Him

Boston’s skyline comes into view from my bus window well before I’m ready.

It’s a mere ninety minutes from Northern Mass to TD Garden. The Frozen Four is always played at a neutral rink, but if anyone has a home-ice advantage this year, it’s me. I’m from Boston, so playing in the Bruins’ arena is my childhood fantasy come to life.

Apparently it’s my jackwad of a father’s fantasy, too. Not only is he pumped up to invite all his asshole colleagues to my game, he can look like a hero on the cheap. He only has to spring for a limo, not a charter flight.

“You know what I like best about this plan?” Cassel asks from the seat next to me as he flips through the itinerary our team manager passed out.

“That this event is like the puck bunny world headquarters?”

He snorts. “Okay, sure. But I was just going to say that they’re putting us up at a nice hotel, not some sleazepit off the interstate.”

“True.” Although the hotel, whatever it is, won’t be nearly as grand as my family’s Beacon Hill mansion a few miles away. I’d never say that, though. I’m not a snob, because I know opulence doesn’t stamp out ignorance and unhappiness. Just ask my family.

We spend the next half hour snarled in traffic, because that’s just how it is in Boston. So it’s almost five o’clock by the time we’re finally unloading the bus.

“The gear stays!” our student manager shouts. “Take only your luggage!”

“We don’t have to schlep our gear?” Cassel yelps. “Baby, I’ve arrived. Get used to this treatment, Wes.” He elbows me. “Next year in Toronto you’ll probably have a personal assistant to carry your stick around for you.”

It feels superstitious to talk about my NHL contract before the Frozen Four. So I change the subject. “That’s awesome, dude. I love it when another guy holds my stick.”

“Teed that one up for you, didn’t I?” he asks as we grab our duffels off the sidewalk where the red-faced driver has tossed them.

“Sure did.” I let Cassel enter the revolving door first just so I can grab the door by its handle and trap him inside.

Stuck now, Cassel twists around to give me the finger. When I don’t let go, he turns away and reaches for his belt buckle, setting up to moon me and whatever slice of Boston happens to be walking past the hotel on a windy April Friday.

I let up on the door and give it a shove, smacking him in the not-yet-bare ass.

Ah, hockey players. You really can’t take us anywhere.

Then we’re in the shiny lobby. “How does the bar look?” I ask.

“Open,” Cassel answers. “That’s really all that matters.”

“Truth.”

We find an out-of-the-way place to stand while we wait for the team manager to sort out the hotel rooms. But it’s going to be a while. The lobby is busy and getting busier. Our end of the room has a distinctly green-and-white color scheme, with our Northern Mass jackets everywhere.

But on the other end of the room another color catches my eye. It’s orange. Specifically, the orange and black of another team’s jackets. They’re filing through the same doors we just entered, shoving each other and generally acting like testosterone hounds. It’s all very familiar.

And then the room tilts a little as my gaze locks onto a sandy-blond head. I only need the oblique view I’ve got to recognize the shape of his smile.

Fuck me. Jamie Canning is staying at this hotel.

My entire body tenses as I wait for him to turn his head. To look right at me. But he doesn’t. He’s too engrossed in conversation with one of his teammates, laughing at something the guy has just said.

He used to laugh with me that way. I haven’t forgotten the sound of Jamie’s laughter. Deep and husky, melodic in a carefree kind of way. Nothing ever kept Jamie Canning down. He was the epitome of go-with-the-flow, probably because of his laidback California upbringing.

I hadn’t realized just how much I’ve missed him until this very moment.

Go talk to him.

The voice in my head is persistent, but I silence it by wrenching my gaze off Canning. With the colossal amount of guilt lodged in my chest, it’s now become even more evident that I need to apologize to my old friend.

But right this second I’m not ready. Not here, with all these people around.

“It’s fucking Grand Central Station in here,” Cassel mutters.

“Dude. There’s an errand I need to run. Come with me?” I form this idea on the fly, but it’s a good one.

“Sure?”

“Back door,” I say, nudging him toward a nearby exit.

Outside, I realize how close we are to Faneuil Hall and all the touristy crap they sell there. Perfect. “C’mon.” I give Cassel a tug toward the first row of stores.

“Forgot your toothbrush?”

“Nah. I gotta buy a gift.”

“For who?” Cassel hefts his duffel higher on his shoulder.

I hesitate. I’ve always kept my memories of Canning to myself. Because they’re mine. For six weeks every summer, he was mine.

“A friend,” I finally admit. “One of the Rainier players.”

“A friend.” Cassel’s chuckle is low and dirty. “Trying to work out how to get laid after tomorrow’s game? What kind of store are you taking me to?”

Fucking Cassel. I should have left him in the crowded lobby. “Dude. It’s not like that.” Even if I wish it were. “This guy—Canning, their goalie—we used to be tight.” I reluctantly add, “Until I wrecked it by being an ass.”

“You? Who woulda guessed.”

“I know, right?”

I scan the row of storefronts. They’re full of the Boston tourist crap that is usually invisible to me: toy lobsters, Bruins pennants, Freedom Trail T-shirts. Something here would definitely fit the bill for what I have in mind.

