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Georgie hadn’t been wrong about the Whalers’ potential. He’d just been wrong about how far they’d go.
One win short of Eastern Conference Champions is nothing to sniff at, especially after last year’s exit, but nobody’s finding any comfort in that, at least not right now, everybody still fully dressed and completely downtrodden, the locker room so silent they can hear the roar of the crowd as the Prince of Wales is presented.
It’s time for a speech — past time — but James doesn’t give many of them in the best of circumstances, and right now he looks just as lost as everyone else. Finn’s usually the one doing it, and he gives good ones, but Finn’s been out the entire round, so it shouldn’t be his job. This isn’t something he needs to answer for.
“We were better than tonight,” Georgie says, barely even needing to raise his voice for it to ring clear across silent room. “We deserved better than tonight.”
He gets a few nods then, a few guys looking at him rather than their laps.
“We had some shit luck,” Georgie says. “Got some bad calls, got a couple goals taken back, lost some guys. Too many guys — half the damn d-corps are in suits right now.”
Finn, leaning against the wall with the other injured players, gives him a little smile when Georgie catches his eye. He blocks Georgie’s view of the rest of them, but Georgie knows they’re there. They’re all there right now.
“Nobody gets this far without facing some adversity,” Georgie says. “We had some shit luck, and we needed to find a way through it. And we didn’t. And that’s on us.”
“I’m not going to talk about next year,” Georgie says. “Some of us won’t be here next year, and honestly, I’m sick of looking at the future and pretending we know shit about what’s coming. But we deserved better than this. And we’re a better team than we were tonight. I stand by that. I think if we’d won tonight chances were good we would have gone on to win it all. But we didn’t.”
Most of the guys are looking at him now, waiting for Georgie to pull it all together, which is enough to make Georgie lose the thread, but thankfully Finn takes over before Georgie is stuck wrapping his speech up with something like ‘and that fucking sucks’, which is about all he has left to say. It probably isn’t the kind of note you want to end on, no matter how true it is.
The coaching staff come in a few minutes later, Coach giving a speech of his own, and the spell is broken, the room back in motion, guys starting to get undressed, head to the showers, go back to their lives, or whatever hasn’t been put on hold since playoffs began. It still feels different than the room usually does, even after losses — velcro and zippers are clear as day over what little conversation there is, nobody quite willing to look one another in the eye, not yet.
But nobody’s rushing out, either. Georgie’s pretty sure they’d all love to be alone right now, but this is the last time they’re all going to be in the same room, and at least in here they all know everyone else feels just as shitty as they do. It’s something. Not much, but something.
“Since when do you make speeches?” Robbie asks, and Georgie looks up.
“Figured Finn’s dealt with enough lately,” Georgie says. “And I wasn’t putting that on Cap.”
“That dude has literally not said a word since you all got off the ice,” Robbie says. “So good call. Sorry about, you know.”
“Yeah,” Georgie sighs. He’s pretty sure if they still had Robbie they’d be booking their tickets to the Finals, considering how far they got without him — then without Petr, then Andrew, then Finn — but there’s no way to know, all of that just a lingering bad taste in the mouth.
“Nice speech, though,” Robbie says.
“Was it?” Georgie asks. “I don’t even remember half of what I said.”
“Could have compliment sandwiched it a bit more,” Robbie says. “But it was good. You did good.”
He wouldn’t have blamed Robbie for booking it as soon as the speeches were done, leaving this mausoleum of a locker room, but after patting Georgie’s shoulder, somewhere between ‘buck up, soldier’ and ‘there there’, Robbie goes over to Holden’s stall, presumably to try to cheer him up. Which Georgie supposes is what he was doing at Georgie’s stall too. He tries not to think too much about the fact Robbie came to him first. It isn’t even weird — most guys would talk to their D-partner first.
Finn sits down heavily beside him.
“Couldn’t do it without you, Schneids,” Georgie says.
“Shut up,” Finn huffs, leaning into him, and Georgie leans back into him, even though Finn’s in an immaculate game day suit and Georgie’s shirtless and sweaty. He really doubts Finn cares.
“I’m probably getting sweat all over your suit,” Georgie says, just in case.
“I don’t care,” Finn says, and Georgie wraps an arm around his shoulders, hauling him in for a proper hug.
