When We Write the Stars

Chapter 8: Hayden

" A team is something you belong to, something you feel, something you have to earn." – The Mighty Ducks

     After how well Sunday night with Cassie went, I thought for a second that maybe we could be friends. That maybe we weren't so different after all, I expected us to get along better on Tuesday. But here we were, both fifteen minutes early for class arguing over when we should meet next. I guess some things will never change.

     "Oh my god," she sighs, "You are literally saying that your schedule is more important than mine." She's practically shooting daggers at me with her eyes.

     "I'm not saying that," I respond equally as annoyed, "I'm just saying I can't change my hockey schedule. I'll be in another state."

     "Well I can't change my schedule either," she crosses her arms, and we both sit there for a second at an impasse.

     "Look, since you're so insistent that we watch these movies together," I start to say before she abruptly cuts me off.

     "Because you won't watch them if we don't do it together."

     I glare at her, "As I was saying, and by the way I would watch them, you just don't fucking trust me to do it. Why don't we just use one of those apps that lets you FaceTime and watch a movie and do it after my game on Friday?"

     "Won't you be partying or something after the game," she asks blatantly.

     "Nah, the party will be once we get back here, besides I'm the captain I have to set a good example and not sneak out of the hotel after curfew."

     "You? Set a good example," she asks again.

     Now, I'm kind of fed up, "Look do you want to do that or do you want to watch them separately?"

     "We can do that, it's fine," She responds, turning away from me to face the front of the classroom.

     I spend the remainder of time before and during class doing everything in my power to ignore her next to me. I didn't understand how after Sunday went well, we were even joking around with each other, she could suddenly be back to this awful bitchy person. I did not understand Cassie Bennet at all.

     Tonight's practice was brutal, with our first regular season game being this weekend, and it being against one of the better teams in our division, Coach was working us hard. Last season one of our biggest weaknesses was killing power plays, and with how much time we'd been spending working on them now we better be killing them this year. 

      We ran through so many different plays, rotating who practiced defending a power play and who practiced being on the offensive of a power play. Every time someone made a mistake that Coach considered below our level, the whole team did suicides. I could hardly feel my legs when we got into the locker room.

     We'd won all of our preseason games, but they'd all been against more local teams, and our real competition wasn't with teams we could drive to. For most of our competitive games, we had to fly to, either Colorado or its surrounding states, or to the east coast. I didn't want to know how much the school spent to fly us to New England and back every few weeks, but we made it worth it by going to the championship every year, and hopefully winning it this year.

     The rest of the week was a blur of trying to stay awake during class and grueling training both on and off the ice. I also had one on one meetings with all the new guys on the team to get a better feel for how they were off the ice, and to make them feel more comfortable on the team. At the end of the year, when me and my guys graduated, these underclassmen would be the ones left to carry on the legacy. Especially if we won which would hopefully mean some of the better sophomores and juniors would also get drafted or signed as free agents leaving these younger guys to carry the team next year.