?” Misha asked—and wow, Max should really stop thinking about sucking cock.

“He was Ukrainian. I guess they don’t like being called Russians.” Max considered that. “Or maybe he didn’t like me calling him a cocksucker. But who doesn’t get called a cocksucker on the ice?”

Misha looked down at the table. “It could have been either. Probably it was the first. But it is not…. That is frowned upon in Russia.”

“Being Ukrainian?”

“Well. By some.” Misha’s mouth turned up at the corner for the briefest of moments. “Mostly I meant the other thing.”

“Calling someone a cocksucker? Or being one?” Why was he still talking about that?

“Yes. Being one.” Misha’s expression was inscrutable. Any hint of amusement was long gone. “It is illegal in Russia.”

“Really? That’s stupid.” Max had played hockey with gay guys before, and while he wasn’t sure if liking to suck dick sometimes made him gay, bi, or what, he still didn’t want to deal with homophobia on top of all the other problems the Spitfires had.

He crossed his arms and gave Misha what he hoped was an imposing glare. “I’m not going to care about that. If any of our players are cocksuckers.” He cleared his throat. “I mean… you know what I mean. If they suck cock, like, for real.”

He heard a throat-clearing noise from beside the table. “Your drinks are…. Here you go.” Kyle set the drinks down and then drew himself up. He looked to be about seventeen, maybe a little older. High school kid working a summer job, probably. “My brother’s gay. If you say anything homophobic, I’ll charge you for those nachos. I really will. They’re not technically on the half-price appetizer menu, but I was trying to be nice.”

“I’m not homophobic,” Max protested. He looked at Misha. “I’m just checking to make sure he’s not.”

“Shouldn’t you have figured that out before you went on a date with him?” At Max’s glare, Kyle hastily said, “I’ll go check on your food,” and made a quick retreat.

“I’m not—I don’t have a problem with that,” Misha said, so quietly that Max almost didn’t hear him. “If that is… what someone is.”

“Gay? Well, that’s good. ’Cause I don’t have a problem with it at all.” Max looked up from his drink to meet Misha’s dark eyes, which were focused so intently on Max that it gave him a chill—and it wasn’t from some memory of the accident, half-buried in his consciousness.

If anything it was a memory of hot night air and tequila, salt and ocean waves, fingers in his hair, words in a language he didn’t understand, and the feel of concrete beneath his knees.

“I’m glad you don’t,” Max said. He shut every metaphorical door as quickly as he could and threw all the deadbolts, for good measure. He didn’t hate Misha and he never really had, but that didn’t mean he should want to blow him.

There’s a setting between “hate” and “sucking his cock,” Max. Find it and dial it there. Quick.

Max took a fortifying drink of his beer, and luckily Kyle returned with their food.

“Sorry for the delay. The first order, the chef put bacon on them. I don’t know why you’d do that when they’re vegetarian nachos. Maybe it’s not even really bacon, but I wasn’t sure. So….” Kyle placed the plates of food on the table. “He’s high a lot. The chef.”

“Why would you put bacon on nachos in the first place?” Misha asked.

“Dude. We’re in America. We put bacon on everything. Thanks,” Max said to Kyle. He thought about pointing out they weren’t on a date, but decided maybe to let it go.

They were there to talk about the team. Which they did as they ate. They went over the roster that was slowly taking shape.

As usual Max hesitated when he got to Drake’s name. “This kid has an attitude problem the size of… Russia. Russia’s big, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Misha said. “Very.”

“I know he’s got a contract, but maybe we should trade him for someone. I think the other players are scared of him.”

Misha considered that. Max had insisted Misha try a fried mozzarella stick, but he was eating it with a knife and a fork—proving that he was not, in fact, a normal person. “Maybe that is a good thing. Hmm? He could keep them in line.”

“He almost has as many penalty minutes as our enforcer,” Max reminded him.

Misha arched an eyebrow—because of course he could do that. “Maybe we should tell Huxley to get in more fights.”

“That’s not how you eat mozzarella sticks,” Max groused, slouching in his chair like an ill-tempered teenager. “Fine. So we’re keeping Drake?” Max put his head on the table and groaned. “He has a lip piercing.”

“What was that? I can’t hear you. Did you say he… has a hip replacement? He’s so young.”

Max lifted his head. Misha was calmly eating his dissected mozzarella stick and watching him with something that Max was
sure
was amusement. “You have got to be kidding me.”

Misha winked at him. Max’s world tipped upside down and flipped sideways. And then, for no reason, he noticed that Misha wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. He wished he hadn’t noticed, but he had. He was also momentarily fascinated by Misha’s long, slender fingers, wrapped around his fork.

Holy shit. I think I kind of do want to blow him.

“I think we should keep Drake,” Misha said, as if Max weren’t thinking about administering blowjobs beneath the table. “I think he should be captain.”