*
“—take full responsibility,” Georgie says to the assembled reporters. “I don’t think anyone out there played as hard as the first line did, they got us the offense we needed, but we couldn’t hold up our end. And yeah, we were missing a few key guys, but I’m not going to stand here and make excuses to you guys. Like I said, I take full responsibility for my play this series. The fact we pushed it to 7 with the injuries we had on the back end just points to how good our offense was.”
“Any chance we’re going to find out you were playing on a broken foot again?” one of the reporters asks.
“Unfortunately I don’t have any excuses, unless you count getting old,” Georgie says, getting a murmur of laughs in return. “I came out lucky, especially compared to some of the guys — just some bumps and bruises, the usual stuff.”
The next stretch of questions are all those injuries, reporters trying to get more information now that it can’t be used against them, doesn’t matter anymore, and Georgie answers all of them,. Question after question rephrased ever so slightly, and Georgie does them the courtesy of rephrasing his answers ever so slightly, even though they’re all the same: they’d get better answers if they asked management, coaching staff, the players themselves.
It’s a relief when the subject finally changes — not much, really, just enough that Georgie can actually answer.
“How did it feel, getting to play with Lombardi again, only to have him sidelined so early in the postseason?”
“I don’t think it’s the way either of us wanted it to go,” Georgie says. “But it was nice to get the chance to play with him again.”
He spends more time with reporters than he ever has on any media day before. More time than he needs to, even — if they’re asking him things, it means they’re not asking James, who looked almost seasick when Georgie saw him earlier, Finn, who’s probably taking it all on himself, chiding himself for not toughing it out, playing through the pain. Georgie gets the feeling, obviously, but playing on a broken foot is one thing — Finn might have made it a game or two, but it would have probably cost him his knee.
By the time Georgie gets a chance to clean out his locker, it looks like most of the guys have already left. Half their shit’s still there, though, the room haunted with empty lockers and abandoned belongings, the garbage bin overflowing with empty wrappers, promotional calendars, half-full Gatorade bottles. Finn would be so annoyed — he spent half the season lobbying for recycle bins, and they’re still tossing plastic in the trash.
Georgie looks over at the recycle, but it’s stuffed to the brim too, mostly with Gatorade bottles, empty this time, at least.
Georgie opens his locker, carefully taking down the pictures of Tessa and Toby. He tucks them into his breast pocket so they won’t get crumpled with the rest of his shit, along with the drawing Tessa made him for the playoffs — pirate themed, naturally. Though honestly, he’s just taking her word for it, since he can’t really tell what any of her pictures are meant to be. It doesn’t translate from her head to her hand quite yet. Maybe it will, and maybe it won’t — Georgie’s no artist himself — but he’ll keep hanging them in his locker anyway. As long as they keep signing him, he guesses. Georgie showed his age, this last series. Felt it, too. He isn’t even old — in most careers he wouldn’t even have seniority — but hockey’s a young man’s game, and maybe Georgie isn’t actually old, but he isn’t a young man either, hasn’t been in a long time.
Georgie sits down, palms his hair back, looking at the detritus surrounding him, all of them like kids on the last day of school, impatient for freedom again. Sits and wonders exactly what it is he’s waiting for. Robbie probably didn’t have to do much media, so it’s not a surprise his locker’s hanging empty, but it feels strange, not saying goodbye. Unsettled or something.
Again, all Georgie can think of is the last day of school — like he didn’t get his yearbook signed or something. Went to say goodbye to someone he was probably never going to see again, only to find out they already left, and the never-seeing-again had already started.
Finn’s still in there, of course. Georgie’s sure he’ll stay until the bitter end. He figures he can wait for him, keep him from sticking around and sorting the recycling, maybe ask if he wants to get something to eat.
Georgie takes his time packing up his remaining things, but Finn still hasn’t emerged, so he checks the news, his feed, opening his email, all on autopilot, even though he doesn’t actually want to hear from anyone right now.
Except maybe that’s not true, because there’s an email from Robbie Lombardi at the top of his inbox, and Georgie clicks it so fast he almost drops his phone.
