Pucking Trouble, page 15
“You’re flushed,” she said casually, like she was commenting on the paint color, not my pulse.
“Stairs,” I lied, even though we both knew I took the elevator. “And I ran into a reporter. Taylor, Hometown Hype?”
Her mouth didn’t move, but a tiny muscle near her eye did. “What did he want?”
“Color,” I said. “And to see if I’d say anything stupid. I didn’t.”
She nodded once, approval and caution in a single movement. “The local blogs are noisy today,” she said. “They get bored when there isn’t a scandal to eat. Don’t feed them.”
“I’m aware,” I said, and then softer, because Peyton’s voice in my head had been so clear earlier, “I’m being careful.”
Her gaze flicked to the glass, to the empty sheet waiting below, then back to me. “Careful doesn’t mean small,” she said. “Just smart.”
I couldn’t help it; I smiled. “You say that as if you invented it.”
She shrugged. “I just used it while everyone else was still learning.” Then, lighter: “Go look at the ice from the rail. It’ll make your lungs work better.”
I took my program and stepped to the glass. The arena is a different animal from up high, geometry and airflow, systems on systems. Warmups would start in ten, fifteen. The boards were freshly wiped; I could see the faint line where the Zamboni had changed direction. A lone maintenance guy stood by the goal horn with a wrench and the kind of concentration you reserve for delicate surgery or angry plumbing.
My phone buzzed in my pocket again. Warmups in 15. Don’t boo the anthem mic if it pops, from Nick.
No promises, I sent. Then, after a second: You’ve got this.
I could feel him fighting the three dots like a superstition. Finally: You too.
“Is that him?” Mom asked, not looking at me.
“Yes,” I said, because we’re done pretending we don’t speak the same language.
Her mouth tipped, maybe amused, maybe resigned. “We’ve had two more calls,” she said. “I told them to buy a ticket if they want a story.”
“That’s a good line,” I said.
“It’s also the truth,” she said. “The only story we’re giving them is on the ice.”
The words landed in my chest with the steadiness of a metronome. I realized I’d been holding my breath since the service corridor. I let it go. The building shifted around me, from anticipating to awakening. Ushers took their places like chess pieces. The PA did a low-test sweep. A kid in a Warriors hoodie pressed his face to the glass at the far end and fogged it into a heart shape; his friend pretended not to see.
“Five minutes,” Nora announced, headset cupped to her ear. “Band is staged. Anthem mic checked. No echo tonight.”
“Miracles happen,” Mom said, deadpan. Then, to me, softer: “You doing okay?”
I thought about Peyton on the phone. She’s calculating risk, trying to keep me safe, and about the way Mom had paled when I said love like it was a thing you could accidentally say out loud and make real. I thought about Nick in that corridor, about the discipline it takes to choose boring where it counts and fireworks where they belong. About the loneliness that lives in both of my parents’ stories and the stubborn part of me that refuses to live in it.
“I’m okay,” I said, meaning I’m choosing, and I’m not sorry.
She studied me for two seconds and then nodded, like we’d signed a contract we both understood. “Good.”
The house lights dimmed one notch. The building inhaled. Somewhere beneath my feet, I felt the boys start to thump sticks against the floor. It was a slow, syncopated, the drumbeat of a team reminding itself it has one heart.
I leaned my forearms on the rail and let the cold glass kiss through the jersey to my skin. My reflection ghosted over the empty crease, and then, down in the tunnel mouth, a flash of our colors moved as the first line stepped into the light.
“Go time,” Nora said, smiling.
“Go time,” I echoed, and for the first time all day, the phrase didn’t feel like leaving anything behind. It felt like moving toward it.
The boys spilled onto the ice, edges biting, pucks rattling the boards, the sound that sounds like a thousand hailstones and home at the same time. I tracked #27, Angus, arrowing to the red line to loosen his hands, #13, Ziggy, one-hand dangling for the drama he pretends not to need. Tank slid to a butterfly at the top of the crease and popped up like a piston. The town poured itself into seats and noise.
