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Chapter Thirteen
Astrid’s stomach was doing the thing.
She stood up and got ready for work, and it was down in her toes. She sat down on the train for the ride to the Ice Knights Arena, and it was up in her throat. Now here she was standing in the employee entrance while a guard checked her driver’s license against the list of names on his clipboard, and it was somewhere around her knees, making her balance all wonky.
“Morning, Charles,” her dad said as he walked up with two huge to-go cups with steam escaping from the lids. He handed one to the guard before turning to her. “Morning, Button.”
“This is Button?” The guard looked at her with a smile that bordered on proud uncle with a little exasperated older brother thrown in. “Why didn’t you just say that? Do you know how many O’Malleys there are in Harbor City who’ve tried to sneak their way in with a story about being the coach’s daughter, niece, or wife? One even swore she was his mother.”
Astrid’s jaw went slack. “People do that?”
Even the Rage’s passionate fan base hadn’t had an organized campaign of O’Malleys.
“Only on the days that end in Y. People around here are invested in their hockey, some a little too invested,” Charles said as he took the lid off his coffee and took a big inhale. “That is the stuff right there. Thank you.”
“No worries.” Dad nodded his chin in her direction. “I’ll vouch for this O’Malley.”
The guard chuckled and waved her through, and she fell in step next to her dad as they wound their way through the arena to a set of offices near the team locker room. The smaller one was his, and it was in its usual state of absolute chaos, every available flat surface littered with books, memorabilia, and random hockey pucks that he liked to fidget with while thinking. On the right side, there was a glass wall with a door in the middle that led to a bigger office filled with a small conference table and seven cubicles. Bear’s had to be the one with the mini–Stanley Cup with the players’ names replaced with World’s Greatest Grandpa. They stopped in front of the one next to it, which was empty except for a laptop with an Ice Knights logo on it and a clipboard almost exactly like the one her dad carried at practices. The only difference was that this one had a bunch of buttons glued to the metal clip.
Astrid blinked away a sudden rush of tears. For the past five years, she’d thought that turning her back on hockey had only impacted her. However, she was staring at proof that wasn’t the case. She snuck a glance over at her dad. Yeah, his eyes weren’t extra watery like hers right now, but his mouth was pulled tight into a flat line that made his lips nearly disappear, and the tip of his nose was turning cherry.
“You kept my clipboard?” she asked, her throat tight with guilt and love.
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “Guess I was always hoping you’d come back.”
They stood there for a few seconds in silence, both focused on the desk or the clipboard or the Ice Knights logo on the wall or anywhere else that wasn’t each other, but Astrid felt more connected to her dad than she had for years. There were a million things she wanted to say crashing into each other in a fight to come out, but nothing did. Not because she didn’t mean them. Not because she didn’t feel them all the way down to the circle of freckles on her left big toe. It just wasn’t how they handled things. They didn’t dwell and get all mopey; they kept going. Just keep swimming and all that.
But for the first time in her life, it felt a little off. It felt as if there might actually be something to her therapist’s theory that she didn’t deal with uncomfortable feelings. Dr. Kowecki used that hypothesis a lot in their sessions. Astrid always found a way to change the subject when she did.
“That reminds me, I have one more thing for you,” Dad said, stepping back and reaching into the Ice Knights backpack he had slung over one arm. He pulled out a bottle of Tums and set them on her desk. “Figured your stomach was doing the thing.”
Tropical smoothie flavor had always been her favorite. “Thanks, Dad.”
He gave her a wink and started toward his office. “All of Tig’s game video is on the laptop along with the report from the head athletic trainer.”
Astrid ran her hand over the team logo, unease creeping up her spine. “What do you think is going on with him?”
Her dad paused, one hand on the door between their offices. He turned, a grim expression on his face. “You’ll see.”
By the time she heard the sound of players talking in the hall as they made their way down to physical therapy or the gym or the press room for media training, she’d made it through the file and saw exactly what was wrong and why her dad had needed her help. This wasn’t about injury or skill set. He needed someone who knew him, really knew him, to jolt him out of what was going on, because Tig had the yips.
It happened in almost every sport when all of a sudden, a player for some non-injury-related reason couldn’t execute a certain skill. One of the most talked-about cases was the baseball pitcher who was great one day and then the next couldn’t throw the ball to first base on routine plays. Too far. Too close. Too wide. The ball went everywhere.
For Tig, though, the puck was going exactly where the opposing team wanted it to. The problem was he couldn’t stop it.
The video showed him going high when the shot was going through the five hole over and over and over again. It was like his brain had gotten rewired to do the opposite of what he needed to do when the shot was zinging low through his legs.
Oh, he still stopped most of the other types of shots, but it was too late. The other teams’ shooters knew what they needed to do, and they’d exploited the opportunity relentlessly until the Ice Knights record was so bad they didn’t even make it to the playoffs last season.
She hit play on the last video again. Even with his face hidden by his hockey mask, there was no missing Tig’s frustration. He didn’t whack his stick on the goal’s crossbar or take a swing at the water bottle on the net like some goalies. It wasn’t in the way he acted out but in the way he seemed to draw in. Tig had always been an expressive goalie. He chirped at the players, he played the puck out of the crease, and he stopped pucks with a kind of showman’s flair that had been making highlight reels since he was in juniors.
That Tig was nowhere to be found in the clips she’d just watched.
Part of her was glad. That wasn’t nice or kind, but it was true. After what had happened, it was satisfying to see him suffer. And yes, if she would have known how much his game had tanked, in the early days after the almost wedding she probably would have tuned in for a few periods to revel in the shitshow.
Underneath the schadenfreude, though, there was this sharp, jagged ache for the fifteen-year-old boy in hand-me-down clothes and a half-grown-out mullet who’d told her that all he wanted in life was to be considered as good in the net as his heroes so maybe his dad would come back.
That Tig didn’t deserve her spite. He needed her help. If only she knew how she was going to do that.
