Rewind.Play.
“You’ve watched that frame forty times,” Austen said from his desk.
“Forty-two,” I muttered.“I’m looking for the tell.He dipped his shoulder.I should have frozen.”
“It’s not his shoulder,” Austen said.The chair squeaked as he spun around.“It’s your eyes.”
I paused the video.“My eyes are fine.20/20.I get them checked every preseason.”
“Not acuity.Stability.”
Austen stood up.He walked over to my bed, invading the space I’d been trying to keep empty for days.He pointed a slender finger at the frozen image of my face inside the helmet.
“Look at your head position,” he said.“In the first ten games, your gaze was fixed for an average of three-hundred milliseconds before you moved.You were locking on.”
He tapped the screen.
“Here?You’re tracking three different variables in under a second.The stick blade, the skater’s hips, the traffic in front.Your eyes are darting.It’s called saccadic suppression.”
I stared at him.“English, Austen.”
“When your eyes move that fast, your brain goes blind for a fraction of a second to prevent motion blur.You aren’t seeing the puck.You’re guessing where it will be.”
He sat on the edge of the mattress.Too close.I could smell his laundry detergent—the same lavender stuff I used now.
“It’s the Quiet Eye theory,” he said, his voice soft, reasonable.“Elite athletes fixate their gaze on a single target—the release point—for more than one-hundred milliseconds before initiating movement.It quiets the neural noise.”
He reached out, his hand hovering near my knee.
“You’re panicking, Luke.Your brain is noisy, so your eyes are noisy.You need to slow down the input.”
I looked at his hand.Then I looked at the screen, where I looked like a desperate amateur.
He was right.I knew he was right.The math checked out.The biology checked out.
But I couldn’t take it.
I couldn’t take the fact that he saw me so clearly when I was trying so hard to hide.I couldn’t handle his patience when I was planning to betray him for a contract.
“Stop,” I snapped, pulling my leg away.
Austen froze.“I’m trying to help.”
“I don’t need a lecture on optics,” I said, my voice harsh in the quiet room.“I need to stop the puck.This isn’t a thesis project, Austen.It’s my career.”
“I know it’s your career.That’s why I’m telling you that you’re physiologically choking.”
“Choking?”I slammed the laptop shut.The room plunged into darkness.“Is that the official diagnosis?Did you run a regression analysis on how much I suck right now?”
“Luke—”
“I have a goalie coach,” I said, standing up and grabbing my towel.I needed to get out.I needed air.“I have a head coach.I have a scout breathing down my neck and a dad who thinks I’m soft.I don’t need some random undergraduate math major telling me I’m blinking wrong.”
Austen stood up, too.He didn’t flinch at my tone, which made it worse.He looked hurt.
“I’m random?”he whispered.
“You know what I mean,” I said, dismissively opening the door.“Because this,” I gestured between me and him, “it’s too much.I can’t do the variables right now, Austen.I can’t.”
