Theo is pulling his base layer over his head. His back is to me. His spine is a line I spent Saturday thinking about. The shoulderblades I had against a brick wall. The small mole on the back of his ribs I noticed Friday when he was on his back in the queen. He's thinner than most of the guys in this room. He's a center. He's built for the thing he does. His hair is still damp from his shower at his father's apartment, which is a thing I know because Theo showers before practice because Paul trained him to.
He doesn't turn around.
He doesn't have to. He knows I'm looking. His shoulders know. The muscle between his shoulder blades goes tight and stays tight. He starts pulling the pads out of his bag one at a time, slower than he needs to.
I stand up.
I walk past his stall on my way to the ice.
I don't touch him. I don't have to touch him. I pass close enough that he can feel the air move around me, and I say, very low, as my shoulder passes his shoulder, “Morning, sweetheart.”
He doesn't answer.
He doesn't need to.
The color comes up his neck in a line a man could track with a ruler.
Paul runs practice the way Paul always runs practice.
Drills. No nonsense. No warm-up jokes. The guys fall into it. I fall into it. I'm a very good hockey player and I've been a very good hockey player since I was fifteen. I can do Paul's system in my sleep, which is one of two reasons he hates me. The other reason is standing twenty feet to my left right now pretending to be invisible.
Here are the legal touches.
A lift, in the corner on a one-on-one drill. I come up behind Theo as he goes for the puck. I put my stick across his hips to lift him off the puck. My forearm brushes his lower back. Skin to glove, glove to jersey, jersey to skin. He doesn't flinch. He adjusts his weight because he's been trained to adjust his weight. Paul, twenty feet away, writes something on his tablet.
A shoulder, neutral zone, on a pass drill. I read him. I come in at the angle I'd come at a bigger man. I let my shoulder catch his and bounce off. It's a legal hit. It's a clean hit. It looks like nothing. It puts my whole body along his whole body for maybe half a second. His breath comes out of him in a sound I'll hear in my sleep.
A tap on the pads, at the blue line, after a clean play. I skate past him and my gloved hand comes down on his shoulder pad as I go.Nice pass.Any defenseman would do it. It's a normal thing. I do it because I want to do it and because I can do it, and because Paul is watching and he can see a hand on a pad and call it a hand on a pad and nothing more.
I do this for an hour and a half.
Nobody on the team says anything.
Magnus doesn't chirp today. Magnus has learned.
Between drills I get close enough to say a sentence in his ear.
“You eat this morning?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
He doesn't look at me. He looks at the ice. He stays lined up with the rest of the drill waiting their turn.
Two drills later, I get another sentence.
“You slept?”
“Some.”
His jaw is set.
“More than Friday?”
“Yes.”
“Good boy.”