Hey,
Sorry I didn’t get a chance to properly say goodbye. I meant to stick around until they quit grilling you, but this young reporter found me after my media availability. From BU’s student paper, if you’d believe it. He had all these questions to ask about the dynamic duo reunited again and he was so eager I didn’t have the heart to turn him down. Only realizing now that he might have been counting on that. Anyway, I took him for coffee and told him my side of things. Just the good parts, obviously. All the shit that’ll make the alumni proud.
I also gave him your number and told him to reach out. You don’t have to answer him, but it’d probably make for a better story if he heard from you too. His name’s Henry Edwards. I don’t know what it is, everywhere I go there are dudes named after kings.
I know it was too early for next year last night, but I genuinely think you guys are just a step away. You’ve got a really good team there, and you know I’m not just saying that. Obviously I wish things had turned out differently for me and the team, but I’m genuinely glad they traded me to the Whalers. I sure as shit wasn’t expecting that back in February, but I don’t mind being wrong about this one.
Take care of yourself, okay?
Robbie
“Right,” Georgie says. “Right.”
Nothing to wait for, then — or, at least, none he needs to make excuses to himself for. Transparent ones, really, if he bothers to look for more than a second. And he’s had a lot of good reasons to look away, lately, try to focus on doing his job, on doing it well, as the D corps started to collapse around him. But he’s got months stretching ahead with nothing but time — Tess home all day once summer hits, Toby set to start crawling soon.
There’s training too, of course, but that’s work, that’s not — the game, he guesses. It sounds so sad when he puts it like that, up on a pedestal. But even though it isn’t that shining beacon it once was for him, the blank check, the golden fucking ticket, sure, but he loved it before it became anything like that. Loved it for itself, and the rest just followed.
And he loves it even now, sitting in a room that reeks of stale sweat and whatever science experiments are in that trash can, every part of him aching, just like it has for weeks now. Bumps and bruises wasn’t a lie, exactly, but in the regular season they’d have sat him weeks ago. Might have sat him anyway, at least for a game or two, but then Finn tore his knee up, and it became a non-starter, the Whalers’ defensive depth spread paper thin, Georgie with more experience than almost all of the rest of them combined. It’s a miracle they made it as far as they did, really. Mostly thanks to James willing them forward with every piece of him, Holden and Ryan along for the giddy ride. Carrying the team like he did, it’s no fucking wonder Cap looks like he’s been wrung out to dry.
He still loves it, but now he loves it in the way you love something you know you could lose any minute. It’s different, that kind of love.. Of course you only figure out, well down the line, that you should have loved everything like that, because there is nothing worth keeping that you can’t lose.
“Waiting for me?” Finn asks.
“Yeah,” Georgie says. “Want to see the kids? Tess keeps dropping heavy hints about missing Matey Finn.”
Finn’s face brightens. “One last chance to use the beard.”
“You know, you could keep it,” Georgie says, though Finn’s already shaking his head. “It suits you.”
“It freaks Cheez-It out,” Finn says, because of course he cares less about whether a beard suits him than whether it freaks out his brother’s dog. “Logan already shaved last night. I was going to, I just—”
Georgie went down to the basement and watched the coverage of it on a gigantic screen, the beer fridge humming at him fifteen feet away, well stocked, in case there was a call to celebrate. He watched the late night coverage, and then he watched the game. Every time they zoomed in on him he saw it — every bit of helplessness he’d felt, the feeling of being profoundly out of their depth, all plainly visible in his body language, written across his face.
He doesn’t remember much else about watching it, except that commentators mentioned Robbie once. Talked about him and Georgie — a force at BU, a Cup with Washington, and possibly the same thing in Hartford, except it’d all fizzled out. It came out of context and sounded rehearsed, like the color commentator been waiting to drop it in.
But he didn’t tell it right. He got the year Robbie left BU wrong. Said he dropped out, and Georgie wanted to call him, even though the dude was national, not local, a dude who wouldn’t deign to cover a Whalers game unless they were in the ECF, and Georgie had never met him in his life. When would he even correct himself? The Whalers season was over. Robbie was never going to play another NHL game.
When Mel came down in the morning she found him passed out on the couch, and he woke to her shaking his shoulder, more gentle than he probably deserved. Woke up with a crick in the neck that’s still there, though muted now, just another bit of noise among the rest.
“I get it,” Georgie says, belated, and Finn smiles at him like maybe he does. It’s not like Georgie’s shaved his beard yet either.
