Heteronym

Chapter 1

Fucking people.

They were everywhere. I'm a social person, but there are some days I just want to deck the shit out of almost every person I come across. I wouldn't call it rage, per say, more of an ingrained discontent towards my fellow man. Said man didn't necessarily have to do something wrong, they were just more of a nuisance. In a city like New York, every person was a nuisance.

This reminded me of why I hated Manhattan. There were always so many people that it was impossible to just hear peace and quiet on the streets. There were always people on the sidewalks, lines to go anywhere, and no parking. I rarely rode in cars before moving to Connecticut where I developed a love for expensive sports cars. Now it was like going back to prison after being free. I still had a car, I just I never used it now.

At least my apartment was two minutes from NYU, where I was going for my doctorate. Some people might not realize that you can jump from bachelors to doctorate, but if you had the grades and found the right program, you could easily do it. As easy as a doctorate would come, anyway. But those required research which is why I was walking into a small coffee shop off campus at five in the morning; to meet my co-researcher and catch up on our observations of various spectrographs over the past few weeks. I won't get into the details, but let's just say our doctoral dissertation will be on inferred astronomy and the effect of galactic nuclei on black holes. Light stuff, really.

Note the sarcasm.

Most people would call me crazy. Keeping up a newer relationship in a new city with a new demanding job while also still going to school. I just call it flexible. But the truth is, supervisors always pushed for PhD's to take three or four years which meant I had a lot of time to pack into one day. And if practice started at eleven, that meant I was working from five to ten whether that be in the lab, talking about results, or attending my three spaced out classes. The complicated schedule left me with practice from eleven to four on non-game days with optional additional workouts after. On game days, practice was eleven to one then I could nap and start the whole thing over again at five before the game.

Despite still getting at least six hours of sleep, getting up at four thirty in the morning still made me feel like shit, which was why coffee shops were my ideal location to meet up in the morning. As I walked in and the smell of strong coffee beans hit my nose, I automatically felt at home. I rather mindlessly ordered a large black coffee before taking my cup and sitting at a two person wooden table in the back corner, tossing in a scoop of vanilla protein powder from a small snack sized container in my backpack.

In all honesty, I still hadn't gotten used to my new life. There was so many parallels to my old lifestyle, but the shine of being on an NHL team and going for a doctorate, not a masters, was something I couldn't shake. As I pulled out my cool silver laptop and a thick pile of papers, a familiar voice caught my ear. "You need another forest for tomorrow or is that stack good enough?"

My eyes snapped up from my work to see the six foot one, dark haired brunette with a lighter beard sit down in the wooden chair across from me, dressed in joggers and a long sleeve blue, dry fit Rangers shirt. "Ha ha, very funny, Nowak," I drawled back at the twenty/six year old left defender. Every team, whether they were good or atrocious, had that one player everyone knew the name off. That player was Taylor Nowak and that team was the New York Rangers; my new team.

Although last years record placed the Rangers in the upper bottom half of the standings, hopes for this year were exponentially higher with a new goalie and a new center, fresh off the draft for a keen eight point four million and nine point one million respectively. Eight point four wasn't bad in my opinion; the literal average for NHL goalie salaries. I must be doing something right as a rookie.