The Rest of the Story

by Tal Bauer

I tugged my hoodie off and laid it over his chest and under his chin like a blanket. It was covered in salt tracks and dried snot, but I took one of the sleeves, one of the cuffs, and curled it around Shea’s cheek, as if it were my hand holding him.

“Coates ground every fucking thing out of me. But seeing Brody? Seeing his smile? Hearing his laugh? Being around him, the way he is when he’s happy? For the first time in, God, forever, there was something good in the world again.”

“I swore I wouldn’t let Coates do what he’d done to us to Brody, or to any of the new kids. So I got everyone together, and I told them we had to do something. Gavin, he was thinking the same thing, and he said he had a plan.” That plan had been me. “I told them Coates would have to kill me before he hurt Brody. But…”

All this time, all these months, Lawson thought he knew the worst of it, that Coates had played his mental mind games and spun cat cradles out of the rookies’ psyches. To find out now that he’d been wrong, wrong in the most horrific way—

They were ragged and water stained in spots—tearstained, I realized—and the folds were soft, as if someone had opened and refolded them many times. I opened them up, scanned each first line. Dear Mom and Dad, I’m so sorry that you’re reading this— Dear Shea, Please don’t be upset. This isn’t your fault— I folded both and handed them back to Lawson. I wasn’t going to read that. I wasn’t ever going to read that.

Oh my baby oh my baby oh my baby

You made a plan, and you made it happen. You fought back. And you did save him. Brody is here. He’s alive, and he’s alive today because of what you guys put in motion. You got me?”

“He loves this place.” “He should, and he should be proud of it. He built it, and he’s the heart and soul of our team.”

Every happy moment, every sparkle of joy, all the times we’d stayed up playing video games or poker or wandered wide-eyed around Nashville or soaked up the rays in Tampa. Every win, every victory, our slingshot to the stars. None of it would have happened if Brody wasn’t there, and he’d been so close to not being here at all. He’d written his notes—

Owen’s gaze went straight to Brody, sleeping with his head in Lawson’s lap, and then to Lawson’s fingers in Brody’s hair. “You must be Lawson,” Owen said softly. “Brody has spoken a lot about you.”

A second later, he was crying, his back bowing as he sank into them, our nineteen-year-old NHL star going right back to his inner five-year-old who needed his mom and dad to make everything better.

Brody and I had shared a lot of looks throughout the season. Laughing looks and serious looks, looks of boisterous joy and heady triumph, fierce concentration and never-give-up grit. Early on, during one of those looks that passed between us, Brody had decided he wanted to live, that he didn’t want to die anymore.

He’d told Brody, I own you. I own you forever.

If I did, if I heard, if I listened to Brody’s voice lay out how he’d planned on erasing himself, and if I allowed my brain to think about my life, Shea’s life, Lawson’s life, the team’s lives, and Owen and Hazel’s life, without Brody, I’d splinter into a billion pieces.

“How’s your leg?” Shea looked blankly at his leg, finally seeming to notice the external fixator and the nails and the stitches. “Oh, wow.” Back to me. “Leg feels great.” We definitely needed whatever was in that IV made into Popsicles and handed out after a game.

when he was pinned by Coates’ car and didn’t even know if he was living or dying, his questions had been about a little boy posing for a photo and for Brody, not for himself. To me, Shea was the strongest person on the planet, bar none.

“You know, when you’re a younger man, and bad things happen to someone you love, you think you need to go out and slay the monster that’s crashed into their life. You think you need to drag the carcass back home and show it off, prove you’ve vanquished that evil. As you get older, you realize… Most times, that’s not really what someone needs from you. Most people don’t want the action hero. What they need, more than anything, is for you to be there.”

“that monster put my son through hell. He sent him so far to the edge of himself that he nearly leaped into that forever darkness. I’ve got two people to thank for anchoring my son to this world. One is that damn strong man upstairs, Shea, and the other is you. Brody walked back from that edge because of you. He’s alive because of you. You showed up, Morgan. You were there for him then, and here you are, doing it again. That’s the finest thing a man can do in this life: be there for someone.”

