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“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Patience is Bitter (But Its Fruit is Sweet)
“Talk to me, Lyosha.” Pavel’s soft tone and the compassion warming his gaze made his words more of an invitation to Alexey to confide whatever was tormenting him than an order.
Even though he was well-aware that rookies weren’t supposed to argue when they were kneeling, as he was now, Alexey couldn’t do anything more than shake his head mutely, but was it really defiance when you felt physically incapable of obeying?
Speech had been syphoned out of him when Blash had steered him into the coach’s office to impart on him that once again—for the second time in as many games—he would be the healthy scratch. Knowing that he had to say something in response to this unpleasant information but understanding that his instinctual urge to protest that he was playing better than most of the defensemen in the lineup and that he had scored a goal the last time he had been allowed to play wouldn’t do him any favors no matter how true it was, he had asked as levelly as he could when his whole body was trembling what he had done wrong.
Blash had clapped him on the shoulder—and it had taken all of Alexey’s self-control not to yank free of his coach’s touch immediately on contact, although he had hoped rather spitefully that his boiling blood had burned Blash’s fingers—and assured him that he hadn’t done anything to deserve being cut from the lineup. As Blash had explained it, he had just drawn the short stick and been the unlucky defenseman who had to sit so that others could play. Blash’s manner had suggested that this revelation should somehow have been reassuring instead of even more infuriating, since if Alexey had done nothing wrong, there was no clear area in which he could improve himself to ensure that it didn’t happen again. The healthy scratch was the dictionary definition of unfair, and there was nothing he could do to prevent the injustice from repeating itself like a bad joke, a fact that rankled with Alexey even more than the initial miscarriage of justice.
Remembering the rage and rancor that had jolted through him like lightning and feeling it singe through his nerves again, he found that he had to speak even though he didn’t want to.
“I’m the healthy scratch again, Pasha.” Alexey, his mouth dry as ash, choked over the dread term “healthy scratch” much as he would’ve if pronouncing himself a leper ostracized from his own colony. Like a leper, although Alexey longed for physical comfort he did not dare reach out for it—gazing dolefully up at Pavel as he knelt before him, sweaty and shaking palms pressed against his sides to conceal the dampness and quaking, instead of nuzzling his head against Pavel’s knee.
“You say ‘again’ as if this happens to you all the time.” As if he could sense how Alexey was aching for affection, Pavel stretched out a hand to cup Alexey’s wobbling chin. “It doesn’t, Lyosha.”
“Twice in a row it happened,” mumbled Alexey, resisting the temptation to pummel the floor with his clenched fists. “That feels like all the time.”
“Everything feels like all the time when you aren’t patient.” Pavel tapped him on the nose in a gesture that was equal parts teasing and reproving. Alexey was used to paradoxes like that, because nobody could saddle the fence between those two emotions with as much aplomb as Pavel. “Be patient, and two disappointments won’t feel like harbingers of the apocalypse.”
“I don’t want to be patient.” Mutinously, Alexey jerked his chin out of Pavel’s grasp and glowered. “I want to play tonight, not be patient.”
“Everyone wants to play.” Pavel’s eyes were firm as they locked on Alexey’s but there was a warmth like melted caramel in them and in his tone when he pointed out wryly, “Nobody wants to be the healthy scratch, Lyosha, but someone has to be.”
“That someone shouldn’t be me.” Alexey’s scowl deepened as all the bitter emotions that had been pent up ever since Blash notified him that he would be a healthy scratch again burst from the dam he had built inside him in an effort to prevent the tide of his own resentment from sweeping him up like a piece of litter carried on the current of a turbulent river. “In the last game I was allowed to play, I had a goal and did everything right. Even Blash said I didn’t do anything wrong when he told me I was getting scratched. He just said I had drawn the short stick of being the odd man out because nonuse of the defensemen deserve to take a seat. That’s worse than sucking and having something to work on when you’re a healthy scratch, since at least then you know what the hell you have to do to get a chance to play. This way you just have to wait around, twiddling your thumbs and hoping your luck will change with the wind. It’s just so fucking unfair because I’ve been better than half of our defense this season. Someone like Ericsson who turns the puck over every other shift should be riding the pine before me.”
“Spilled all your vinegar?” Pavel arched an eyebrow.
“I’m right.” His cheeks flushed, Alexey took a deep breath, whether to fuel his fire or to bank it, he wasn’t sure. “I’m bitter, but I’m right, Pasha.”
“No.” Pavel squeezed Alexey’s heaving shoulders. “You’re wrong.”
“I suppose Coach is right?” Scathingly, Alexey snorted. “I forgot the coach is always right in Detroit. It’s practically a law of the universe in the Red Wings organization: the sun will rise tomorrow, the Earth will revolve around it, and the coach will be right about everything always.”
“Alexey!” Pavel’s razor-sharp annunciation of Alexey’s name should have been scolding enough, but Alexey was too convinced that he was the injured party in all this to apologize. Giving Alexey’s shoulders a stern shake, Pavel chided, “Whether or not Coach is right is not up for you to decide, and even if Coach is wrong, there’s nothing you can do about it. Regardless of your opinion, you have to obey your coach and do whatever he wants you to do, even if that means not being part of the lineup.”
“I know that.” Alexey bit his lip. “That’s why I’m so pissed off, since I have to obey Coach even though I think he’s mad as a hatter to healthy scratch me again.”
“And that’s why you’re wrong, because it’s always wrong to be bitter.” Pavel tapped his shoulder to emphasize this declaration. “Bitterness blinds your vision, making you see setbacks instead of opportunities.”
“Of course I see a setback, Pasha.” Alexey rolled his eyes. “What the hell else am I supposed to see: a chance to get paid for doing nothing but sitting on my butt in the press box?”
“Speaking of your ass, you’ve been doing a lot of talking out of it.” The stinging swat Pavel landed on Alexey’s rump let Alexey know that he had finally gone too far with his snark. “Ready to listen with your ears now, or do I have to keep conversing with your backside, huh?”
Ruefully rubbing his hindquarters and blinking back tears—because while he had received plant of harsher blows from his father, Pavel had never spanked him before, and it hurt to have messed up so terribly that he deserved to be smacked by one of the legends of Russian hockey—he sniffled, “I’m listening, and I’m sorry, Pasha.”
“You’re forgiven.” With gentle fingers, Pavel wiped the salty streams off Alexey’s cheeks. “Just don’t repeat the offense.”
“I won’t,” whispered Alexey, clinging to Pavel’s knee, because he felt the sudden, overwhelming need to hold onto something solid. “Getting spanked sucked and can just be added to the list of awful things that happened to me today.”
“You’re still looking at things wrong.” Pavel ruffled Alexey’s hair as he clicked his tongue in mild reproach. “I didn’t spank you, Lyosha. I gave you a love tap.”
“Didn’t feel like it, Pasha,” muttered Alexey.
“Love hurts.” For a second, Pavel’s eyes gleamed before he went on more seriously, “You’ve got to stop seeing your healthy scratch as a setback and start looking at it as an opportunity instead: a chance to rest your body and watch the game from a bird’s eye perspective, noticing things you might not have otherwise. Learn and rest. Then you will be even better and not bitter when you get to play again.”