I closed the door behind me and stood in the hallway for a moment, my hand still on the handle.
My phone buzzed. A text from Joel, sent thirty seconds ago.
FEBRUARY
The weight room was supposed to be empty.
After practice, most of the guys cleared out fast, headed home to wives or girlfriends or whatever filled the hours between ice times. I always waited because it was easier to do my hip work when no one was around to watch me load the bar with plates that would've been a warm-up for anyone else on the roster.
But Jean-Luc Bouchard was still here.
He was on the bench press, working through reps at a weight I'd never touch. Six-two, two-oh-five, with a frame that made the bench look undersized. When he racked the bar and sat up, his eyes moved over me once and then away, already done with whatever calculation he'd made.
We'd been on the same team for a year, and I still couldn't read him. JL was the team glue, the guy who'd held the blue line together through three coaching changes and two rebuilds. Twelve years in the league. No trophies, no headlines, and the same twenty-five minutes of ice time every night while the sportsblogs wrote love letters to flashy centers who showed up out of nowhere.
Flashy centers like me.
"Piper." He went back to adjusting his grip on the bar.
"Hey."
I grabbed a foam roller and found a corner, putting as much distance between us as the room allowed. My hip flexor was screaming from the extra power play work. I dug the roller in and tried not to make any sounds that would carry.
JL started his next set. The weights clanked in a steady rhythm. I worked the knot in my hip and kept my eyes on the wall.
Joel was in Colorado. One time zone away and it might as well have been the moon. He'd texted yesterday morning:Training went well. Thinking about you.I'd read it four times before typing back something careful, something that wouldn't look desperate if anyone ever scrolled through my phone. Then nothing for the rest of the day. My phone sat in my bag across the room, and I kept not looking at it.
"Your hip's getting worse."
I looked up. JL had finished his set and was watching me, towel around his neck. His mouth was flat, his eyes giving nothing away.
"It's fine."
"You've been compensating all week. Favoring your left on the breakouts."
"I said it's fine."
He shrugged and loaded more weight onto the bar. "Your career."
The dismissal landed harder than it had any right to. I dug the roller into the muscle and watched him settle back onto the bench, watched his hands wrap around the bar with the ease of someone who'd been doing this since before I could skate.
This was how it always was with JL. Polite enough in the locker room, solid enough on the ice, but there was a wall underneath that he kept maintained. I'd watched him laugh with the veterans, clap the younger guys on the shoulder, sit with the coaches and talk strategy for hours. With me, he was careful. Professional. His sentences clipped short, his attention always sliding somewhere else.
Maybe he didn't like rookies who got too much attention. Maybe he'd been doing this too long to care about another kid who'd probably wash out in three years. Maybe I reminded him of something he didn't want to think about.
Or maybe I was reading into it because I was tired and my hip hurt and I couldn't stop wondering when my phone would light up again.
"You watch All-Star Weekend?"
His voice surprised me. I looked over and found him sitting up again, drinking from a water bottle, sweat darkening his brown hair at the temples.
"Some of it."
"Catch the skills competition?"
"Yeah." I wasn't sure where this was going. "Your hardest shot was clean."
He shrugged with one hand, already looking away. "Doesn't matter. The save streak was the real show, anyway. Did you see Štepán Sabatyn?"