I pulled my phone out one last time under the rail where the glass caught the glare and typed without overthinking: After. Loading dock. Green.
I didn’t watch for three dots. I slid the phone away, set my palms on the ledge, and let the cold kiss my skin again. The puck snapped on sticks. The PA cleared his throat. The mic didn’t pop.
Down on the bench, Nick stepped behind the players and put one hand flat on the dasher like he was taking an oath.
I didn’t wave. Neither did he.
We had a plan.
24
NICK
Watching her disappear into the staff elevator shouldn’t have felt like a loss, but it did. Every cell in me wanted to cut across the hall, drag her back into a shadow, and kiss that jersey until the letters wrinkled.
I had to think about grandmas in cardigans fiddling with their false teeth just to shut my cock down before I walked into the locker room.
And the second I smelled the rubber of those pucks and the sharpness of ice-covered blades, I drew in a deep breath.
“When I was ten years old, I almost drowned in a lake,” I said as I walked slowly through the locker room, demanding their attention with my voice, one by one. “Had it not been for my mother diving into that body of water, I never would’ve learned that I preferred standing on ice instead of swimming in it.”
I turned to face the young eyes of the team whose attention I had. I clasped my hands behind my back. “But it wasn’t until I was nineteen years old and watching a Star Trek episode with my mother that I realized why I loved the ice so much. Why water, in all of its forms, calls to me. Just like it calls to you, guys. To your skates. To your souls. To your futures.”
My voice bellowed as I continued my opening speech. “Water cleanses. Water carries away. Water carves and erodes, and builds. It heats and creates gas, fueling energy. It solidifies, giving it the ability to bear weight. Water is all-encompassing. Water is nutritive. Water is what we are, after all. Seventy-fucking-percent of us is nothing but water. Which means that water out there? That solidified water your blades are about to own? We own that water. That water is us. That water is in our blood. In our veins. In our souls.”
The boys on my team nodded their heads. I released my hands from behind my back. I held my head high as my voice bellowed. “So, let’s get out there and show these men THAT THEY! WILL! NOT! TREAD! ON OUR SOULS!”
“YEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH!” the boys exclaimed as they all slammed their hands against the metal lockers. “COACH! COACH! COACH! COACH! COACH!”
I clapped my clipboard against my hand; the sound rising above the cacophony. “Now, let’s get into formation, everyone! We’ve got warm-ups before the intros start!”
Warm-ups and stretches passed in a blur. The roar of the stadium grew as it finally opened to let the half-drunk tailgating crew come and take their seats. Little by little, those stadium rows filled up, until even the dull roar of the crowd was heard back in the locker room.
I had my men chug down one last bottle of lukewarm water each to replenish before we went to get lined up for introductions.
“Ladies aaaaand gentlemeeeeen,” the announcer said as he came over the crackling loudspeaker system. I winced. We had to get that shit replaced. “Let’s hear it for your home team, the Eau Heights Warriooooooors!”
The crowd cheered as my boys took the ice, but I almost stopped them. That was the introduction? No name-by-name rap sheet? No music? No fire tunnel, or t-shirt shooting, or confetti poppers for the audience?
Man, this minor league hockey stuff was like stepping into a completely different world.
Still, I didn’t let it faze me. I took my place in the bench area, watching as the team made the rounds with the crowd. Ziggy slung his arm over Angus’s broad shoulders, and the crowd chanted, ‘Slab! Slab! Slab!’ as Angus skated his way around the outer edge of the ice. Ziggy raced over to one side and threw his hands into the air, getting the crowd on that side to cheer. Then, he sprinted like lightning over to the other side of the stadium, commanding the crowd in that direction to yell as well.
By the time he was done, he was practically conducting the fucking audience from the middle of the ice.
I had to put my clipboard up to my face just to keep from laughing.
The refs slid out to the bright circle at center ice. Everything got quiet in that loud way arenas do; thousands of people humming, but the only thing that mattered was the little black disk in a striped sleeve’s hand.
