Author's Notes: Looking through my original version of this story, I decided that it needed a complete re-write to do it justice. And so, that is exactly what I am doing. I'll never exactly be Hemingway, but hopefully my writing has improved a bit since the original. Thank you to all of you who suffered through reading the original, and I hope you will all enjoy this version.
Standard Disclaimer: I don't own the Mighty Ducks. I don't own the characters. I don't own anything else mentioned in this story. Basically, I just don't own anything at all. (Fine. Technically speaking, I'm not a communist hobo, so I actually own lots of things. Like, a refrigerator, and a toaster, and wardrobe that was super stylish in back in 2003. But none of those things are relevant to this story. For all reasonable intents and purposes, I don't own anything.)
Disclaimer #2: For the moment, I'm taking a rather liberal approach to interpreting the rating guidelines. Eventually, I'll probably change the rating on this to M, but for now, I'm setting it to T since the only thing it really contains is language. But yes, this story features quite a bit of course language. I tried to clean it up, but that didn't feel authentic to the story's tone (if you read on, I suspect you'll be able to see why).
Not What Could Have Been
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"With our first pick in the 2001 draft, the St. Louis Blues are proud to select Adam Banks…"
Bzzz Bzzz Bzzz Bzzz
For a brief, wonderful moment, the sound of the alarm clock didn't fully register in Adam's mind. He was still 20 year old. Still reveling in being a first round draft pick—fourth overall, no less. The whole world ahead of him.
Bzzz Bzzz Bzzz Bzzz
And then, as consciousness came back to him, so did the pain. There were the standard aches and pains of getting older. And the pains of a body that had been battered in every way imaginable over the years; a youth spent jumping out of trees and getting crushed on the ice and drunkenly sledding down the fraternity house stairs in a plastic kiddy pool all catching up to him. The worst of all, though, was the nerve pain. That was the pain overwhelmed every fiber of his being, and never quite let go. The first moment he felt it, he thought he was going to die…and after more than eleven years, he often wished he would have.
Slowly, he opened his sleep encrusted eyelids and looked around the room. The only source of light was the amber glow of his alarm clock, the square orange numbers telling him that it was 5 A.M. Time to get out of bed and face another wonderful day of being Adam Banks.
Bzzz Bzzz Bzzz Bzzz
Before he could even be bothered with silencing the incessant alarm, his hand fumbled around the top of the nightstand in search of the right pill bottle.
"Oh Oxycontin, when did you become my one true love?" He thought to himself, quickly grabbing several pills and throwing them in his mouth.
For another ten minutes, he just laid there, his eyes slowly adjusting to the dark room. This morning, there wasn't any light from the moon, just a faint warm glow from the street light five houses down. Still, that was enough light for him to make out the champagne and white stripe of his curtains, and the awkwardly narrow brick two-story across the street, with the garish robin's egg blue door that was inspired by the lady of the house's Pinterest obsession.
God this town's an embarrassing shithole.
He longed for the stately seven bedroom Georgian Colonials and Federalist Revivals twenty miles away, where the neighborhoods had patina and the housewives didn't occupy themselves with ill-conceived $30 "home improvement" projects they'd seen online.
Pinterest should go to hell.
Never mind. I live in hell, and I don't want to be neighbors.
Pinterest should go to a different hell. A hell reserved for people who name their kids Braydenton and put stick figure families on the back of their cars.
In other words, the assholes across the street.
Eventually he forced himself to leave the minor refuge of his down comforter and Egyptian cotton sheets, and slowly made his way over to the cramped bathroom, cane in hand. Turning on the light, he blinked several times, the sudden artificial brightness temporarily searing his retinas.
Damn fucking morning.
Still blinded by the harsh bathroom light, he reached across the grey and white marble counter for the crystal lowball glass containing his front teeth. Putting them in, he mentally cursed the fact that he'd come to live out one of his least favorite hockey clichés.
I thought you were supposed to at least get to keep your teeth until you made it to the pros. Rich and toothless is a fair enough trade off. Poor and toothless is just being a meth addict without the fun of meth.
His eyes slowly adjusting to the light, he looked back up, staring at his reflection in the mirror, taking the mental inventory he took every morning.
God I look like shit.
Traces of his boyish good looks remained, but at 31, the years had taken their toll. Decades of eschewing sunscreen had left him with a number of wrinkles that he found cruelly ironic for someone who'd spent his life in a frozen tundra. Between the various high school mishaps, the halo, and the neck surgery, scars etched a roadmap of bad luck and bad decisions across his once perfect, porcelain skin. The sparkle that had given his baby blues such magic had been extinguished, leaving his eyes with the same cold, dead quality as his father and brother's. And, even with his teeth in place, his upper lip drooped just a hair on the left side, giving his smile a slight crookedness that made him long for his old smile—the one where his lip worked properly, and his teeth didn't live in a crystal tumbler at night.
