Playing Hurt Read online

  I huffed out a laugh. “Okay, yeah, I get it. The more I tell myself not to think about it, the more I will.”

  “Right. So don’t think about not scoring. Reframe your negative thoughts. Now…remember these things even in practice. Every shot you take on net during practice, play the puck until it’s in the net or the goalie freezes it. Go after the rebounds. Do whatever it takes to get the puck in the net, even when it’s a practice. And when you do it, you scored—tell yourself that.”

  We talked more about these things until a couple of the guys jumped onto the ice and Coach was at the bench getting ready for our practice.

  I was ready.

  * * *

  —

  I worked hard during practice. I barely even noticed my wrist, so that was good.

  Marc Dupuis, our team captain, talked to me as we were leaving the ice. “Good practice, Chaser.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I know you’re frustrated about not scoring.”

  I swallowed a sigh. Apparently everyone knew I was frustrated.

  “Just remember…it doesn’t have to affect your confidence. Even if you’re not scoring or contributing offensively as much as you’d like, you can’t let it get you down. There are lots of other things you can do to help your team. And you do. You have a big presence on the ice, in the room. Lots of other contributions.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  He tapped me with his stick and strode ahead of me to the dressing room.

  In the room, Tony flagged me down right away. Apparently Coach had talked to him. I swallowed a sigh as he led me into the training room with tables set up for physical and athletic therapy. Brick was stretched out on one table where Cal, another trainer, was working on his shoulder.

  “Hop up.” Tony patted a table.

  I gritted my teeth and sat.

  “Right wrist?” Tony reached for my arm and put it through a series of motions, flexing and extending it, rotating it, feeling around. “Nothin’?”

  “Nope. Just when I move certain ways. It actually feels fine today.”

  “Okay. First thing we’ll do is get an X-ray.”

  I nodded. Fine. I’d go for an X-ray.

  On Thursday afternoon, Hartman sat in his stall in the Aces dressing room, answering questions about his lack of offensive production. “I can’t score right now,” Hartman said. “I’m working on some things, back to basics, trying to play a simple game. I know at some point, they’re going to go in again.”

  The twenty-five-year-old is clearly frustrated and down on himself, but answered questions with stoic composure.

  —Chicago Press

  * * *

  —

  I didn’t know why, but that night I went on Twitter and brought up Jordyn’s profile. She was tweeting about the game between the Condors and the Stars. That made me smile.

  I tweeted at her, Stars will win.

  No! Her reply came swiftly.

  I settled into my couch and found the game on TV. Sure enough, Stars were leading three–one.

  Stars have defense problems, she messaged me. Our top line is hot!

  Their top-scoring center blasted one past the Stars’ goalie.

  She tweeted at me Go Condors!

  I laughed out loud. Then I changed the subject. Great article about you in Panache.

  I cringed, wondering if I should admit in public that I’d just read a women’s magazine.

  Thank you! It was fun.

  And sexy cover.

  Yeah, I was going there. I was flirting.

  I smiled. Then the Stars scored. I tapped in my tweet. Uh-oh…

  It’s okay! Still lots of time! #GoCondors!

  I held on to my phone as I watched the game. Jordyn’s next tweet came moments later. Are you kidding me? That was so not goalie interference! #GoCondors

  I nodded my head, making a face. Have to agree with you there, song girl.

  Condors took a penalty for that bad call and sure enough, the Stars scored on the power play.

  Jordyn’s next tweet had another laugh bursting from my chest. Hey ref, does your boyfriend know you’re screwing us? #GoCondors

  She was passionate about her team. I liked that. You tell ’em.

  Who are you cheering for?

  I’m Switzerland in this game.

  Huh. Okay.

  I didn’t really want the Stars to win because they were in our division and two points can be the difference when it comes to making the playoffs. But I couldn’t cheer for the Condors either since they beat us last year in the playoffs. That still burned.

  But the next time the Condors play the Leafs…watch out.

  Leafs???? You’re a Leafs fan??? OMG

  I grinned. Go Leafs go.

  What do you call 23 millionaires sitting around a TV watching the Stanley Cup Finals?

  My face scrunched up at her question. Before I could answer anything, she tweeted again. The Toronto Maple Leafs.

  I cracked up. It didn’t bug me, because even though I grew up a die-hard Leafs fan, I had a sense of humor about it—and anyway they weren’t my favorite team anymore because the Aces were.

  Good one.

  The Condors scored again, but ended up losing. I was a good sport so I didn’t tweet anything about correctly predicting the outcome of the game. Nobody likes a poor winner.

  Jordyn tweeted one more time. Good game, boys #GoCondors

  I replied to her. Yeah, good game. Thanks for entertaining me.

  I felt a weird fizzy sensation in my gut. It wasn’t unpleasant. And I couldn’t stop smiling.

  Chapter 4

  Jordyn

  LOS ANGELES

  NOVEMBER

  “Congratulations, Jordyn!”

  “Thank you!” I smiled at the record producer. Then I accepted hugs from Gigi Hadid and Taylor Swift.

  Oh my God!

  What a night!