Angus skated up to take the first faceoff. He had a couple of inches and longer arms than their guy, small things that matter at the start. I scanned how Minnesota setup. Their right winger was sneaking toward the middle, trying to jump on any loose puck. Their defense stayed packed in front of their goalie like a wall.
I leaned over the bench. “Ziggy—stick close to Angus. If it pops free, you’re first touch. You two,” I tapped our defensemen with the marker, “steer them toward the boards. Don’t let them cut through the middle.”
The linesman set the puck between the two centers and made them hold still. One heartbeat, two. Angus flexed his fingers on his stick. Our guys rocked on their blades, ready to explode the second gravity did its job.
The whistle chirped. The puck fell.
Sticks cracked together. For half a second the entire game was a scramble of skates and noise, then the puck kicked our way, exactly where we wanted it. And just like that, we weren’t waiting anymore.
Game on.
Sticks cracked together. Skates hissed like torn paper. The crowd surged every time the puck changed hands.
Angus and Ziggy looped through traffic, trying to shake Minnesota’s two biggest guys. Ziggy’s our shooter. He’s deadly when he can see the net, but he turns human when a refrigerator-on-skates parks in his lane. That’s a project for later. Tonight is about learning who we are when the lights are on.
My pride wants the headline win. My brain wants the habits that win months from now. I go with the brain.
A hit rattled the glass, one of their defensemen pinning Angus to the boards. Booing rolled down from the cheap seats. I tracked the matchup: they’d glued a gigantic body to Ziggy just to block shots. Not talented, just in the way.
Angus coasted to the bench for a change, breathing hard. I leaned in. “Next shift—shake the barnacle off Ziggy. Set a pick, tie him up, give Zig a window.”
“On it, Coach,” he said, dropping onto the bench.
They stole one a minute later, a quick pass across the ice, bang-bang, back of our net. Their horn blared. Our building groaned.
I clapped, loud enough to cut through the noise. “That’s fine! Reset! We’ve got time—play simple.”
But as the period wore on, I didn’t like our shoulders. Heads dipped. Skates got heavy. We answered with a greasy goal, rebound shoveled in right in front, and the place woke up again. Half the seats were empty, and it still sounded like a sold-out drum.
The horn ended the first. I headed straight down the tunnel into the rubber-mat air that smells like tape, sweat, and cold. Breathe. Make it land.
The guys poured in; helmets off, water bottles up, gloves half-peeled. I let the clatter run one more beat, then flattened it.
“What was that?” I said—quiet enough to be sharper.
A few groans. A few eyes were on the floor.
“I’ll wait,” I added. Ziggy started to talk. I gave him a look. He closed it.
“You don’t slump because a bounce goes against you,” I said, walking the row. “You don’t skate small. You don’t stare at your laces.”
Angus looked up. “What do you want?”
“Pride in the boring stuff,” I said. I pointed at Langley. “Nice finish. Hated the body language after. You score and skate like that’s who we are, not like you tripped into it.”
Silence. Good. Listening.
“If the refs—” Ziggy began.
“Nope.” I set a palm on his helmet; steady, not hard. “The officials don’t control your posture. They don’t keep you from hustling back on defense. They don’t decide if you take the easy pass instead of the hero one.”
I tapped the whiteboard. No fancy drawings, just three lines and an X. “Here’s the fix. We stop trying to make the perfect play through the middle of the ice. If it’s not there, we chip the puck along the wall and make them turn and chase. Quick passes. Five feet on the tape. Get it out of our end, get it deep in theirs. First guy in finishes the body clean, second guy picks up the loose puck, third guy hangs high so we don’t get burned.”
Knock at the door; two-minute warning.
I dropped my voice. “If you want people to watch you, give them something worth watching. Not jokes. Not slumped shoulders. Shifts that stack. Simple, mean hockey. We’re not here to juggle; we’re here to be awful to play against.”
Heads lifted. Tape squealed. Buckles snapped. The room had the right sound again.
“Good,” I said, scooping the board. “First shift back: off the glass and out if it isn’t clean. Puck behind their defense. Win the race. First hit clean. Show them what Warriors look like.”
