Faceoff.We lose it.Don’t care.I ride the center through the neutral zone and finish my route to set the tone.He coughs the puck up early next touch.Fear makes clumsy hands; mine are loud, not clumsy.
First minute, first hit.Shoulder through chest, legal, hard, enough to make the glass jump.They want to skate cute through the middle?Not tonight.The bench gives the stick-tap rhythm that means right idea, boys.I don’t look at it.I’m already tracking the next rush.
I’m counting every time my line changes within sight of the bench.I’m counting every time Wren moves.I’m learning her silhouette the way I learn opposing forwards’ tells—how her head dips when she writes, how her weight shifts when she’s bracing, how she looks ten percent taller when she remembers we’re here.
Their first line gets a look off the rush—cross-ice pass, shot one-timer high glove.Our goalie kicks it with a sound I could pick out from a thousand: leather, plastic, breath.Kael clears the rebound like he’s clearing a thought he doesn’t need.Finn picks it up with a little shimmy that makes two defenders guess wrong at the same time.He’s off.
The building rises with him—two beats, three, the long inhale that feels like prayer.He fakes backhand, pulls forehand, goes top right where the logo lives.Net bulges.Horn screams.I don’t feel joy like normal people; mine is more like pressure releasing a valve.Whatever you call it, it hits.
Finn slides on one knee to the glass, glove to the crest, tapping where his heart ought to be if he kept it where he was born with it.He glances left—bench, not me—and I follow the line of his look to Wren.
She’s smiling.
Not the careful one.The real one that lifts both cheeks and pushes the scar near her mouth into a tiny crescent the camera would never catch.It cuts something loose in me I didn’t plan to set free while I’m on a shift clock.
Next faceoff; the game turns mean.They want the next penalty.I don’t give them the stick.I give them angles and boredom and the kind of body work that wears the will out of a man.One of their wingers yaps about my mother; I tell him he wouldn’t know what to do with a woman who could make eye contact.It gets a laugh down the line.It gets him to take a lazy route on a dump-and-chase.Kael eats that route like breakfast.
Mid-third is where men look like what they are.Finn is still flying; when he’s tired you only notice because he smiles less between whistles.Kael looks like a metronome learned to skate.I know I’m burning hot because my hearing does the tunnel thing—it narrows to puck, boards, ref’s whistle, her breath when I pass the bench.
There’s a sequence where everything slows.Their center comes down my side with help, draws me, dishes late, hoping to find the soft ice behind me.I pivot, you could draw it in a coaching clinic—hips, edges, stick, body—and meet the second layer at the dot.We collide; I win.Puck squirts to the corner; I write my name on the corner and leave it there for later.The sound through the glass is men with beer turning into men with opinions.I don’t care.I care about the way my lungs hurt and how clean it feels to be exactly what I’m for.
Shift over.I hop the boards.Kael claps my shoulder once without looking.Finn bumps my hip.I don’t hear what they say.I hear Wren.
“You’re breathing too fast,” she says, like she doesn’t realize I’m built like a forge.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re always fine,” she says, and there’s something in her voice that makes the fine feel seen.She pops the top on a bottle and hands it up.Our fingers don’t touch.I feel it anyway.“Sip.”
I do because I’m trainable when she tells me to be.The water tastes like plastic and cold.The way her eyes flick to my face to check that my color is coming back tastes like something I shouldn’t try to name in the middle of a game.
We’re protecting a one-goal lead with eight and change.This is the part where you find out who knows how to be boring.Boring wins.We push pucks in deep.We eat rims.We flip out to the neutral zone and force them to spend fifteen seconds getting it back so we can spend five taking it away again.It’s a clinic when it’s ugly and a poem when it works.Tonight it’s both.
They pull the goalie with one-twenty left.I’m on.Six on five.That’s when the ice starts to feel smaller and bigger at the same time.Kael points once—where he wants me for the chip if it comes rim-to-wall.Finn cheats for the empty-net lane but not enough to get burned.We play rope and anchor.Their best guy gets a look in the slot and whiffs because he’s thinking about how heavy my hit felt seven minutes ago and you can’t shoot when you’re thinking about getting hit.
Fifty-six seconds.Dump.Win one battle.Lose one.Puck squirts to the blue.I get there first, jelly legs and all, and do the simple thing: toss it out to neutral so their D has to turn and go get it.The crowd groans because groans don’t know the beauty of simple, and then the groans turn to cheers because Finn picks it off at their line and slides it into the yawning net with one hand like a show-off.
The building goes feral.I don’t smile.I exhale.
Bench mob; gloves slap; horns scream; my chest finally lets the wire go slack.I look left again even though I shouldn’t.
Wren’s laughing.
Not big.Not loud.Enough to make her throw her head a little.Enough to make me believe in stupid things like good nights and luck and doors that open from both sides.
The last twenty seconds are victory math.Kael doesn’t give up a foot.I don’t give up an inch.Finn tries not to chirp in a way that would earn him a handshake line punch.The clock hits zero.
The horn hits me like a wave I’ve been holding my breath under all period.I don’t give into the urge to sprint the bench gate.I take the lap, tap gloves, shake hands where I have to.Then I go.
Wren steps back into the shadow again before I get there.Not hiding.Habit.I put myself in the light again and wait for the noise to drop enough that my voice will reach her without forcing her to meet it.
“You did good,” I say.
Her mouth does the almost-smile it does when she doesn’t know what to do with praise.“You did better.”
Finn blows past, panting, grin big enough to warm a city.He leans his forearms on the boards, helmet askew.“Tell me I’m pretty.”
“You’re insufferable,” I say.
