I scored twice. Felix had three assists and a goal that made Hartley, in the post,game, say, “That was disgusting,” which from Hartley was like getting knighted.
In the locker room afterward, Coach did the thing where he tried to be stern about some minor defensive lapse and then gave up halfway through because someone , Kieran, obviously , said, “But the first line is kind of trying to win the Art Ross by committee,” and Mivo snorted beer out his nose.
Later, as I unlaced my skates, I caught a piece of Callahan’s voice outside the locker room door. He was talking to someone in a suit I didn’t know.
“,no, we’re not breaking up that line,” he said. “Not right now. Not with what they’re doing.”
The suit said something I didn’t catch.
Callahan: “They’re stable. They’re producing. That’s the image we want.”
I looked at Felix.
He looked back.
We didn’t say anything about it.
We didn’t have to.
The weirdest part of the week wasn’t the ice time, or the numbers, or the fact that I didn’t feel like I was going to throw up every time my phone buzzed in case it was my agent.
The weirdest part was that I didn’t have to perform for Felix’s attention anymore.
I hadn’t realized, until it stopped, how much of my loud was oriented around him.
I still told stories in the locker room. I still climbed up on the equipment trunk and reenacted Mivo’s most questionable decisions on the ice. I still pointed at Kieran and told him his entire personality was offsides.
But I wasn’taimingit at Felix.
I wasn’t subtly checking where he was in the room and calibrating the volume, the angle, the timing to make sure I caught his eye at least once, that he saw me doing the thing I did best.
He saw me anyway.
I’d be halfway through a story , the ref, the penalty, the helmet that rotated forty,five degrees , and I’d feel it: his eyes on me, steady and unhidden, across the room. Not performing anything. Just watching.
The first time I lost the thread for half a beat.
“and then,” I said, and stopped.
Mivo looked alarmed.
“And then,” I recovered, “the ref decided my elbow was a crime against humanity, which is discrimination against passionate people.”
The room laughed.
Felix’s mouth did the small, private curve.
Later, in the hallway, Mivo said to Reeves, “Okay, seriously, the vibe is back.”
Reeves said, “Yeah, I don’t know what happened, but we should make sure it never unhappens.”
Hartley, passing them, said nothing. Which, from Hartley, meant agreement.
At night, sometimes, I went home with Felix instead of alone.
Not every night. We had games, travel, lives that still had to make sense on paper. We didn’t move in together or announce anything or do anything dramatic that would get us on a headline outside the building.
But there were Tuesdays now where my couch was still my couch, except forty percent of it came with a system.