Not that anything else works properly...
Looking down, he sighed. If the past decade had been hard on his face, it had been downright murderous on his body.
The perfectly chiseled six pack Julie Gaffney had once loved to trace with her fingers had been replaced by the pudge that comes with spending all day in a chair, and his right arm now hung uselessly by his side like an overcooked spaghetti noodle. He'd become something of an expert at finding clothes that hid all of that—long sleeves and carefully selected layers went a long way towards giving the illusion of a marginally fit, athletic body, but he knew what was underneath the button downs and Brooks Brothers jackets, and he hated it. There was nothing he could do about any of it, but it still taunted him, constantly reminding him of his multitude of failures as a man.
Before long, he was fumbling with the buttons on his white oxford, and muttering a variety of expletives as he attempted to perfect the Windsor knot in his navy and maroon tie, cursing under his breath as his efforts proved fruitless.
What kind of limpdick can't even dress himself?
Sacrificing what little was left of his pride, he trudged into the kitchen to ask his wife Laura if she could help straighten his tie.
Looking at her, he sighed. "Dumb fucking cunt."
As usual, she was already dressed for the day—this time in a tortoise shell headband, pearls, and a sweater featuring a toucan playing hockey. The absurdity of her sweater only seemed to reinforce the notion that he'd failed in some profound way; the quirks that once seemed whimsical now left him feeling like a four year old asking for help with his juice box.
"What?" She asked, noticing his expression.
"That sweater."
"It's great, isn't it?" She insisted, her usual cheeriness refusing to be dampened by another one of his moods. "I found it on clearance at Neiman Marcus—can you believe something like this was 80% off?"
"I'm as shocked as you are."
"Come on, it's a toucan playing hockey! And it's cashmere! And it was only $40! What's not to love?"
I can think of quite a few things…
His tie finally adjusted, he trudged his way over to the kitchen bar and sat down to eat the breakfast she had prepared. Staring down at the delicate bone china plate filled with a mountain of overcooked scrambled eggs, he sat there and sulked, too annoyed at the poor breakfast selection to pick up his fork.
"Would it really be that hard to make something edible every once in awhile?"
"Eggs are edible." Laura sighed, refusing to look up from granite counter she was busy scrubbing. "That's why they sell them at the grocery store, as opposed to say, the hardware store."
"I hate eggs. Why didn't you make pancakes, or biscuits and gravy?"
"Because if you ate pancakes every day, you'd look like your brother."
"What, so now you're saying Scott's fat?"
He knew this was a stupid argument. Of course Scott was fat—the guy had been eating his feelings and guzzling cheap beer by the case since was 10. And yes, he was also well aware that if he was already upset about his expanding midsection, eating pancakes every day was not going to help the situation. Logic, however, was not going to stand in the way of an argument.
"I'm not saying Scott's fat…"
Yeah you are. Get him a toupee and he could be Chris Christie's body double.
"You're saying I can't have pancakes, because if I do, I'll look like him."
"Well fine, tomorrow I'll fix pancakes."
"Good."
That argument out of his system, Adam went back to angrily picking at the eggs on his plate while Laura poured herself a mimosa, already feeling the tedium of the day setting in. She tried, but no matter what she did, he always found something to gripe about. If it wasn't eggs, it was the orange juice. Or the maple syrup. Or the president. Or the color of the sky. Or the fact that he thought Florida was a stupidly shaped state.
That had been an actual argument the week before. Florida's shape. She only wished it had been their dumbest argument of the month.
"Tucker!" He suddenly shouted, throwing his fork down on the counter and getting up from the white kitchen stool where he'd been sitting.
"What Adam? He's sleeping."
"That spelling test. You didn't think to tell me he made an 80%?" He pointed at a spelling test hanging on the stainless refrigerator, one word misspelled.
"He's in kindergarten. He got one letter wrong. I think life will go on."
"How the hell do you misspell 'is'? It's two fucking letters. Do you not go over his school work with him?"
"I repeat, dear. He's. In. Kindergarten."
"And that's an excuse to be a worthless idiot? I expect better. Of both of you. You're home all day—how hard would it be to try actually raising our kids for once?"
"Tucker!" He shouted again, painfully limping his way towards the bottom of the staircase. "Tucker, get your ass down here right this damn minute!"
"Oh for God's sake, Phil." Laura snapped, grabbing his elbow as he tried to make his way through the kitchen to the landing of the foyer. "Shut the hell up and go to work."
