I look up from my bruised knuckles. The bartender is standing across from me, pointing at my right hand with a bar towel that’s seen better days. Purple-and-yellow bruising is spreading across my knuckles like a storm system. Swollen. Throbbing. The result of introducing my fist to a helmet during tonight’s game.
“No,” I say. “I’m good.”
He raises an eyebrow but doesn’t push. Just goes back to polishing glasses.
I flex my hand. Pain shoots up my arm, sharp and immediate.
Good.
Better to feel this than the other thing.
I’m sitting in the hotel bar in Seattle—one of those chain places where every city is identical. Same dark-wood tables with brass fixtures. Same laminated, sticky drink menus and fake plants in the corners. The air smells like stale beer with a hint of someone’s leftover burger and fries.
I’m nursing a Coke because I’m not drinking. SportsCenter is playing on the mounted TV above the bar, volume low. They’re replaying our loss. Seattle 3, Blue Ox 1. I watch myself take a hit into the boards. Get up slowly. Skate away with my jaw clenched.
We got destroyed.
I played like a man possessed. Blocked six shots—felt every single one of them. Pucks hitting shin pads and shoulders, and once, terrifyingly, my inner thigh, just above the knee. Threw three hits that rattled teeth. Then spent five minutes in the penalty box for roughing after their center said—I don’t even remember what—and I just…snapped.
Coach Jacobsen wasn’t happy. I got an earful in the tunnel after the game about the difference between intensity and recklessness.
I didn’t care, but I said all the right things. Showered and got out of there.
Condensation pools around my fingertips as I rotate my glass. I don’t know why I’m here. Feels better than alone in my room.
“This seat taken?” The voice is familiar. Steady.
I look up. Conrad Kingston is standing there, wearing jeans and a Blue Ox hoodie. Hair still damp from the shower, droplets darkening the fabric on his shoulders.
Great. The team’s unofficial therapist is here to fix me.
“It’s all yours,” I say.
He sits on the stool next to mine. The leather creaks under his weight. He signals the bartender with two fingers, the universal sign for “one for me.”
We sit in silence while the bartender pours Conrad a Coke too.
He takes a drink. Sets it down carefully on his own coaster. The TV’s moved on to highlights from some other game. Someone scores a beautiful goal, the announcers losing their minds over it.
“You want to talk about it?” Conrad asks finally, his voice gruff over the music.
“About what?”
“Whatever’s got you playing like you’re trying to kill someone.” He pauses. Takes another drink. “Or yourself.”
“I’m fine.”
“You know, you’ve said that a lot lately. I’m starting to wonder if you know what it means.”
“I’m playing hard. That’s what you’re supposed to do.”
“There’s playing hard, and there’s playing angry.” Conrad turns on his stool to face me fully, one elbow on the bar. “You blocked six shots tonight. Six. And you fought a guy who outweighs you by forty pounds.”
“He was running his mouth.”
“About what?”
I don’t answer. Can’t answer. Because I don’t actually remember what he said. I just remember needing to hit something. Someone. Anything to release the pressure building in my chest over the last week.