Georgie helps Finn pack up, and then both drive to his place, taking separate vehicles. No point carpooling, not when there isn’t anything to come back to, at least not until the end of summer. The kids are delighted to see Finn, Tessa swarming his legs and Toby giving him a wide, gummy smile he only gives his favorite people. Mel seems relieved too, but maybe Georgie’s just assuming that. He can’t read her half the time anymore, and the times he thinks he can, he ends up being wrong.
“She’s kind of picked up a robbery thing,” Georgie says in warning when Tessa disappears to raid her costume box, show Finn her latest bounty. It did make it to the playground despite their best efforts, and the school has made it clear it’s not impressed. “Just in the last couple series. We’re trying not to encourage it, but—“
She always gives it right back. Counts her booty, cackling more like super villain than a pirate, then, once she’s done admiring it for a minute or two, she gives it all back, in the exact same condition she took it. Honestly, she’s more like a TSA agent than a pirate.
She makes Finn her first mate, though, which means he’s safe. And so are the rest of them, after Finn somehow convinces Tessa that there are better ways than a life of crime. Georgie smiles, watching, sees Mel smiling too, hiding it behind a glass so Tessa won’t see it and catch on. Robbie would find it hilarious — he already thinks Finn’s the biggest goody-two-shoes he’s ever met, in both senses of the word, and now he’s reforming a child.
He thinks about that email Robbie sent him, sitting in his inbox, thinks about telling him all this, but then, he already replied while he was waiting for Finn. Said goodbye, and good luck, and everything else you’re meant to when someone walks out of your life and you can’t get down on your knees and beg them to stay, because you’re too proud, or scared, or because you already know it won’t change anything. Just like he already knows that, no matter what he says, Robbie isn’t going to reply.
Tessa’s unusually patient at dinner, clearly taking her cues from Finn. He’s the most patient person Georgie’s ever met. It makes him a good example, though a hard one to follow, Tessa almost vibrating with the urge to leave her seat as Finn cleared his plate for the second time.
“What did you do to my kid, Schneider?” Mel asks after Tess goes to bed without a murmur of protest, other than a request she get her bedtime stories from her first mate, who, of course, obliged, coming out of her room a shockingly short amount of time later announcing she was fast asleep.
Finn blinks. “What do you mean?”
“Took her job,” Mel says.
“Her living,” Georgie says, catching on. “What’s a pirate without the life of crime?”
“Just a sailor, I guess,” Finn says, and then, already chortling at his terrible joke, “a Whaler.”
“Oh, fuck off, Finn,” Mel says, but she’s laughing too, and for a moment Georgie thinks that they could run it back. That it could be like it had been last year, all the years before that, like Robbie had never been here — the Whalers forever on the cusp, Tessa delighted, delightful, in everything she does, Toby so tiny in the cradle of Finn’s hands, but smiling wide, knowing he’s safe with him. His family just a drive away, here when he needs them, then gone, without him even asking, leaving Georgie to grieve.
Because he does, every year he does. It sounds so fucking pathetic, he knows that, but every year, there’s grief at the end. The year there isn’t, that’s the year he has to stop. Or the year he wins it all, he supposes. But probably not.
And probably he won’t be so lucky. Probably, like Robbie, he won’t have the luxury of choosing — it’ll come for him, a lingering injury that never truly recovers, a hard clean check, an accidental collision, a shot block, and when he works his way back from it, he won’t be good enough anymore. The window closed. The curtain pulled.
But until then he can have this, maybe. If he tries hard enough for it, if he stretches himself just a little further — another year or two, maybe three if he’s really lucky. Anything more than that would be a dream, and about as likely. And then — he doesn’t know. Tessa will still be delightful, Toby hopefully still smiling with his whole body. His family still there for him, most of the time. Maybe he even learns what Mel’s face means again. Or maybe he just ties himself in knots the moment he’s left to loose ends.
And anyway, the moment’s over — Toby kept fussing on the baby monitor, so Mel’s gone up to check on him, Finn disappearing to the bathroom. Georgie bides his time, mostly on autopilot — news, feed, email — before stopping, hard, on Robbie’s name at the top of his inbox once again, all lit up with the bold of a new, unread message. Stopping on Robbie’s reply.