They stood. No one tried to be a hero. Everyone tried to be a hammer.
And that’s how you turn a quiet night into a season ticket waitlist.
25
MELANIE
“Heeeeeey!” I said as I picked up the video call from Peyton. “I don’t have long; the second period is about to start.”
Pey scoffed. “I don’t know why some of those stadium seats aren’t filled. The snapshots of the game you sent me are pretty good! Did you move out of the V.I.P. booth into the regular seats?”
I shrugged. “Ehhh, not as good as it could have been. I have a feeling Nick’s giving them a piece of his mind back there in the locker room. And yeah, I moved out of the booth. I enjoy being near the fans. Makes the game feel more real.”
She snickered and shot me that award-winning smile of hers. “When’s the second period?”
I looked at the countdown clock. “Here in a few seconds. Want to watch the second period like this? Or do you want me to keep sending you pictures and stuff?”
“Pictures for now, but hit me up when it’s the last period. I may be wrapped up in my blanket then.”
I paused. “You’re crocheting again? Since when?”
But the buzzer went off, signaling for the teams to gather once more, and I sighed. “Hold that thought; I’ll call you back.”
“Looking forward to the pictures!”
I quickly hung up the video call, but I didn’t pocket my phone. Instead, I pulled up the video record screen and decided to video the entire second period for her. Peyton didn’t go anywhere or do very much. For a woman who had the kind of aspirations she did in college, she was a homebody. An introvert. I mean, you’d never know it while she was out in public. She was as charismatic as they come. But if you drained her of energy? Peyton was the kind of person who needed hours of alone time and a strict routine in order to help even herself out a bit.
At least, that’s what she called it.
Evening out.
“Come on!” I roared as the teams took to the ice once more. “Let’s get this party started!”
Watching Angus zip around with that massive Minnesota Daredevil didn’t shock me. I mean, I wasn’t a hockey professional or anything, but it didn’t take a professional to clock the fact that the behemoth Minnesota man on the ice was strictly there to keep Ziggy locked up. On one hand, that was a good thing. It meant the other team recognized his contributions to ours.
But Jesus, it had to be frustrating.
Every time Ziggy went to make a shot, that man was there, blocking it. Doing the goalie’s job. Snaking himself right in the middle. And Angus, bless his soul, did everything he could to get around it. They ran play after play, with Nick snatching boys off the ice and switching them out on a dime just to get a once-over on the Minnesotan team that invaded our small town for the evening.
But when that motherfucker rolled up on Ziggy and damn near tripped him in the middle of a well-tuned snipe, I leaped to my feet.
“Don’t do it, Ziggy!” I bellowed.
Too late.
The instant Ziggy ripped his gloves off, it was game on. Angus zoomed over from the other side of the ice, his stick discarded as Ziggy got shoved into the protective barrier that kept the spectators safe from projectiles on the ice.
“Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!”
I raised my phone high to try to capture every second for Peyton, but I didn’t pay attention to my phone. Angus ripped the fucker off Ziggy and slammed him into the plastic shielding, earning a hearty cheer from the audience. Refs of all shapes and sizes skated out onto the ice. I’d never seen so many of them at once out there before. Granted, not all of them were in uniform because not all of them worked the game, but to watch them all stumble and stutter over the ice just to get to the growing pile of men beating on one another?
It truly was a sight to behold.
Whistles were blown, and game clocks stopped. What started out as a fight turned into team on team, and before I knew it, I watched as the ref dragged Ziggy toward the penalty box. He slammed the man into the small enclosure, with Ziggy tripping over himself on his skates. And as he slammed himself down into the seat, I held my breath.
The ref came over the intercom and announced, “Number 13, Warriors. Penalty box for unsportsmanlike conduct. Minor penalty. Two minutes.”
The crowd booed before the ref continued. “Number 24, Daredevils. Penalty box for cross-checking, holding, and unsportsmanlike conduct. Double-minor penalty. Four minutes.”
