Pressure comes with it.
I hold.
One second. Maybe less. The winger lunges. The lane is not there and then it is, small and temporary and stupid to try unless you have spent your life learning when stupid is the only useful choice.
Isaac looks at me from the far side.
The kid is ready and not ready. Everyone always is.
I nod.
He goes.
Not late. Not waiting for permission from the game. He pinches down the wall before the Carolina forward can turn, takes the pass off the boards, and puts the puck toward the net from an angle that should not matter.
It matters.
Deflection. Traffic. The puck disappears under bodies and comes out behind the goalie.
Tie game.
The building detonates. The sound comes up through the ice into my skates, into the shaft of my stick, into my teeth. Eighteen thousand people and I feel every one of them.
Isaac hits the glass with both hands and looks, for one wild second, like a kid who cannot believe the game answered him back.
I do not skate to him.
I cannot.
The hip has taken its last clean turn.
On the bench, Katie looks at me once and does not ask. I shake my head before she can. Not no to help. No to going back out. She understands. Callahan understands too. His hand comes down on my shoulder, heavy and brief.
"Done?" he asks.
"Done."
The word hurts.
It also fits.
Overtime begins without me.
This is a kind of death and a kind of mercy. I sit on the bench with my stick across my knees and watch Isaac take my minutes. He is terrified. Of course he is. Fear is not the problem. Waiting is the problem.
He does not wait.
Eight minutes into overtime, he holds the blue line on a clearing attempt, takes the hit, gets the puck down the wall, and Cole feeds Mik in the slot.
Goal.
Atlanta wins.
The bench empties around me, sticks and gloves thrown, the boards shaking under everyone's hands. I get over the boardslate because the hip is done and because joy does not repair cartilage. Isaac reaches me first, which is impossible because he was just on the ice and also twenty-one, so apparently physics has chosen a side.
He does not speak.
Good.
