I narrowed my eyes. "You aren't going to tell me who it was, are you?"
Thane grinned. "Nope."
"You're no fun."
"I've been called worse."
Eventually, he started talking about the road trip. He told me about some of the ridiculous things that happened whenever a group of hockey players spent too much time together. The stories made me laugh, and for a while, it was easy to focus on the fact that he was home instead of everything I'd read that morning.
Then the conversation drifted toward the games. The conversation flowed the same way it always had. Effortlessly. One topic slides into the next without either of us having to force it.
"You looked frustrated afterward," I said.
A corner of his mouth lifted. "We lost."
"I know."
He shrugged. “Losing usually isn't on my list of favorite activities."
For a moment, neither of us said anything.
Then I asked, "Was it really that bad?"
Thane considered that. "No." He shook his head. "That's probably the frustrating part. We weren't getting run out of the building."
I frowned. "What does that mean?"
"It means we weren't being dominated. The games were close." He settled back against the couch. "You can spend most of the night doing a lot of things right and still come away with nothing."
I nodded.
"The frustrating part is knowing we were right there," he said. "If a couple of breaks had gone differently, we'd probably be having a very different conversation."
A very different conversation.
"That's hockey," Thane said. "Sometimes the puck misses by an inch, and that's the game."
Thane kept talking, not complaining or making excuses. Just explaining the game the way somebody who had spent most of his life playing it would.
But for some reason, those four words wouldn't let me go.
Maybe because the articles had spent all morning insisting that one thing could change everything. That all it took was one distraction, one mistake, one wrong decision for everything to start unraveling.
Maybe because part of me had always believed that. That one change could cost you something important. That one change could turn something permanent into something temporary. The thoughts had been sitting at the back of my mind all day. Finally, I gave voice to them.
"You should be focusing on hockey."
“What?”
I forced myself to keep going. "Maybe this..." I gestured vaguely between us. "Maybe this isn't a good idea right now."
"What are you talking about?"
I looked away. "The season. The team. Everything you've got going on."
"Kieran."
"You just lost two games."