“C’mon.” I wave Cassel into the cheesiest store and start scanning the shelves. Everything is garish as hell. I pick up a bobblehead doll of Paul Revere and then put it down.

“These are funny,” Cassel says. He’s holding a box of Red Sox condoms.

I laugh before I think better of the idea. “True. But that’s not what I’m looking for.” Whatever I choose, it cannot have anything to do with sex. We used to send each other all sorts of gag gifts—the dirtier the better.

But not this time.

“May I help you?” The sales girl is dressed in colonial garb, complete with the bosom-squishing flouncy dress.

“Sure you can, doll.” I lean against the counter in the cockiest way possible, and her eyes open a little wider. “You got anything with kittens on it?”

“Kittens?” Cassel chokes back a laugh. “What the hell for?”

“His team is the tigers.” Duh.

“Sure!” Miss Betsy Ross perks up at the request, probably because this job is boring as fuck. “One sec.”

“What’s the deal?” Cassel tosses the condoms down onto a table. “You never buy me prezzies.”

“Canning and I were summer camp friends. Tight, but we only saw each other for six weeks a year.” A very intense six weeks. “You have friends like that?”

Cassel shakes his head.

“Me neither. Not before, and not since. But we didn’t speak during the year. We texted, and we sent the box.”

“The box?”

“Yeah…” I scratch my chin. “I think it started on his birthday. He must have been turning…fourteen?” Christ. Were we ever that young? “I sent him this obnoxious purple jock strap. I put it in one of my dad’s Cuban cigar boxes.”

I could still remember wrapping the box in brown paper and taping it all to hell so that it would get there in one piece. I’d hoped he’d open it in front of his friends and get embarrassed.

“Here we go!” Betsy Ross returns to spread several things on the counter in front of me. She’s found a Hello Kitty pencil box, a big plush cat wearing a Bruins T-shirt, and white boxers covered with kittens.

“These.” I push the boxers to her. Underwear hadn’t been my goal, but the kittens are even the right shade of orange. “Now, for bonus points, I need a box. Cigar-shaped, if possible.”

She hesitates. “Gift boxes cost extra.”

“I’m good for it.” I wink at her and she blushes a little. She’s checking out my tats where they peek from the V-neck of my T-shirt. Can’t blame her. Most women do. Better yet, men like ’em, too.

“Let me see what I can find.” She scurries off.

I turn to Cassel, who’s chewing his gum, watching me like I’m not making sense. “I still don’t get it.”

Right. “So, a couple of months later I get the box in the mail. No note. It’s just the box I sent him but it’s filled to the top with purple Skittles.”

“Gross.”

“No, man. I fucking love purple Skittles. Took me a month to eat them, though. That’s a lot of Skittles. And eventually I sent the box back.”

“With what?”

“No idea. Don’t remember.”

“What?” yelps Cassel. “I thought this story had a punchline.”

“Not so much.” Huh. I didn’t realize until right this second the gift inside wasn’t that important. It was the act of sending it. I’d been just like every teenage kid going through the grind of school and practice and homework, communicating only by email and text and grunts. When that box showed up unannounced it was like Christmas, but better. My friend had thought about me and gone to the trouble.

As we got older, the jokes got even more ridiculous. Fake poop. Whoopie cushions. A sign that prohibited farting. Stress balls shaped like boobs. The gift wasn’t nearly as important as the fact that something was given.

Now Betsy Ross is back with a gift box that’s roughly the right size, even if it doesn’t flip open at the top like our box used to. “That will do,” I say, even though I’m disappointed.

“So…” Cassel looks around the store, bored now. “You’re sending him this one?”

“Yeah. Our old one is probably at my house somewhere.” If I weren’t an asshole, I’d know where. “I broke the chain a few years ago. So this’ll have to do.”

“I’m gonna text the manager and see if he’s got hotel keys for us yet,” Cassel says.

“You do that.” I’m watching Betsy Ross wrap the kitty boxers in some tissue paper, then tuck them in the box.

“Need a card?” she asks, flashing me a smile and a better view of her cleavage.

Those don’t work on me, sweetheart. “Please.”

She passes me a sturdy square of cardstock and a pen. I write exactly one word on it and drop it into the box. There. I’ll send this gift to Jamie’s room in the hotel as soon as we get back.

Then, when I can pull him aside somewhere quiet, I’ll apologize. There’s no way to undo the wreckage I’d wrought four years ago. I can’t take back that ridiculous bet I’d forced on him or the very awkward result. If I could go back in time and restrain my stupid eighteen-year-old self from pulling that bullshit, I would do it in a heartbeat.

But I can’t. I can only man up and shake his hand and tell him it’s good to see him. I can look into those brown eyes that always killed me and apologize for being such a dick. And then I can buy him a drink and try to go back to sports and smack-talk. Safe topics.

The fact that he’d been the first guy I ever loved and the one who made me face some terrifying things about myself…well, all that will go unsaid.

And then my team will kill his in the final. But that’s just the way it is.