  I was at an after-party hosted by Justin Bieber, following the American Music Awards. The swanky lounge in West Hollywood was full of big stars and music industry VIPS, all drinking champagne, laughing and talking, and dancing. It was an amazing feeling, floating around in my beautiful gold sequined dress, accepting congratulations from everyone—fellow musicians, songwriters, producers, and agents. All the hard work over the last few years was worth this night—I was a winner!

  There was one person not congratulating me and that was Polly Martinez, who’d been nominated for the same award. You know when everyone says it’s an honor to be nominated, and then smiles and claps when the other person wins? It’s bullshit. If I hadn’t won, I would have been so disappointed. Crushed. Of course, I would have put on an act and I would have congratulated the winner. But Polly doesn’t bother pretending she’s not pissed about this.

  That was okay. I could avoid her at this party. I had lots of friends in the business and she wasn’t one of them.

  I smiled at my manager, Aaron Garland, and my date for the night, Malik, and drank more champagne.

  The truth is, most people here weren’t really my friends. They were acquaintances and they liked me and I liked them, but I’d learned a few hard lessons over the years, and one of the hardest was that when push came to shove, most people here would shove me under a bus if it would help them and their own career.

  My best friend in Los Angeles was Malik (he used just one name), and I could honestly say that I trusted him and supported him and there was no jealousy or competition whatsoever between us. He’d been there for me since our days working on the Piper Reed show together. He was a musician too, a rapper, damn talented, and we’d recorded and performed together. The press tried to create a relationship between us, but we truly were just friends.

  There was one small thing dimming my pleasure this e
vening, and that was the way my throat had felt when I’d been onstage singing. I’d had that weird feeling again, like I had to keep clearing my throat, which I couldn’t when I was singing, obviously. Nobody else said anything, but I felt like my voice was rough. Different. Obviously it wasn’t that noticeable, but I noticed it.

  I’d thought I was getting a cold or something, but that was weeks ago and I felt okay.

  It was probably nothing. I didn’t have to perform for a couple more weeks—in New York at the Mistletoe Magic concert at Madison Square Garden—and it would be fine by then.

  I let Malik drag me onto the dance floor. DJ Jaymz was spinning some great mixes, and I wanted to forget that nagging worry about my throat and celebrate the fact that I was the New. Artist. Of. The. Year.

  I let out a little scream, arms over my head as I shook my booty, dancing in a circle, and Malik laughed.

  It wasn’t until about four in the morning when I was in the back of the limo with Malik heading home that I looked at my phone. Of course it had blown up with all kinds of messages and tweets; there was no way I could read them all. But I saw one from my Twitter hockey buddy Chase Hartman.

  Congratulations, song girl. You deserve that award. Happy for you.

  I curled my fingers around the phone and pressed it to my chest, closing my eyes. My parents had been there tonight. My agent, my manager, my publicist, and of course all the people from RXM Records had been there. My best friend Malik was there. They were all thrilled for me, my mom even crying, which made me cry too. But this tweet from a man I didn’t even know made my heart flutter.

  Weird.

  I tweeted him back. Thank you so much.

  He didn’t answer, which wasn’t a big surprise given what time it was. Even if he was on the East Coast it was still early morning. Hmmm…where was he? At home in Chicago? Or did they have an away game somewhere?

  I brought up the Aces’ schedule on my phone, which I may have bookmarked. I swiped my finger down the screen until today’s date came up. Oh wow…they’d played in Anaheim tonight.

  He was so close to here.

  I didn’t know why that gave me a strange feeling in my belly. It made me feel a little sad actually, because we’d been tweeting at each other for over a month, off and on, and I kind of felt like I knew him.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Malik’s voice had my head jerking up. In the dark car, the city lights slid over his face in an irregular rhythm. “Nothing.”

  “You look like something’s wrong. You should be happy.”

  I smiled at him. “I am happy. Just tired. Long day.”

  “No shit.” He rubbed his face.

  “Malik…how did you think I sounded tonight?”

  He blinked at me. “You sounded amazing. Everyone thought so. I heard people talking about you, saying you killed it.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.” He frowned. “Why? It’s not like you to fish for compliments.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “I’m not!”

  “You know you’re great, boo.”

  I sighed. “Not always.”

  “What is up with you? You just won New Artist of the Year, girl!”

  I smiled, relieved that I’d sounded okay. “Right. I’m just being neurotic.”

  “You do tend to overdramatize things sometimes.”

  I swatted at him with a huff. “I do not!”

  He lowered his chin and gave me a look.

  “Okay, I do. But you love me anyway.”

  “Yeah.” He grinned.

  * * *

  —

  After the AMAs, I kind of crashed.

  I knew you couldn’t stay on that kind of high for long. You just couldn’t. And even though I was happy and proud, it felt like a gigantic letdown. It didn’t make sense, I knew that, but it was how I felt.

  I got a teensy bit blocked in writing my music. I’d sit at the piano and realize I’d been staring into space for an hour and hadn’t accomplished anything.

  But I had commitments I had to honor, so I did the interviews and photo shoots. I went to the gym because it was part of the gig, not just because I needed to look good, but because singing and dancing onstage for an hour or more took a lot of strength and endurance.

