Guarding Garrett (Hockey Allies Bachelor Bid) - RJ Scott
Chapter One
Garrett
In hindsight, I should never have done the naked photo shoot.
Nor should I have agreed to use a bath toy to cover the parts they couldn’t show. I was only copying what another player had done before, but maybe using a plastic hippo had been a bad idea. Because I got toy hippos thrown at me on the ice all the time, and some of those suckers were big.
Also I was the subject of a hundred hockey memes. Some of them funny, some downright weird.
Of course, hindsight is a beautiful thing and not immediately handed out to wannabe hockey stars alongside their skills with skates and a puck. But, at moments like on my birthday, I regretted the Burlington Dragons encouraging me to do the ESPN Body Issue at all. Seven years ago, and I’d only been twenty and flattered, hell, I was young and fit, no scars, no bruises, I was fast and winning, and I had no cares that my naked body would form the basis for a hundred online memes and jokes.
Take tonight, for example, and the fact that when I’d arrived for practice, my stall had been papered in printouts from the photo shoot, with crudely drawn genitalia where the hippo had been sitting. Then to top it all, the big sign which was crooked and held up with hockey tape read Hippo B-day Hooly. I turned to face the team, and none of them would look me in the eye, all apart from our goalie, who couldn’t quite keep a straight face.
“Assholes,” I said, and as soon as I acknowledged what they’d done to my stall, some of the guys collapsed in laughter, or at least the older Burlington Dragons players did. The younger guys, the rookies, sat with their mouths hanging open and probably waiting for me to blow a fuse.
Johan Dinquis, Mark Reid, and Graeme Stokes. Aka Dinksy, Reidsy, and Stokesy, were three big guys, two D-men, and a decent backup goalie, and they weren’t laughing at the display in my stall at all. They all seemed a little nervous, and I wondered if they’d been told to do this to my spot, being the newbies and all. I crossed my arms over my chest and raised my eyebrows, waiting for one of them to crack. It was Dinksy who made the first move; for some reason, he was the most terrified of me, which didn’t bode well for the team as he was often paired with me to work on his defense.
“Loki made us do it,” Dinksy blurted, and then hid his face in his hands when he realized what he’d done. Not only had he broken the sacred code of pranking, being that no player ever admitted shit. But he’d also dropped his two teammates, plus one of the veterans and the most obvious suspect in all pranks, in it with him. Reidsy and Stokesy elbowed him from each side, and he let out an oof, but still didn’t peek from behind his hands.
“You broke the code, dude,” Loki said in all seriousness.
Dinksy went scarlet. There was silence in the locker room, so much that I could hear tape being dropped in the corner, and then the laughter started. I didn’t know where it began, but it was infectious, and finally, I gave the newbies a break and sat back in my stall surrounded by naked pictures of myself, and laughed until I cried.
Dinksy was still scarlet when he showed his face, but he did smile when Loki came over and gave him a proud attaboy while rubbing his fine blond hair until it stood up with static. Nicki Lecour, or Loki as he was known, was the team prankster, and I wasn’t sure if the pranking had come first, or the nickname had, but he kept us on our toes.
One by one, the guys paraded past me, a chorus of “Happy birthdays,” making me smile. Gotta love the Dragons as a cool place to come to work each day.
The practice was predictable; somehow, I was involved in everything and got a face full of snow at every opportunity. Post practice, it was harassment as I showered and dressed, each individual just having to ask me loudly where we were going after, which they all freaking knew anyway.
When I was dressed and ready to go, there were a few gifts collected there, and I opened them one by one. There was my favorite candy from five different people, a bobblehead of