The linesmen come in.
They peel us apart.
The kid is yelling something at me with blood on his teeth, and I’m not yelling anything back because I am not breathing right. My chest is moving, but the air isn’t going where it needs to go.
Five for fighting. Two for instigating.
Seven minutes.
I skate to the box.
Across the ice, the kid is in his own box, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his head down. The Lowell trainer is at his glass with a towel, trying to get at the lip. The kid is waving the trainer off.
He looks up.
He looks across the ice at me.
He isn’t grinning anymore.
Good.
I let the breath out of my chest. I let myself feel the fist in my ribs loosen for the first time since Friday night when Melly Sorcha walked into my house with another man.
I think I’m okay now. This is what I needed.
My shoulder is on fire. My hand is throbbing in three separate places. I haven’t moved either of them since I sat down. I place my stick across my thighs, and I tell myself that I did that for Percy.
I look up, and across the ice, in his crease, Percy has lifted his mask onto the top of his head. He’s leaning his stick against his pad and is looking at me.
He’s been watching the whole thing. He isn’t grateful. I can’t quite read him through the cage and across two hundred feet of ice, but I know what I’m not seeing. He doesn’t nod at me. He doesn’t tap his pad. He just looks. Then he pulls his mask down and turns back toward his net.
The thing in my chest, the one I just told myself had loosened, tightens right back up. I look down at my stick. I don’t think anything for a second. Then I think,he knows. They all fucking know.
I shove the thought down before it can get under my feet. I breathe through my nose and count down the seven minutes on the scoreboard above the kid’s box, and I don’t look at Percy for the rest of the period.
Out of the box, I play the rest clean. I don’t chase a hit I don’t have. The kid doesn’t come near me. We play different shifts, and the only thing that exists between us for the last twenty minutes is the lip and the cheekbone and the way the third punch opened things up.
In the third, I set up Stanley off the wall on a stretch, and he buries it from the slot. I’m playing the best hockey I’ve played in weeks.
Horn goes. 4-2.
We win.
I skate down the line, and I tap gloves with my guys. I get to Percy at the goal line last. I tap his pads with my stick.
He looks at me through the cage. He doesn’t say anything. Percy isn’t a long-conversation man. Percy is a man who looks at you through a goalie mask and you understand what he means without him having to say it, and what he means right now — what his eyes are saying through the cage — is that what I did wasn’t necessary.
The hotel is a Marriott two miles from the rink. Four-channel TV. Eastern-conference carpet. An ice machine at the end of the hall.
Benson and I typically always share a room. Last away game, we did. And tonight we are. I drop my bag at the foot of the bed. I sit down on the edge of the mattress, and I start untying my shoes.
Benson sits on the edge of his. He looks at the carpet between our beds. “Can we talk?”
I set my shoe down on the floor. “Yeah.”
He takes a breath. He still doesn’t look at me. “I’ve known you for two years, going on three.”
“Yeah.”
