Theo plays well. He plays exactly the way his father raised him to play. Every breakout the kid runs is the breakout on the diagram. Every time he gets the puck he looks up and finds the right option and hits it. There is no flair in his game. There is also no mistake in it. He is a very good player who doesn't know he's good because he was raised to think “good” was the floor.
I watch him skate the weakside curl on the third rep and I notice the thing nobody has ever pointed at in his game because nobody has ever had to. He takes a half-stride before he hits the line. A half-stride to set up his release. It's a tell. It's also what gives him the release. A real coach would see it and call it out and ruin it and get him a new one. Paul Laurent hasn't. Paul Laurent is too busy watching whether Theo's feet are where the chalkboard said they should be. Paul Laurent does not see his own son.
I file that too. That one's for later.
I watch him and think,I'm going to ruin you.
I think about it with a clarity I haven't thought about anything with in a year.
Coach calls a water break. The room clusters at the bench. I get my bottle. Theo gets his. We are close enough that I can hear him breathe.
He's not looking at me. I step one skate closer and turn so my mouth is near his ear, and I say, soft, like I'm telling him a play, “I keep thinking about your mouth.”
He freezes. He does not turn. He does not breathe for one full second. He takes his bottle away from his face and he takes a step toward his father down the bench line without acknowledging that I've spoken.
“Water's over,” Coach says, and we all pile back on.
Phoenix looks at me from the faceoff circle. He knows I said something. He doesn't know what. He has the wrong idea, which is the right idea for what I want.
The locker room after. I peel my jersey off with the rage I've been sitting on for ninety minutes and I chuck it at the laundry bin and miss. I don't pick it up.
“Boys.” I say it loud, to the room. “Boys. That system.”
Jax is laughing already. Jax laughs in anticipation of chirps he hasn't heard yet.
“What about it, Mad Dog?”
I drop into my stall and stretch my arms over my head until my shoulder pops.
“Coach Laurent has a system. Coach Laurent's system is the strongside option. Coach Laurent's system was also invented in nineteen ninety-four.”
“Bud, come on.” Phoenix is sitting across from me in the captain's stall with his elbows on his knees. Tired. He's been tired since yesterday.
“I'm asking, philosophically,” I say, and I wave my glove at the ceiling like the ceiling has been polled, “whether there is a single hockey system in the North American pro leagues that has been used continuously since before I was born, and whether the systems that are still used are used because they work or because they got there first.”
Grayson snorts from his stall and unbuckles a shoulder pad.
“You are asking to get benched again tomorrow.”
“I am asking,” I say, sweetly, “out of a deep personal love of the sport.”
The room laughs. The room laughs because the room agrees. The system is a system they'll run because he's the coach, and they'll resent, because they're players, and the thing I'm doing is the thing half of them wish they could do.
I strip the rest of the way down. I catch Theo out of the corner of my eye at his stall. He is doing his gear in his order, which is a careful order, pad to pad, each piece where it's supposed to go. He hasn't looked up. He hasn't looked up since water break, which means he's still thinking about what I said, which means what I said worked, which means I've got him.
That is how I frame it to myself. That is the frame I take into the shower. That is the frame I take home.
I shower alone. The stall he used yesterday is two down from mine, which I notice, which I would have sworn I wasn't going to notice. I use the cold tap for the last thirty seconds the way I always do and towel off hard before getting dressed. I don't say goodbye to anyone because I don't do goodbyes.
The drive back to the apartment is twelve minutes. I take the turns too fast and hit three lights red and I arrive at the underground garage with a feeling I can't place and don't try to. I pull into my spot and sit in the truck for a minute with my hands on the wheel because my apartment is gray and the vehicle isn't.
I get out. I go up.
My apartment is the one the team gives me. It's in a mid-rise six blocks from the rink. It's gray inside the way men's apartments are gray when nobody has loved them yet. There are two couches. I bought one of them. I don't remember buying the other one.
I pour a whiskey. Two fingers, not three. I am not going to drink tonight. I am going to pour a whiskey and look at it.
I put on a shirt because I don't like being shirtless when I'm thinking. I sit on the couch I remember buying.
