“You mentioned a helmet,” he said, turning down a narrower hall. “One that seemingly vanished into thin air.”
My heart kicked. “That about covers it, yeah.”
“Well, it got me thinking about a place I know where things vanish around here.”
He stopped beside an unmarked door wedged between an office—the nameplate read Bob Trent— and a storage cage stacked with sticks. The placard on the mystery door had been peeled off at some point, adhesive still clinging in strips.
“This,” he said, pushing it open, “is where gear and everything else like it goes to think about what it’s done.”
The door needed some force from his shoulder before it gave, and the room fought back immediately. Heat trapped under decades of neglect. Fabric that had never forgiven sweat. I laughed and covered my nose with my sleeve as he flicked on the light.
Racks crowded the walls. Broken sticks, old pads slumped together, a pile of helmets sat in milk crates, visors scratched opaque. The door shut behind us with a click that felt louder than it should have.
“Careful,” he said. “Any move you make is a risk you take to cause an avalanche.”
I shifted sideways and my elbow caught his ribs. He hissed and grabbed my arm to steady himself, fingers warm around my sleeve.
“Sorry,” I said.
“No, that one’s on me.”
We ended up facing the same crate, the space forcing us close. I crouched and started lifting helmets one by one, turning them so I could see the decals.
“I should say something,” I blurted.
He paused, helmet in hand. “Okay.”
“About before. Asking you out.” I kept my eyes on the crate, although I could’ve passed over my holy grail three times over without noticing with the way my heart hammered in my throat. “I get why you said no, and I just wanted to say… no hard feelings. You have a cup run to focus on.”
“That part’s true,” he said.
“I just didn’t want it to be weird.”
“Okay,” he said again, and started digging through a different box.
I risked a glance at the same time he did, and quickly snapped my gaze back to the crate. “Good. Then we’re fine?”
“We’re fine.”
He turned back to the shelves, reaching past me for another crate. His forearm grazed my shoulder as he shifted, unavoidable in the tight space. I tried not to think about it.
“You’re hunting for a white base, the lightning bolt was smaller back then, and only on the left. There’s a crack over the right ear, and his autograph is just above that,” I said.
He gave a small laugh. “I keep forgetting you’re like a Surge encyclopedia.”
“I must be losing my touch,” I said, smiling at nothing in particular. “Usually my obsession is constant and unmistakable.”
He held up a battered helmet, turning it in his hands as he inspected it. “Does your archive include my most humiliating game?”
The question got me to stop what I was doing and look at him. I thought for a moment, then said, “You’ve had a rough game here and there, but you don’t strike me as the type to get embarrassed over it.”
He shook his head slowly, swapping out the helmet for another. “My first game. We were in Vancouver. A guy up front had been heckling me all game. The usual stupid shit, but he was creative about it. He waited until I’d scored. My first goal, huge deal. Then when I skated by the glass, he held up a huge poster of my high school yearbook picture. Dumbass haircut, and a fucking zit on the tip of my nose that was suddenly the size of Connecticut, staring back at me.”
Laughter rippled out of me. “Oh, my God, I remember that! Brutal.”
“I lost an edge. Took the boards wrong, and my stick went one way, helmet the other.”
“You recovered fine. Scored again at the top of the third,” I said, nudging him with my shoulder. “I’d call that a suitable ‘suck it’ to that guy.”
