It’s chippy from the drop, and halfway through the second, Blue takes exception to a hit and drops his gloves right there against the glass, dead in front of the family section. The bench is up. I’m over the boards before I’ve decided to be, into the scrum to drag him out of it before he gets himself tossed for the night, and somebody’s fist catches the side of my face, and my helmet goes spinning off across the ice.
I bend down to get it, right under the family section, ears ringing, smirking, because a punch from a guy that size is the most awake I’ve felt all day. Then I look up.
And there she is. Second row, right behind the glass. Aspen.
So I wink at her with a grin. The whole I’m fine, this is fun, watch what I do next.
I get nothing back. No eye-roll, no reluctant almost-smile, not one of the things I’ve spent the last month collecting off that face. She just stares at me. White. Still. Like she’s looking at something a long way behind my head.
And then I see her phone, low against her knee, and her eyes drop to it and come back up, and whatever’s on that screen has done something to her that has nothing to do with the fight on the ice.
Her dad. That’s where I go, fast, skating backward to the bench with my helmet in my hand. Her father is in the middle of his own game right now, but Coach Linwood called me before puck drop to tell me I blew it, and if he’s spending his pregame on my decision, God only knows what he’s saying to his daughter about it.
I want to stop thinking about the disappointment I’ve caused, but it stays with me the rest of the game.
Blue’s in the box five for fighting, and we’re down a winger, so I go the extra mile.
The doubt, the two fathers, the wink that died on the glass, her white face, and her phone — I take the whole load of it, and I burn it for fuel, the same way I burned Gavin’s name out of my chest the day after Thanksgiving. There’s no version of this earth where I play a bad game. Whatever’s going on outside the rink, I’m always present in here. I cover Blue’s wing and my own. I’m furious and clean. It’s the most settled I’ve felt since I stepped off the plane.
We win, I’ve got a hand in most of it, and when the horn goes, the building comes up off its seats and for sixty straight seconds, everything in my life is simple again.
The room after is the best place on earth. It’s loud, and it reeks, and there’s gear flung everywhere. The boys are wild with it, and Benson stands up in the middle of it and points at me.
“Guys see Stanley tonight?” He’s got the room. “Golding goes and gets himself five for defending his girlfriend’s honor against a guy who made a comment—”
“He made a stupid fucking comment—” from Blue, somewhere, not a shred of remorse in it.
“—and Stanley plays the entire kill on a line by himself and wins us the game with our best winger in the sin bin. So.” Benson lifts a water bottle like it’s a cup. “To Sterm. Apparently, he does his best work when Golding’s getting himself in a fight.”
And the room comes down on me — chirps and love in the same breath, the way only this room does it, somebody’s tape ball bouncing off the side of my head, Percy giving me the slow silent nod, Rowan informing me there’s pie at the house, and I’ve earned myself a corner piece. And I’m up on the bench doing the thing I do, batting all of it away — it was nothing, I was barelyout there, somebody had to cover Blue’s job while he sat in time-out — deflecting the praise the way I deflect everything.
This. This loud, filthy room full of these idiots I would lie down in traffic for. This is what was sitting on the far side of that conference table in Halifax — the thing I couldn’t have said to Whitfield without getting weird about it, I’m not leaving this. You can’t make me leave this. This is my whole heart, and it lives in this room. Two fathers can think I’m sentimental. They can be right that I’m sentimental. I look around this room, and I can’t make myself sorry about a single thing.
And under all of it, the whole time, I’m thinking about a pale face in the second row. I get my phone out. I text her.
Me:You still here?
Me:Coming to find you.
I’m watching the screen for the dots when I feel the room catch it.
“Who’s he texting?” Blue, delighted, scenting blood. “Look at his face. Sterm. Who are you texting?”
“My mother.”
“That is not your mother face—”
“None of you would know it, you were raised by wolves and—”
And they’re laughing, and somebody says, “Must be the girl.”
I give them nothing. Grin, shrug, redirect. Because that one’s mine. That one stays mine. The powder stays dry.
But the dots never come up on my phone. She hasn’t answered.
I find her in the hallway off the family entrance. And I take one look at her face and the whole warm, easy night goes out of me like a match in the wind.
I stand there in the hallway with my hair still wet, and I don’t know what’s wrong.
