Page 176 of On His Team

“Gary?”

He looks up. “Gianna?”

“Yes.”

We meet in the middle of the parking lot and shake hands like we are about to enter a business merger instead of spend six hours trying to keep children upright on ice.

“I brought two,” he tells me.

“Two what?”

He opens the canvas bag. I look inside. They are hooks. Actual metal hooks attached to old wooden handles.

I stare at them.

Gary pulls one out. “Skate hooks.”

“I have never seen one of these in my life.”

“You have now.” He hands it to me.

It’s heavier than it looks. “What do I do with it?”

“You’ll want it when your fingers stop working after the twentieth pair.”

I turn it over. The wood is worn smooth from years of hands. “This looks like something from a museum.”

Gary laughs. “It probably is.”

I put it in my coat pocket because I don’t know where else to put it.

Inside, the rink smells the way it always does before anybody arrives — cold air, rubber mats, old ice, coffee somewhere nearby. There’s something comforting about being here before the building fills. Everything is where I left it last night.

Registration packets stacked. Name tags alphabetized. Sponsor banner rolled beside the table. Jerseys in their box. All forty-eight identical youth-large jerseys.

I look at them and decide I am not reopening that wound.

Cole comes through the hallway carrying two plastic bins. He puts the bins down.

“Do not complain today,” I tell him.

He makes a face. “I haven’t complained.”

“You complained by text.”

“That was yesterday. Today’s a new day.” Cole gives me a look and then starts unloading tape.

Facilities finishes the ice before seven. Lisa arrives ten minutes later with two folding signs, three boxes of paperwork I didn’t know existed, and enough energy for someone who claims to have two children of her own.

Ives comes shortly after seven-thirty. She has her coffee, her clipboard, and appears to be completely calm.

I have not been calm since Monday.

She walks up to me, glances around the lobby, and says, “Morning.”

“Morning.”

“That your registration flow?”