Chapter 1: Luca
The alarm goes off at five-forty. I reach for my phone on the nightstand, and the screen fills with it. Blue water, white railing, the palms lined up against a sky I haven't stood under in two weeks. The balcony. The view from fourteen floors up in an apartment that is no longer mine.
I set the phone down. Face up.
Twenty-four boxes, flattened and recycled in forty-eight hours. Clothes in the closet by category. Cabinets contain kitchenware, ordered from left to right by how often items get used. The cutting board I brought from Miami is too small for the counter, but it's mine, so it stays. Shelves are on order. When they arrive, the books go on them. For now, the books sit in a box by the window with the spines facing up so I can read the titles without opening the flaps.
Coffee takes two minutes. I drink it standing at the counter. Five-point-one. The beans are adequate, and the water here has a mineral weight to it, something chalky on the back of the tongue. Finding a better roaster is item forty-two on the ‘Atlanta’ Transition tab.
Atlanta in September has a thickness. The air through the car window is warm and still. Not salt-warm. Not coastal. A landlocked heat, stubborn, arriving without breeze and refusing to leave. Someone clearly overpaid for the Firebirds logo design, which covers the glass and concrete facility off the highway. Four-point-eight for the kerning. Loose.
The hallway smells like new carpet and fresh paint. Framed renderings on the walls, showing what this building will look like when it has won something. Right now, it hasn't.
The locker room is loud before I get through the door. Music, something with brass and a drum fill, coming from a phone propped at a stall across the horseshoe. Already at his stall, Jensen laces his skates, his focus unwavering. Murray is a couple of stalls over, unpacking with the same settled weight.
"This humidity is going to kill me," I say. "I'm sweating through my third shirt today."
Mueller looks over at me. "Didn't you just come from Miami?"
"Yes, but at least there we had the beach and an ocean breeze." I drop into my stall. "This is just hot soup. No beach. No breeze. Just soup."
"The soup is part of the charm," says the guy across the horseshoe, the one with the music and the dark hair. Marchetti. "Give it a month. You'll acclimate."
"I will not acclimate. I will endure. There's a difference."
A few guys laugh. Good.
I start unpacking. Skates first, aligned with the stall frame. Helmet on the shelf, visor forward. Gloves on the hooks, fingers down. Tape, two rolls, left of the gloves. Hangers separated by type. Toiletry bag at a specific angle, adjusted once, then again because the first angle was wrong by two degrees. Bag folded, zipper out, tucked under the bench.
The guy with the music is watching me. I catch his eye.
"Marchetti. You look like you slept in your car."
He grins. "I look great. I look fantastic. This is what five hours of sleep and a positive attitude looks like."
"It isn't." I study his stall. Pre-wrap sitting on top of his slides on top of his tape. "And that's horrifying."
"That's a system. It's a load-bearing Jenga machine. Don't touch it."
"That's a cry for help. And I say that with warmth."
He laughs. I go back to adjusting my stall and he goes back to his, muttering about shelf placement while the brass track shifts into the next song.
The room fills. More faces I recognize from the group chat, matched to bodies and voices for the first time. Thompson finds his stall a few down from Marchetti. Taller than I expected. Kowalski, Mäkinen, Davis, Soucy. Each one settling in, building a small territory in a space that belongs to nobody yet.
Ikonen is near the tunnel. He carries himself like someone the room naturally gravitates toward, unprompted. Asher is in the stall next to him, not at his own nameplate, talking with his hands. It looks like they already know each other, even though we’re all new to this team.
A tall blond kid comes in late. Young. His bag is too big for his frame, and he bumps a bench on the way to his stall. Nobody says anything, which is the right move. Hájek. I know the name from the team chat that started weeks ago. Czech. Second round. He sits down and puts his hands on his knees and reads his nameplate as if it might have instructions on the back.
We settle into the video room for introductions. First, the coaching team, and then the support staff. I've changed into my fourth shirt of the day because I refuse to sit through a meeting damp. Marchetti is on my left. Thompson on the other side of him.
"Fourth shirt," Marchetti says to me. "New record?"
"It's not a record. It's a necessity. I refuse to sit in a meeting damp."
"I am."
"I've noticed. And I've chosen not to say anything."
