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"Doesn't show." He grinned. "Good to see you, Holloway. Really."

"Yeah. You too, Lester."

He clapped me on the shoulder and walked back toward the locker rooms. I watched him go.

Janine was looking at me. "How do you know him?"

"We played opposite each other in high school."

"Were you friends?"

"No."

I'd disliked him in high school and nothing since had changed my mind. He coached like he played. He was loud, physical, and without a clue what to do when effort wasn't enough. But he was Hazel's coach and that meant I was going to smile at him every Saturday until it killed me.

Hazel insisted on taking us to a coffee shop a few blocks from the rink. We walked. She held Janine's hand with one of hers and mine with the other, talking the entire way about every crossover she'd landed. The place was new. It hadn't been there when I was playing.

Hazel pushed through the door like she owned it and went straight to the counter.

"Jody! I did it! I did my crossovers! Alex taught me!"

The girl behind the counter leaned over the register. "No way. Show me the move."

Hazel demonstrated a shoulder turn in the middle of the coffee shop. Jody clapped.

"Look at you, superstar. What's it going to be today?"

Hazel pressed her face against the pastry case. She went left, to the empire biscuits. Then she looked back at the millionaire's shortbread. Then back to the empire biscuits.

"The empire biscuit." She looked again. "No. The shortbread." She looked again.

Jody leaned across the counter. "You know what, since you finally nailed those crossovers, how about you take both. On the house."

Hazel's eyes went wide. She looked at Janine for permission. Janine laughed and nodded.

They had a whole routine. Hazel ordered her hot chocolate with extra whipped cream without looking at the menu. Jody started on Janine's coffee without being asked. They had their booth, their order, their Saturday.

Hazel was vibrating with the crossover breakthrough, reenacting the moment on the bench seat with her hands.

"My shoulders go first and then my feet follow and then I cross over and it's fast, Mama, it's actually fast now!"

"I saw, bug. You looked great out there."

"Alex taught me the shoulder thing. Coach always said push harder but Alex said forget my feet and just turn my shoulders."

Hazel looked up from her empire biscuit. "Alex, will you come to all my practices? Before the tournament?"

Janine started to say something, probably that I might be busy, that I had shifts, that she didn't want to impose.

"I'll be there," I said.

Janine smiled. Her shoulders dropped an inch. I reached over and took her coffee out of her hands so she'd stop gripping it like a lifeline, and set it on the table between us. She let me.

I thought about the drive to the rink this morning. The hundred times I'd passed that building. The ten years of looking at it from behind the windshield and keeping my foot on the gas because every time I thought about stopping, I thought about my father.

I didn't think about him once on the ice today.

I thought about a six-year-old's shoulders turning in the right direction, about Janine's breath in the cold air and how close I'd come to closing the distance. The sound of the puck, the feel of the edge. None of it carried the weight it used to.