Angrily, he jerked away from her loose grip, losing his limited balance and face planting to the floor in the process. For a good five minutes, he just laid there against the cheap laminate, too angry to swallow his pride and let Laura help him back up. Her help was a blow to his ego on a good day. At the moment, it sounded worse than having to saw off his own manhood with a butter knife.
Unfortunately for him, as the minutes slowly ticked by, there was no denying what had to be done. Try as he might, he wasn't going to be getting off that floor by himself. As he reluctantly asked her for help, he understood deeply what Aron Ralston must have felt on that mountain, the primary difference being that Aron Ralston left the mountain a man. Adam would never get to be a man, just a washed up loser who couldn't even stand up by himself.
Finally freed from his imitation oak captor, he sulked towards the mudroom and grabbed his coat, muttering "cum guzzling bitch" as he slammed the door loudly enough to wake the two sleeping children upstairs, as well as several angry neighbors.
January, 2001
"So, what's the first thing you're going to want me to buy you?" He smiled, pulling the trim blonde in closer. She smelled of champagne and Chanel No. 5, and all he wanted was to have her in his arms for forever.
"I won't want you to buy me anything! The only thing I care about having is you."
"Liar!"
"I'm not lying!" She insisted, snuggling deeper into his strong, hockey toned arms, their bodies sinking further into the leather sofa at his modest off-campus apartment.
.
The two had left his fraternity mixer early that night, Adam still exhausted from a grueling practice. It had felt like a crime against college to leave a great party and his adorably toga clad girlfriend at 9:30, but his arm was killing him and he could barely hold his eyes open. Reluctantly, he'd told everyone goodbye for the evening, and slipped out the door, determined not to ruin Laura's good time just because he was overdue for a date with his pillow and an ice pack.
No sooner had he gotten out to his car than he noticed she had followed, braving the subzero wind in just her seersucker toga and nude heels, too afraid that he'd leave without her to take the time to grab her parka.
Taking off his coat to drape around her slender shoulders as they walked back to his car hand in hand, he felt his heart melting. Alone, there was nothing like going home early to remind him of all that he had sacrificed at the altar of ambition, his apartment full of hockey trophies and framed jerseys reminding him of all of the fun childhood memories he didn't have. With Laura, though, everything felt softer. Cozier. More worthwhile. From the moment he'd first laid eyes on her three months earlier, he'd known she was the one, and as she curled up next to him, the cool metal of her charm bracelet brushing against his skin, he could hardly believe his good fortune.
.
"Fine, I'll just buy you one of everything."
"Oh yeah, that sounds like a very fiscally responsible move."
"Okay, fine, I probably picked the wrong sport for literally buying everything." He laughed, gently entwining his fingers with hers. "But I do want to give you the perfect life."
"It already is perfect." She softly replied, her head resting against his shoulder as she stared out the window of the fourth floor apartment. "It already is."
Collapsing into the battered leather seat of his old Lexus, he pounded the back of his head against the tan headrest, letting out a long sigh at the thought of another fourteen hour day.
I sure do work hard to be so fucking poor.
Pressing the button for the garage door, he slowly backed out of the driveway, only to carelessly speed through the tired subdivision of cheaply built McMansions and three bedroom/four car garage snout houses. As he passed Buckingham Lane and Windsor Place, he couldn't help but laugh at the irony of the street names.
Couldn't they aim a little lower? Maybe name the streets for places people in this neighborhood have actually seen? Perhaps Lake Michigan Drive? Branson Boulevard? Sizzler Steakhouse Circle? Community College Cove? Suicide Ward Terrace?
Fiddling with the finicky CD player that had long ago developed a mind of its own, he laughed at the cruel irony of the fact that, as a grown adult, he now drove a car less technologically advanced than the Porsche he'd gotten when he turned 16.
Then again, it's not like anything else in my life has improved for the better.
Just as he was about to have to resign himself to another long morning commute of bad talk radio, the worn out CD player decided to comply, Theory of a Deadman's Hate My Life suddenly blaring through the blown out speakers.
I hate how my wife
Is always up my ass
She always wants to buy brand new things
But I don't have the cash
Singing along loudly from the privacy of his car, he was well aware that it was not the most sophisticated song in the universe, but he figured that was fitting, considering that his own life had all the class of a complimentary Kid Rock concert before a Jerry Springer taping.
Well I hate my job, all of my rich friends
I hate everyone to the bitter end
Nothing turns out right, there's no end in sight
I hate my life
"Yes. Yes I do." He thought as he merged onto the interstate, well aware that in another 20 minutes, he'd be trading the hell of lower middle class suburbia for the hell of downtown investment banking.
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