“I think you’re crazy.” Max sat up and firmly told himself not to think about anything but hockey. “Goalies are never the captain.”

Misha shrugged. He did that very elegantly. It looked very European. Were Russians European? Max was fucking terrible at geography. “Maybe they should be. And sometimes I have seen it. Roberto Luongo, when he played for the Canucks. He was a captain.”

He was also crazy, if his Twitter account was anything to go by. “You think we should make our blue-haired, lip-pierced goalie the captain. Even though he’s crazy.”

“Yes.” Misha paused. “One time I played with a goalie who would eat sand before a game.”

“Sand? Did you say sand?” Max made a face. “Ew. Why? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“He said that it kept him from losing focus.”

“How?”

“I have no idea.” Misha picked up another cheese stick. “I have never had these before.” He deftly poured some sauce on his appetizer plate and delicately twirled the piece of fried mozzarella in the sauce. It looked fancy—like how rich people ate. If rich people ate mozzarella sticks.

“So we keep Drake and make him the captain,” Max continued, trying not to watch Misha’s fingers and his strange and elegant mannerisms.

“I would recommend that. Yes. Perhaps tell him to get rid of that earring in his lip.”

“It’s a lip ring,” Max said, nonsensically. “Not an earring.”

Misha gave him a look that Max was beginning to interpret as his “is that so, stupid American” look. He waved his hand. “The lip ring, then. I do not understand why anyone would want one of those.”

“For kissing, maybe,” Max said, infused by a sudden, alcohol-driven urge to… what? Say slightly PG-rated things to Misha? He was smoother than that when he tried to ask Tara Pike to the eighth grade school dance.

“For… kissing.” Misha went very still.

“Yeah,” said Max, and he barreled on. “For kissing.”

The tension between them wasn’t unpleasant, but Max wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. They stared at each other for a moment longer, and then Misha put down his knife and fork and quietly said, “I’ll get the check.”

BY THE
end of training camp, they had a team of, if not champions, at least passably decent hockey players.

A rousing endorsement to be sure. But it was a start, and that was all they needed. They had a clean start, a new team, a new attitude, and a new coaching staff behind the bench. The season was alive with possibilities, and the excitement in the arena was palpable.

Or it would be, if Max led some kind of charmed, Lifetime-movie existence. Which he did not. And he knew that because watching Lifetime movies was a guilty pleasure he absolutely would not admit to anyone.

What he really had was a team of misfits captained by a goalie with anger-management issues and a facial piercing, coached by the man who ended Max’s professional hockey career, and owned and managed by a sleazy asshole who was going to use that for publicity.

It was also a team that had five players named Jacob. And even though he’d been half responsible for signing said players, Max had completely managed to overlook that.

“Wait. Seriously?” Max groaned when the fifth Jacob, who was actually Jakob, introduced himself the first day of practice. “What’s your last name?”

“Wawrzyniak, Coach.”

Max exchanged a look with Misha. “Congrats, Jakob. You’re the only one who gets to keep his first name.”

On the ice the team looked… not good, exactly, but they weren’t terrible. Max didn’t dream of Kelly Cup glory, but he didn’t have nightmares either. It was pretty much the best he could hope for at that point in the season, because they were a new team who needed time to play together and nail down their dynamic.

Misha was a good coach, but he was shit at talking to the players. His normal method of communication was to stare at them until they skated off to do what he told them. He never had to shout, and he somehow made his whistle sound threatening. Max’s own whistle sounded like a goofy cartoon noise most of the time.

As the more personable of the two—though there were pieces of hockey equipment easier to converse with than Misha—Max was mostly in charge of player relations, retention, and general locker-room attitude. So they immediately had to get rid of the elephant in the room, or more appropriately the “Misha and Max accident” shaped elephant.

It was incredibly awkward and ultimately unhelpful to try to discuss it with Misha. He just stiffened and said, “However you feel comfortable,” and then didn’t look at Max at all.

Since being comfortable was impossible, Max did what seemed like the easiest thing. On their second day of practice, he said, “Don’t worry about me and Coach Samarin. We’re not going to have any problems because of my accident.”

“When did you get in an accident?” Shawn Murphy asked, blinking.

Drake looked up from tying his skates. “Did he hit you with his car or something?”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. “Look it up on YouTube,” Max said, and that was that.

It was not quite so easy with Belsey. Their intrepid GM thought the best thing to do was capitalize on Max and Misha’s sordid past to draw in crowds. He didn’t understand that if the
team
didn’t know about it, then probably the legions of hockey fans in Spartanburg, South Carolina didn’t either.

Especially considering there weren’t legions of hockey fans in Spartanburg. There might be a scattering, and even that was probably an exaggeration. And Max didn’t really know how showing a career-ending hit—that was, when it came down to it, an accident—was going to endear the community to their sport. But apparently Belsey didn’t think much of Southerners. He said it would remind them of college football.