  But whenever I had the chance, I was on my couch watching my Condors play. Or the Aces. Another thing I loved about hockey was how many games there were.

  I enjoyed watching the Aces play, and I found myself watching for Chase Hartman a lot during their games and cheering him on as well as the team. Sometimes when I watched a Condors game and he wasn’t playing, we’d get into Twitter conversations, trash-talking the refs or arguing over which team had the better defense. He knew way more about hockey than I did, and I didn’t want to make a fool of myself by pretending I knew more than I did, but I felt I held my own in our bantering. So it was weird that when I watched a game he was playing in, I kind of missed our back-and-forth on Twitter.

  Other people were noticing it too.

  I didn’t care. But people love to start rumors, and I’d seen a few comments online with people asking cute questions about what was going on between me and Chase.

  Everyone’s talking about the tweets between pop star Jordyn Banks and hockey star Chase Hartman. Apparently the two have never met, but they’re heating up social media with their online flirting.

  Is there more to this relationship than cyber flirting?

  The answer: no. We’d never even met each other.

  But in my crazy life, with my post-award downer and my writer’s block and my throat still tickling sometimes, those little exchanges were a bright spot that I looked forward to.

  I never tweeted anything about being down, or worried that I’d never write another song again, or that I had some terrible disease that was going to take my voice away. As Malik had pointed out, sometimes I’m a bit neurotic, and I prefer that the whole world doesn’t know that. Online I was always positive and cheery. Except when my team lost or took a stupid penalty or something.

  Chase was the same. People criticized how he was playing—I saw the comments. It had to be hard for him, but he never responded to them and, like me, his social media posts were always positive.

  One day I picked up my phone and went on Instagram and…whoa. Showing up in my feed was a picture of Chase wearing nothing but a pair of underwear.

  Holy shit.

  It was an ad for Elite Sportswear, a brand that had become really popular lately for all kinds of athletic and workout clothing for men and women. I owned a bunch of their sports bras and leggings.

  I blinked at it. Sweet baby Jesus in velvet shorts.

  The underwear was black, with the company name in red and white on the elastic at the top, boxer briefs that were tight and low-rise. But my mouth had fallen open at the body wearing the boxer briefs.

  Yes, I did use my thumb and middle finger to make the image bigger. And yes, there was a bulge in the underwear, but because they were black, you couldn’t really see much. But the rest of him…yow. Especially his thighs. Oh my God. They swelled from beneath the briefs, big muscles curving down to his knees, his legs dusted with dark hair. Above the waistband…more joy. He was ripped, with defined abs and pecs, rounded muscles at his shoulders and dark tattoos curving over his left shoulder.

  I sat and gazed at that picture for a long time. Then I sighed happily and set my phone down. That had just made my day.

  Chapter 5

  Chase

  CHICAGO

  “No, Mom, I’m not doing drugs.”

  I rubbed my forehead, talking to my mom on the phone.

  “Then what is going on with you?” she asked. “Are you partying too much? Staying out too late?”

  “Are you working out?” Dad asked, on an extension on the la
ndline at home in Sudbury. “You have to stay in top shape.”

  “I am working out. And I’m not partying. I mean, I go out once in a while.”

  “Are you seeing someone? Is it a girl? Is she disrupting your schedule?”

  “No! Jesus, Mom.” I sighed. So I had a little online obsession with a pop star; that wasn’t impacting my game. “One of the assistant coaches is helping me with some stuff. It’s just one of those things. I’m trying to relax and not focus on scoring goals.” And you’re not helping.

  I loved my parents, and I knew the sacrifices they’d made for me to play hockey, and I appreciated them with my whole heart. But they were a bit helicopter-ish when it came to my hockey—my dad was a coach and a team manager, my mom watched at every game, and they were super involved in every hockey-related decision in my life. They weren’t the craziest parents at the rink, but they were up there. I’ll never forget when I was about seventeen, I was on a breakaway and my mom was yelling at me “Score! Score!” Good advice, Mom, thanks. I wouldn’t have thought of that myself.

  When I started playing hockey, I was small for my age and not the best skater. I’d been a little fearful on the ice…afraid of falling down. Afraid of the bigger kids. I didn’t tell my parents I was scared. I told them I wanted to quit.

  They were pissed.

  I remembered it clearly, even though it was so long ago, because it had felt like they didn’t love me anymore. The atmosphere in our home became chilly. They were still my parents—still took me to school, still fed me meals—but there were no hugs and kisses, no teasing words, no bedtime stories. I lay in my bed at night, cold and scared. I’d felt so isolated and alone. No kid should ever feel like that.

  I’d known what I had to do to earn their love. I started playing hockey again.

  That made my parents happy. When I played well, my parents were pleased. When I didn’t play well…they were pissed. Or disappointed.

  I remembered driving home from a tournament in a van full of hockey equipment that smelled only slightly better than if we’d been carrying around a dead body since 1996, in thick silence because my team had just lost the championship game because I turned over the puck to the other team’s star player in sudden death overtime. My parents’ disappointment had pulsed like a living thing. Then my dad had ended the silence by saying, “You broke another three-hundred-dollar stick.”