I already know I'm going to do what he said, the next time he says it, and the time after that, and every time he says it until he stops saying it, and that's the thing I can't look at, so I don't.
I lie down on my back on top of the comforter with my shoes still on.
The ceiling hasn't moved.
I have.
4
MADDOX
Game one of the season.
I am in a mood. The mood has a cause. The cause is that yesterday I told the kid to get on his knees in front of the whole room and the kid walked. Not the walking. The walking was fine. The walking was hot. It's what happened to me the night after. It's that I went home and laid in bed, replaying the walk. The back of his neck leaving the showers. The wet hair. The stupid towel held in front of him. I replayed it like it was a highlight reel until at some point I fell asleep. When I woke up, the replay was still going.
This is not what a man who is doing this to piss off a coach does.
I put the mood on the ice.
Paul benches his son. Scratches him for game one. I see the lineup on the whiteboard an hour before puck drop and Theo's name isn't on it. It’s an asshole move, and I file it with the other asshole moves I have on Paul Laurent. Theo sits in the tunnel in warmup gear with a clipboard he doesn't need and a face he is trying very hard not to wear. I catch his eye twice during warmups. Once by accident. Once not.
Then the game.
Fifteen minutes in, I hit their third-line center so hard into the boards that their trainer jogs out and the crowd does the thing where they half-stand while they decide whether to boo or cheer and then settle on cheer because home barn. The kid gets up. I don't apologize. I skate past him close enough that he flinches.
Two minutes later, I put a backhand past their tendy from a bad angle that everybody at my old camp said I'd never land in a real game and the barn blows up and Phoenix grabs me on the celly and says, “That's your fucking mood, Mad Dog?” and I grin at him and do not say what the mood actually is. I look once at the tunnel. I can't see in from this angle. I skate back to the bench.
We play sixty minutes. We score four. They score two. I'm plus three and I take one minor for roughing that was worth the two minutes. The whole rink is on me. Not like it's on Phoenix. Different flavor. Phoenix is the captain. I am the fun.
Paul doesn't look at me once from the bench. Not during the hit. Not during the goal. Not during the celly. That's also fine. That's information.
End of the game, the room is a noise I know. Champagne on Phoenix's head for the first win of the year. Somebody is playing some bullshit country song. Jax is half-naked in the middle of the floor recounting his own penalty for interference like it was a game-winner. Grayson has taken his pads off and put a beer in his hand inside of four minutes, which is the veteran move.
Theo walks past the open door of the locker room in his street clothes. He did not change in here. He changed somewhere else. He is carrying a garment bag over one shoulder and is pretending the inside of the garment bag is very interesting, and he is gone before anyone in the room says anything to him.
I watch him go.
I pull my phone out of my bag and I open my thread with Dominic. Dominic is a guy who works at a gallery four blocks from the rink and who looks exactly like you’d expect someone who works for a gallery to look. I haven't texted him in six weeks.
You in town?
He writes back in ten seconds.yes. Wolves win?
you know it
you inviting me somewhere?, he texts like he doesn’t know the game.
usual place. 45
Dominic is the guy. Dominic is what I do after a game-one win. Dominic is hot, skilled, undemanding, and available on twelve-minute notice because Dominic is in it for the same reasons I am. I have known him for two years and I know exactly what he looks like in a bathroom mirror.
I shower. I dress. I head out.
The usual place is Vigil, which is a bar three blocks from the facility with dim lighting, good whiskey, and a bartender who knows me by face and not by name, which is the correct proportions. I walk in within thirty-eight minutes. Dominic is already at a high-top by the wall with two drinks poured and his jacket off.
“Creed.” He stands. He kisses me on the cheek, which is a bit, and I let him do it because it's funny. “Good goal.”
“Thanks.”
