I passed. Back to the point. Safe. Responsible. The shot missed the net entirely, and the whistle blew for an icing that shouldn't have existed if I'd done my job eight seconds earlier.
Two turnovers. Zero shots.
The stat sheet wouldn't say I'd been bad. It would say I'd been invisible.
The third period opened with our line on the bench. Markel sent the second unit out first. Standard rotation. Nothing dramatic.
Our shifts came later and shorter.
The last minutes ticked down. The game remained tied. Markel ran the last ninety seconds with Cross, Kieran, and Varga. My line. My spot. Varga in it.
Overtime lasted two minutes and twenty-two seconds. Their top center beat Pratt with a wrister from the circle.
We lost 2-1. I sat on the bench after the horn and stared at the ice. The surface was chewed to hell; sixty-five minutes of blades had stripped it down to fog and ruts.
The locker room emptied the way it always did after losses. Faster than after wins.
I sat at my stall in my base layer and one skate.
The other was on the floor between my feet, unlaced but still upright, leaning against my shin. I'd taken it off six minutes ago. The second one hadn't followed because somewhere between unlacing the left and reaching for the right, I'd stopped moving.
My phone sat on the shelf above my helmet. I didn't reach for it. Reaching for the phone meant looking at the calculator and acknowledging that tonight I hadn't been worth what I cost.
Every team carried players who could do what I did. Net-front bodies. Traffic absorbers. I was better at it than most, but better meant more expensive to lose, not impossible to replace.
The nameplate above me read DONNELLY in white letters on black. Permanent until it wasn't. I'd seen the equipment manager swap nameplates between periods. Two screws and a Phillips head.
The door opened.
Kieran crossed the locker room. He'd showered and changed. Dark jeans, henley, jacket in hand. He moved past my stall without slowing, heading toward his own at the far end. I heard him open his locker. Retrieve something. Close it.
Then his footsteps came back.
Something landed in my lap.
It was a folded piece of paper, torn from a coaching clipboard notebook.
I looked up. He was already walking away. He didn't turn his head.
I unfolded the note and read his handwriting.
My place. 10pm.
I refolded it. Stuck it in my jacket pocket. Unlaced the second skate.
At his condo, Kieran opened the door in sweatpants and a faded t-shirt I recognized as mine. It was a soft gray one with the Rhinelander Hockey logo peeling off at the shoulder.
The fabric sat differently on his frame, pulling across the chest where it hung loose on me.
The condo smelled the way it always did: clean and faintly saline from the reef tank. It hummed in the living room, casting blue-green light across the ceiling in slow, shifting patterns that made the walls feel like they were breathing.
Kieran walked over to the kitchen. Pulled two bottles from the fridge and set one on the counter in front of me. Neither of us spoke.
I cracked the bottle and took a long pull. The beer was cold enough to make my front teeth ache.
"I played like shit tonight."
He didn't argue.
