I’ve decided to do a little series here on my personal blog, just for fun and for my own nostalgic tendencies, called Beginnings. In this series, I will post the very beginnings of books or stories that I never finished. It gives me a reason to go back and read old work, and maybe it’ll inspire me along the way.
Ultimately, I just want to put my work out there and write and revel in it, with no agenda, no money involved, no plan to finish a full book if I don’t need or want to. Just to dick around with fiction online, like back in the old days of FanFic Dot Net. You know what I mean.
Here’s the first installment. I have honestly zero recollection of writing this, but I did spend a few years in a hockey-obsessed haze, so it’s anyone’s guess what kind of nonsense I was spewing during that fugue state.
Enjoy!
Back on the Ice
Getting back on the horse is hard.
Shit. That sounds like gay innuendo. Ron’s never been good with metaphors. He’s never been good at much but skating. So here he is, getting back on the… ice, after a summer laid up in bed with a fucked ankle. And Luci’s here, the little shit, giving him a wide grin from center ice, holding his stick loose at his side.
Fucking Lucian DuBois. Assistant captain, star player, and twinkle-eyed showoff.
“Hey douchebag,” Ron calls, pausing at rink’s edge. Babby edges past, all overgrown beard and jostling elbows. He laughs, turning to grunt encouragingly at Ron before skating away across the ice.
“What’s that?” Luci shoots back, raising his free hand to cup it around his ear. He can hear fine. “Ankle still hurt? Don’t be a pussy, Ronnie.”
Fuck Luci. Ron hates him. He hates the well-groomed fully-toothed privileged little fuck, but somewhere deep down inside there’s some kind of respect. There’s got to be. A team functions on respect, no matter how blonde and blue-eyed and–
“Keep glaring,” says Smithie, skating up outta nowhere. He slows as he passes, a puck flying past him and slamming against the boards a yard away. He doesn’t flinch. “It really hurts his feelings when your face scrunches up all mean like that.”
“Fuck you Smithie.”
“Get on the ice, Ronnie.”
Fine.
Fine. So he does. It’s been over a week since he was declared fit to skate by his physical therapist, and a whole summer since the accident. But it feels like yesterday he was lying flat on his back, someone’s legs tangled up in his own, his ankle twisted wrong and screaming. He knows it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t see the guy coming, it was a mad scramble in the crease, everyone tripping over everyone like a damn cartoon. And he knows they could have won the game without him. Logically. He knows.
But when you’re on your way to being one of the top 5 defenders in the league before going down for the count when your team needs you most… well. Damn hard to be logical.
A puck skids past on the ice.
Fuck it. He was on his way to being who the fuck cares. It’s a new season.
He pushes off and he’s skating, like the world dropped out from under him, but he’s not falling. He’s flying. He’s home. He’s not the poetic type, not even close, but damn does it feel good. Crisp air rising from the rink. The thwack thwack of puck after puck against the boards. Skates scraping against ice. His teammates whooshing past and around him, racing, shooting pucks and laughing with an openness and excitement that comes with every new season.
“Hey, Ronnie! Fuck you, Ronnie, you sonofabitch.” The sound of Luci’s fucking voice.
“Now what, blondie, you gonna tell me my form’s off?”
Luci grins. Slightly crooked up close, an annoying trait that Ron wants really badly to ignore. “Fuck you. No. Glad you’re back, man.”
Ron’s opening his mouth ready to fire back when he realizes there’s no insult to counter. He should say thanks. He should. “Fuck you, Luci.”
Luci’s grin widens.
meg smitherman 