***
The season ramps up fast. Practices. Travel. Press.
There’s the occasional trip home and a few nights of Thatcher making it to the city because Liz steps up. A couple of disappointments when she doesn’t. The uncertainty there isn’t great, but we manage.
Those nights he does make it keep me going. Thatcher’s body on mine, how good he makes me feel, how seen and cared for. I crave him more than any pill or drink I’ve ever had, and I’m perfectly fine with that sort of addiction.
We’re all addicted to something, one of the counselors told us in rehab. I guess it will just have to be Gabe Thatcher for me.
But I have my hands full.
I stay solid second or third line, which is fine for me. I play the same steady hockey I was with the Iceguard and on my three game Boston streak.
It’s the kid who gives me fits and takes the pressure off my own game. Dom—Domenico DeLuca, the team’s hotshot rookie winger—is a human firework. All speed, no subtlety. First game, he tries to take on two defensemen solo and wipes out into the boards. By the third game, he’s calling me “Dad” in interviews like it’s some kind of joke.
“You’re like if a grizzly bear and a team therapist had a baby,” he says over lunch one day.
“You’re like if Red Bull learned to speak.”
I remind myself to tell Jamie he’s the best. That kid will never be the headache this one is. Well done, Thatcher.
Across from me, Dom grins. “You love me.”
I do. In the way that only comes from knowing a kid like this is going to burn out without someone to anchor him.
That’s my job. I’m not here to be the star. I’m here to be the calm in the noise.
And when I come home from practice, I shower, ice my knee, and call Fox River Falls.
***
We fall into a rhythm.
I text Jamie every day. He sends back videos—some from school, some from The Keep. He’s coaching the younger kids now. Has opinions on drills, on skate sharpening, on whose stick is objectively trash. I save every clip.
Thatcher doesn’t talk on the phone much, but we FaceTime in the evenings while he’s cooking or sanding something down in the bar. His voice is low, steady. He doesn’t say I miss you, not often, but I can hear it in the way he says:
“You eating?”
“Don’t let them run you down.”
“Tell me if you feel the knee flaring up.”
We talk late at night too. I now have a Pavlovian response to Thatcher’s dirty talk from all the sexy video calls.
And the next time we’re together in the flesh and he breathes the same words across my skin, I come untouched—nothing but him inside me and his dirty talk is needed.
He sends weekly photos of the progress at the bar. Framing. Shelves. An old carved arch he salvaged from somewhere in town, now installed over the bar’s front entry. The Five Hole is starting to resemble a bar, and I love the pieces of Fox River Falls finding their way into it.
Before I left we went through Stan’s things and sent them off to be framed and mounted properly. I look forward to seeing them shine in the bar.
Sometimes the picture includes Jamie in the background, sweeping or holding a board steady. Once, I catch a glimpse of a carved panel I didn’t design. Something new. A surprise, maybe.
I don’t ask.
I just look at the photo for a long time before I open the next one.
I still miss them—miss home. But I don’t feel untethered like I used to when I was on the road or spent too much time in my own brain.
