Page 83 of Puck You Both

If this is about my future, I'd appreciate a moment to throw up first.

"You've seemed somewhere else lately," he says.

There it is. That's front-office vocabulary, a phrase that lives in somebody's meeting minutes, right above a salary figure with a red line through it.

"My numbers are the best they've been in three seasons," comes out of me on autopilot. Real smooth. "But if the staff want more, I can add some extra ice time. Whatever they—"

"Patrick," he cuts off my spiel. "It's not your game. Your game is fine."

Oh.

"You drift, though," he goes on, maddeningly calm. "Mid-conversation. Dziedzic asked you about the blocker repair twice on Tuesday, and you answered differently both times." His voice drops out of captain and into friend. "I'm not asking as the C. I'm asking if you're okay."

My heart restarts in a new, less embarrassing rhythm.

"I'm fine. There's just... a lot on my mind."

He studies me one moment, and I'd bench myself for how readable I must be right now. Then, he nods, either satisfied or polite enough to fake it.

"Okay." He picks up his stick. "If the 'a lot' ever needs a second set of ears, you know where my stall is."

Then he's gone, and I'm alone with the world's most useless victory.

I should have just asked. One question, that's all it would have taken. Have they said anything about next season? Five seconds of courage, and I'd know.

Two seasons of wondering whether the management thinks I'm aging like wine or like milk, and when my opening skates up and taps me on the shoulder, I hand it the same quote I give reporters after a loss.

A coward, that’s what I am. Because right now, nobody has said no to me yet, and that's the kingdom I live in. Nobody has said no yet, and every morning I choose not to find out, the kingdom stands one more day.

Other men talk to somebody. A therapist, or a barber.

I open a spreadsheet.

Don't laugh, it works. It's worked for years. Every mess my life produces goes in as a row, gets split into columns, and gets handled by the part of me that has never once panicked.

But lately, there are two rows I can’t seem to be able to fill in. And believe me, I've sat there, cursor blinking, wine going warm.

The first row is labeled contract, and every time I look at it and try to find the right formula, it turns into fortune-telling. You can't do math with fortunes. I've tried. The cells just look back at you.

The other one simply says them.

***

"—AND AT THIRD spot—and Milwaukee, my inbox is open, I know you'll have feelings—the Vipers' Patrick... Grezkowski—"

The horn in my Mercedes goes off. Not at a car, at the radio.

"Third?" Theo's palm is still flat on the horn, and he sways into the other lane for a second. "Did he watch the paddle save? Was he conscious? Was he employed that night?"

"Road."

"He put you third, Patrick."

"Third is a compliment." I even mean it. Especially since the name at number one is six-foot-seven, and I have zero dignified options for having feelings about that, so I'm electing to have none.

"Okay, the big one at number one, fine, I'm not insane. But behind Larsen? Larsen—"

"Theo."