When We Write the Stars

Chapter 20: Hayden

"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."- Ferris Bueller's Day Off

     "Who the hell are you texting," I ask Coleman as we're sitting in the terminal of the airport waiting to board our flight to Boston for tomorrow's game. We're playing Boston College who is also undefeated this season, and likely to be who we play in the Frozen Four if we make it.

     "Fucking Adrianna man," he says setting his phone down in frustration, "We've been playing iMessage games all morning, looser chooses the next game and she keeps sending those fucking word games and I always lose them."

     "You're still on this? I thought you guys agreed to call it a tie after last night," I respond. After eating, everyone else was hanging out, chatting, and then eventually left but Coleman and Adrianna spent the entire night gaming, none of us realizing just how competitive they were.

     "Neither of us liked that, so we're playing iMessage games until we can play again in person for real."

     "You realize she's into women, right? There's no future hook-up in this for you."

    "Dude," he says turning more serious than I'm used to seeing him, "This has absolutely nothing to do with sex. I respect her way too much as a gamer to even go there, plus she showed me a picture of her girlfriend. She's hot. That means she's beating me when it comes to girls too. So I have to win this next game of word hunt if it kills me."

    I stifle a laugh because he is dead serious and look around making eye contact with Payne who looks at me equally as shocked and on the verge of laughter as me. I then shoot a quick text to Cassie.

Hayden West: Looks like Adrianna and Coleman are besties now, they're battling via iMessage now

Cassie Bennet: I KNOW. We've been black Friday shopping all day and she keeps stopping to play him back. We've created a terrible monster.

     I smile, and then turn my phone back onto Do Not Disturb. Boston College is good, and I don't need any distractions this weekend. I told Cassie I'd call her after the game, but that she probably wouldn't hear from me until then. I needed hockey to be my only focus for the next 24 hours. I had footage of both of us playing and them that I was going to watch on the plane as prep.

     When we landed in Boston a few hours later, I didn't so much as look around, a bunch of the guys on the team especially the newer ones were excited. All of the Boston schools were in a different conference so we didn't play them too often, and the last time we'd played a Boston school they'd come to us. The new city was exciting and all, but I'd be back so many times when I was hopefully in the NHL. I'd focus on where I was then, for now, I needed to be on my game.

     That meant as soon as we got to the hotel and got to our rooms, while most of the guys were making plans to go out and explore the city a little bit this afternoon, I'd told them all in the most threatening voice I could muster that If any of them so much as had a sip of alcohol I'd hound their asses when we got back, I was making my way to the hotel's gym if you could even call it that to get a workout in.

     Gibbs and Payne both joined me, which didn't come as much of a surprise. They were both working just as hard to get noticed by NHL teams and hopefully sign somewhere as a free agent. Normally Coleman would too, but he was too busy trying to beat Adrianna at their iMessage games. I was definitely going to confiscate his phone tomorrow morning and not give it back until after our game.

     I ended up running four miles on the little treadmill in the hotel gym, spending the entire time going through everything that needed to happen tomorrow, and which guys I needed to check on tonight to make sure they really didn't get into trouble. I loved being Captain and getting to lead my team, but on nights like this when we were in a hotel before a game I really just felt like a glorified babysitter. For the most part, I trusted my guys. They all knew how big of a game this was, destroying Boston College's perfect record would feel so good, especially for the guys who'd been on the team the past three years. It was Boston College who beat us in the Frozen Four during my sophomore year. We'd been wanting revenge ever since. The game was also nationally televised, which happened for us on occasion, but this time it just felt big.