Bad Call

Chapter 1

"Yes, I made it mom, Im on my way there right now", I rumble into the phone while wheeling my suitcase out of the airport and towards the pick up zone. 

"Please just be safe, your father and I will be out as soon as we can, but we're shooting for late august". 

My mother (bless her heart), will always seem to think that the world is out to get me, no matter how hard I try to prove her wrong. Perhaps it's just her motherly instinct, or at least she'd try and play it off as that, so shed say. But I wasn't a stupid son, I knew the real reason was deeper than that. Two years ago, after publicly coming out, I had been hurt pretty bad by another teams enforcer, which led me to sitting out for the rest of the regular season. 

But times have changed, at least that's what I keep telling myself, especially now more than ever as my life was packed away into this suitcase, and I found myself in a completely new state, waiting for my ride. 

Speaking of which, judging by the loud music being blasted from the red Maserati, it seems like my ride had arrived. 

"Okay mom, Love you I gotta go" I spoke before hanging up, douche move, but Id hear about it enough later on.

The window went down, and a man with a rough looking face was grinning at me, with all of his three missing teeth. "Rookie!", boomed the man, my new teammate who was assigned with picking me up and bringing me to my new apartment. 

The man must have sensed my hesitance, as he parked the car and got out, and holy shit was he tall. I myself, stood at a good six foot one, but this guy was gigantic. I swallowed thickly and looked up at him. He was still grinning, why was he still grinning?

"Get in the car yes?", the man spoke, grabbing my suit case without giving me any warning, which caused me to become startled. The mans eyes widened with realization. "No need to be frightened rookie! Is me, Dorborov" The cheerful defenseman said while placing my suitcase into the backseat.

"Yeah, sorry, I wasn't expecting you to get here until later", I finally spoke, offering him a small, tight lipped smile before getting into the passenger seat. "I didn't expect you to be listening to Kesha", I snorted as TikTok was blasting. Aleksander Dorborov must have thought what I had said was pretty funny, because a booming laugh rattled his frame as he got in and shifted the gear into drive. 

"We are not defined by music, rookie" he merged into traffic, Kesha still on blast. 

He had a point there, perhaps it was just me, trying to act all tough to compensate for feeling so out of place. 

"Team is going out to dinner tonight, you join?" Dorborov asked while speeding at a concerning number. Had this man always acted like this off screen, or had he recently gotten one too many pucks to the head?

I sighed, racking my brain for any excuse I could use to get myself out of this. I can't just turn him down, but going would be awkward for me. I didn't know how people felt about having me join the team, let alone me being the youngest player on the team.

"I don't know big guy, I got a lot of unpacking to do" I carefully spoke, earning a scoff.

"Nonsense! I'll send Uber to pick you up!" was the last thing he said for a while as we shifted into a comfortable silence with Kesha singing. 

I took this as a time to review the email that Coach Berghman had forwarded to me, reviewing the layout of my new apartment, graciously paid for by the pirates financial offices. 

One master bedroom, one guest bedroom, fully equipped kitchen, two bathrooms, living room and deck. 

Dorborov whistled, peeping over at my phone. "Not bad for a rookie, my rookie year, still lived with parents", he clicked his tongue while his eyes went back to the road. I looked up from my phone. "What was it like? your Rookie year in the NHL I mean?", I asked, hoping for some advice from the big guy.