Unsportsmanlike Conduct

Don't Rain on My Stanley Cup Parade

They're walking into the lobby when Shane appears.

He looks like he is about to head out the door before he makes eye contact with Moss. Melanie and Roksana suddenly go silent and subconsciously step closer to Moss in a protective manner.

"Hey," Shane offers weakly while holding a hand up in greeting.

"Hey," Moss responds while continuing towards the elevator with the girls, but halts in place as Shane speaks again. "I'm heading to a coffee shop that's only, like, a two minute walk from here. Do you want to come with?"

Moss is surprised that Shane is speaking to him at all, let alone inviting him to hang out.

He's most perplexed, however, by the nervous tone in his younger brothers voice. Eli's made fun of the way Shane speaks before, saying that he sounds like a wannabe-frat-boy with the way he drawls his words out slowly. In their current conversation, Shane's normal overly-nonchalant tone is nowhere to be found, which is honestly very concerning.

"We just had coffee at lunch and are meeting up with some of the other girls now," Melanie grabs Moss' arm and gently tugs at him to keep moving, but Moss resists her pull.

"Um- I can go for some more coffee," he says to Shane before turning to his two friends. "I'll catch up with you and the others when I get back."

Melanie and Roksana hesitate at his insistence on letting him go somewhere alone with Shane.

"You sure, Mossukha?" Roksana questions, giving him one last chance to get out of the impromptu coffee invite.

He smiles warmly at her, "Yeah. I promise we'll be quick."

They both look at him and then glance at each other for a moment before tentatively making their way to the elevator. Melanie shouts for him to text when he's back in the hotel which he promises to do as the elevator doors close on them.

Moss and Shane then walk silently to a coffee shop that is only a block away from the hotel. Shane orders a black coffee while Moss gets a cold brew. After retrieving their drinks, they sit at a table in a secluded corner of the shop. Moss doesn't move once he's sat, but stares warily at Shane who takes a long sip of his drink before speaking.

"So the team doesn't fuck with me," is how Shane chooses to start off the conversation. Moss doesn't react to this, wanting Shane to expand on his statement instead.

"After Tye and I duked it out in the hotel back in Houston, they all knew something was wrong. Like, a lot of them heard what we were arguing about and those that didn't hear probably heard the rumors about what happened. Tye and Eli stopped talking to me off the ice. The only times we spoke were when it had to do with hockey and the team definitely noticed this."

Moss still doesn't move. Not even to take a sip of his cold brew.

The ice in his drink is going to melt soon which will water the coffee down and ruin it.

"Everyone loves Tye. He's arguably been the best defenseman in the league this season, not even taking into consideration the heater he's been on for the playoffs, and the team respects the hell out of him. Hockey is a team sport and all that bullshit, but we wouldn't have made it this far in the playoffs without him basically dragging us here. When he came out to the team, it somehow united everyone even more. They all were so supportive of him and made it known that they have his back."

Shane's face looks paler than it ever has. He usually has a year-round golden glow to him despite his two main places of residency being Michigan and Colorado.

"After what happened at the hotel, the team walked on eggshells around me. They all saw how comfortable Tye was when he would talk to Eli and noticed how he would never even look in my direction. The mood of the locker room lightened up when we started winning again, but no one really talked to me anymore. It got even worse when I was put on IR. I wasn't playing with the boys and no one missed me."