Then I turned and walked inside, strode across the lobby, and took the elevator to the seventh floor. Shea’s room was on the fifth. Coates was on the seventh.

Bro please don't

His hands were still long and strong, and I imagined them closing around Brody’s throat, tightening, choking Brody, Brody scratching at his wrists, clawing at those fingers, trying to free himself—

“You think you can waltz into my team, in my city, and take what belongs to me?” His lips pulled back, something primal, something that, to him, was probably a grin. “Showed you, didn’t I?”

When he looked up, thirty brutally-sober days later, he’d found a city that had forgotten him, a team riding high on success that he’d never tasted, and me, holding his former captaincy and leading the team that had been his punching bag for years.

I’d taken what he loved—not the team, or the players individually, but his power, his control, and his domination—and so he was going to take away what I loved: our bond, our team, our strength. The city’s love for us. And Shea, my Shea. He’d tried to kill Shea.

I didn’t kill my father when I was fifteen, even though I could have, and I didn’t kill Coates that morning on the ice, even though, maybe, I should have.

“Enjoy prison,” I said. “I’m going to make sure you’re there for the rest of your fucking life. And then, I’m going to make sure that everyone forgets your name forever.”

I showed him Brody’s nameplate—Zeagler, in our Outlaws font and our Outlaws colors—and then wrapped it around his wrist and tied in a knot. Now he could wear Brody’s name during the game beneath his glove and keep him close, the way he needed. I needed Shea close to me, too. “Can you tie Shea’s onto my wrist?”

He tucked my sweaty strands behind my ear. “So, what’s a guy like you doing in a place like this?”

AWWWWW

“Don’t make me smile,” I said, ruining it by smiling at him. “Ah, but you have a good one.” He leaned in, kissed my cheek. “I love you.”

I love them so much

“Next year,” I said to the circle. “Next year, we’re doing this again. All of us. And we’re going to win everything.”

She also told the world that anyone who had a Coates jersey, T-shirt, hoodie, player’s card, photo, hockey stick, puck, Happy Meal toy or even Cracker Jack sticker, should bring that to the arena and trade it in for anything they wanted. Signed stick of Shea’s? No problem. Signed jersey of Brody’s? Here you go. Game puck signed by Lawson? All yours. Coates was being erased, completely, from reality.

Bonne chance et bon courage! Merci, mon ami. I wish you were here, playing us. Me too. Win for us, eh? Oui, mon ami!

HOW DARE YOU MAKE ME TRANSLATE MORE FRENCH TAL BAUER

I felt the future of the ice we were standing on, heard all these cheers in another context, another time: with a Cup above our heads, me passing it to Shea and then Shea to Brody, and we were champions of the world, the best of the best, and we were all, all of us, together.

“Your contract.” It was day three hundred and one of my one-year contract with the Outlaws. “Kit-Kat, I’m yours forever,” I told her.

“Sign the rest of the team first. Give everyone big raises, extensions, and bonuses. Give them the world, and then give me whatever peanuts are left.”

Mike called. He was laughing when I answered. “So, one year with the Outlaws?” he said, once he could speak. “That’s what I said.” “One year, and then I had to get you out of there.” “Can’t believe you got me into this mess. What kind of agent are you?”

She’d gone and inked a ten-year, no-trade, one-hundred-million-dollar contract, which put me both in the absolute stratosphere of players in the league and secured me on the Outlaws’ roster until well after I was likely to still be playing.

“Sign that contract today,” I told him. “I’ll be an Outlaw until I die.” “They’re going to retire your number.” I could hear his pen moving across the paper. “I don’t know what you did down there, Moogs, but whatever it was, keep doing it. Goddamn.” “I showed up,” I said.

“Whatcha looking at, Husband?” You are everything to me, Shea. You are my mornings and my midnights, my days of sunshine and my nights of candlelight. You are my everything, and my love for you has no end. I smiled. “You.”