Page 74 of Take Two

Kirk lets the replay run one more time before pausing it on the monitor, the image freezing on the celebration at center ice, red jerseys piled together, arms raised, the crowd a blur of color behind the glass. He studies it for a moment longer than he needs to, and then he looks at me and smiles.

“I don’t think I’ve thanked you properly.”

I frown. “For what?”

He gestures toward the monitor, the frozen image still glowing on the screen.

“For this.” His smile widens, reaching his eyes. “When we first sat down and talked about filming hockey, I hoped we’d make something convincing. I never expected it to feel this authentic. Watching the rushes, you genuinely cannot tell it isn’t real.”

I glance back toward the ice, where both teams are already resetting for another take, players moving through the familiar motions of returning to marks with the familiarity of people who’ve done it enough times that it doesn’t feel strange anymore.

“The actors deserve a lot of the credit. They’ve worked their asses off.”

“They have,” Kirk agrees. “They also had one hell of a teacher.”

I huff out a quiet laugh, rubbing the back of my neck.

“I just showed them what I know.”

“Exactly.” He nods, like that’s precisely the point. “You never let us fake the little things. The positioning. The line changes. The stick work. The timing. You cared about all of it, every detail, even the ones the camera might never pick up. People who know hockey are going to believe every second of this film because you cared enough to make it right.”

I don’t quite know what to say to that. It isn’t false modesty. I genuinely don’t know how to take a compliment.

Kirk claps me once on the shoulder, firm and brief.

“You should be proud of what you’ve done here, Jamie.”

Before I can find the words to answer, an assistant director calls for everyone to reset, the voice cutting cleanly across the ice and pulling Kirk’s attention back to the monitors.

Kirk smiles once more.

“Come on. Let’s finish this.”

Another handful of takes follows. A few different camera angles. Close-ups of the bench, the players’ faces caught between shifts, the subtle language of exhaustion and focus that lives in a hockey player’s expression when nobody’s looking. Wide shots of the crowd. Inserts of skates carving into the ice, sticks battling along the boards, and gloves flying into the air after the winning goal. Every time Kirk calls for another angle, everyone simply resets and does it all again, as though spending an entire day recreating the biggest game of a college season is the most ordinary thing in the world, just another day at the office with better equipment.

By the time Kirk finally calls the last cut of the day, I can feel the ache seep deep into my legs, the particular fatigue that comes from hours of standing on skates while your mind stays sharp. The actors are going to feel it tomorrow too, probably more than they’re expecting, but with all the skating drills, edge work, and conditioning I’ve put them through over the last few weeks, they’ll recover. They’ve earned that confidence in their bodies, and they’ll recognize it when they wake up stiff in the morning and realize they got through the whole thing.

The extras deserve a hell of a lot of credit as well. Kirk asked them to bring playoff energy and hold it across twelve hours of filming, and they delivered it every single take without complaint or noticeable drop-off. Every chant, every groan after a missed opportunity, every eruption after the winning goal sounded genuine enough that I caught myself forgetting we were filming, more than once. More than I’d like to admit.

As the Vipers’ liaison, I honestly couldn’t have asked for the day to go any better. The hockey looked authentic in a way that would hold up under the scrutiny of someone who actually played the game. The actors looked like they’d been playing together for years instead of learning the whole enterprise over a handful of weeks. The crew moved around all of it with the kind of quiet efficiency that only comes from people who are exceptionally good at what they do and know it without needing to announce it.

Then there’s my Blue.

The second the cameras rolled this morning, he disappeared so completely into Daniel Mercer that I stopped thinking of him as Cyaire Reed altogether, somewhere around the second take. He wasn’t pretending to coach a team fighting for its season. He was Daniel Mercer, genuinely living every shift, every missed call, every goal, every moment of helpless elation and grinding frustration. The frustration especially. That part looked dangerously real. If today’s footage is anything to judge by, I’d be genuinely surprised if people aren’t talking about this performance long after the movie comes out. Sincerely surprised.

After comparing notes with Kirk and a couple of his assistant directors about a handful of pickup shots we’ll need later in the week, going over the list twice to make sure nothing gets missed, I hand off my clipboard and make my way through the maze of trailers arranged in the service corridor behind the building.

I find Cameron exactly where I expect him, leaning against the side of Blue’s trailer with his phone in one hand and his earpiece still tucked into place, his posture the particular kind of relaxed that still manages to read as alert. He spots me coming before I’ve said anything.

“Is he almost done?”

Cameron slips his phone into his pocket before glancing toward the trailer.

“He jumped in the shower about five minutes ago. Shouldn’t be much longer.”

I nod and lean back against the side of the trailer beside him, watching a couple of grips wrestle a lighting stand onto the back of a truck while another crew starts coiling thick camera cables across the service corridor.

“Heading back to the hotel after this?” I ask curiously.