Who Wouldn't Want To Be Me

---Jordan's POV---

“You no-good piece of shit motherfucker!” I yelled skating straight over to the group of orange sweaters, grabbing him by the scruff of his neck and throwing him to the ice.

“What the fuck?” he snarled, but looked intimidated nonetheless.

“You fucking did this to him, you can’t beat him so you thought you’d just take him out? Is that it?” I hollered as he slowly got to his feet.

“What do you mean? All I did was hit the kid,”

“Then sliced him with your fucking skate!” I roared.

“I didn’t mean to! I went to skate away and he fucking rolled over right in front of me! I tried to hop over him but my skate caught his jersey! I didn’t think I’d cut him because I hit his hockey pants!” he defended himself, keeping a safe distance between the two of us.

“Bull fucking shit. You’re so goddamn jealous of him that you’d do anything to get rid of him,” my voice was a snarl as the words came from my gut. Max had been a good friend of mine, and had I not been this mad and worried about my best friend I would have never said it out loud.

“I’m not jealous of him! I’m not jealous of some stupid little fuck who thinks he can waltz in and be the next Sidney Crosby! Doesn’t he piss you off, the fact that he didn’t have to work half as hard as you to get to where he is? Hell, you’ve been with the Penguins for how many years and you’re only a third-liner, he’s been here a few months and he’s playing second line sometimes? Doesn’t that make you feel like shit?” he demanded.

“No; because he’s worked just as fucking hard as I have to be here. It’s not his fault that he’s this good at hockey, and that he keeps working so that he can improve. You have no idea the kind of time and work he puts into practices and working out; it’s his entire life! He isn’t trying to be anyone but himself, and if you weren’t so fucking stupid you’d see what a great guy he is,”

“Aww, how cute; sounds like you’ve got quite the little bromance with him. Why don’t you go hold his hand until he wakes up, then you can kiss him better,” he sneered, and then I saw red. I lost it, lunging at him and slamming my fists into his face until the refs and two of my teammates pulled me off of him. It felt good to cause him some pain, especially when all I had to do was look thirty feet down the ice and see the huge bloodstain left by the gash on my best friend.

“Staalsy! Staalsy stop it!” Sid hollered as he tried to hold me back. He may be strong, but my extra twenty pounds and five inches of height gave me a definite advantage. It wasn’t until Geno pinned my arms behind me that they managed to get me away from him, and I couldn’t help but smirk at the amount of blood on the ice and his jersey as he held his face in his hands. He’d dropped his gloves, and even attempted to get a few hits in, although it had been pointless for him to even try to fight back. He hadn’t stood a chance and he knew it, but since his gloves came off too we weren’t going to be on a Penalty Kill.

“Fuck man, what’d he say that made you snap?” Pascal asked as they skated me to the penalty box.

“Aside from totally bashing Cam? Called me gay,” I grumbled, feeling my ears heat up. Coming from a small town that wasn’t something that was considered ‘ok’. I had nothing against guys who swung that way; it’s their life, their decision, kudos to them for being their own person and doing what they believed in and all. But the way I’d been raised that wasn’t okay, so for him to accuse me and Cam of that had pushed me over the edge.

And the worst reason was because I was almost afraid it was true.

Cam was the closest friend I’d ever had; he was closer to me than TK, or even my brothers. He could always make me laugh, I could talk to him about anything, and he was always more than happy to step up and help me out. He had this contagious laugh, and made the best funny faces. It had hit me a couple of weeks ago that I’d started noticing the weird, little things, things I shouldn’t notice about my teammate. The way one corner of his mouth lifted up more than the other when he smiled, or the way he bit the corner of his lip when he was nervous, or stuck his tongue out ever so slightly when he was concentrating. That’s when I began to worry, and it wasn’t long after that that things started getting awkward with us. I tried to act as normal as possible, and so did he, but there was a tension in the air sometimes that hadn’t been there.

I was scared as hell that he knew. That any of the guys knew. I was sure it was just that I was confused about the whole Torrie thing and with him being my best friend – and I’ll admit in some ways a little feminine, though I’d never say it to anyone for fear of hurting his feelings – I was noticing this and feeling this way. All I could do was sit it out and hope that I’d come to my senses.

Or that he’d feel the same way.

As I sat in the penalty box my mind started to wander, something that didn’t usually happen, or at least hadn’t since I’d gotten over my breakup with Torrie. I mean, something like… that would be really awkward, but if he felt the same way surely it couldn’t be that bad? I mean, they say to love somebody they have to be your best friend too, and Cam definitely fit that description. I just couldn’t imagine… anything like that, with a guy. That would be too weird, too…gross, but maybe it was a mind over matter kind of thing. You know, like keeping yourself from barfing after seeing something gross; you just make yourself get over it.

Then there would be admitting this to any of my friends, teammates, or my family. I hadn’t said a word about any of this to anyone, because nobody would look at me the same way. I’d always been the kind of red-blooded, kind of “womanizer” type, I’d always liked girls, and lots of them. Nobody would know what to think if I told them the person I currently had feelings for played for the Penguins. God my face was bright red from just having this internal conversation. My parents would ask if I was joking, then go into extreme shock, before probably not speaking to me for a lengthy period of time. They’d come around after a few months, undoubtedly, but it’d be something I don’t think they’d ever really get over. I wasn’t exactly sure how my brothers would react; Eric was a bit of a traditionalist, so he’d take a while to understand. Marc would probably be happy for me, as weird as he’d find it, and Jared would be mortified for a little while.

To explain how my little brother would react wasn’t hard; we’d taken him out to a bar in Toronto for his nineteenth, and he’d been hit on pretty excessively by two gay guys, who had went as far as trying to feel him up. Now he’s pretty wary of any guy who he even suspects is gay. Once he talks to somebody and knows them he doesn’t have a problem with it, but anybody would react like that after his experience.

“Staal, time’s up,” I snapped my head up as the ref spoke to me, the door to the penalty box open. I hopped out, and skated down to watch Sid slide the puck across the line and score a goal, tying the game up for us before I went with them to the bench to sit down and wait for my next shift, hoping my face wasn’t still red and wondering if the people I considered my friends would still be my friends if they only knew what I’d spent the last five minutes thinking about.