I made it maybe ten minutes before someone approached.
“Excuse me.”
I looked up. A guy in his twenties, wearing a Northgate jersey. My jersey. Number nineteen.
Of course he was.
I could've lied. But the jersey made it pointless, and lying just made things weirder.
“Yeah,” I said, pulling off the sunglasses because wearing them inside while talking to someone was psychopath behavior. “That's me.”
His grin widened. “Dude, I knew it. My buddy said it wasn't you, but I was like, no way, that's definitely him.” He pulled out his phone. “Could I get a picture? My dad's gonna lose his mind.”
“Sure,” I said, standing up.
He handed his phone to someone nearby—a woman who looked mildly annoyed at being drafted into photographer duty—and positioned himself next to me. I put on the smile. The one I'd perfected over years of practice. Warm but not too friendly. Confident but not cocky. Approachable but still aspirational.
The camera clicked. Once. Twice. Three times because people always took multiple shots like I was going to look significantly different in the span of two seconds.
“Thanks, man,” the guy said, checking the photos. “This is awesome. Good luck this season. We need the Cup this year.”
“We're working on it,” I said, automatic and hollow.
He walked away, and I sat back down, and the hangover hit immediately. That's what I called it—the hangover. The emotional exhaustion that came after performing for strangers. They were the people who bought my jersey and stayed up late watching road games and genuinely gave a shit whether I scored or not. I loved them for that. I always had. The fans were the reason any of this meant anything at all.
But lately, when someone recognized me, I couldn't find the place inside myself where that love used to live. I smiled and I meant it in the abstract—grateful, really, genuinely grateful—but the moment always felt like it was happening to someone else.
I stared at the book about urban farming and tried to remember why I'd thought leaving my apartment was a good idea.
A crash from the counter snapped me out of it. I looked over. A kid, maybe seven or eight, had dropped a cup of hot chocolate. The ceramic mug had shattered, and brown liquid was spreading across the floor in a puddle that was absolutely going to stain someone's shoes.
The kid looked horrified. Close to tears. His mom was scrambling for napkins, apologizing to the barista, and the whole thing had that frantic energy that made everyone in the shop stop and stare.
I stood up without thinking, grabbed a stack of napkins from the counter, and crouched down next to the spill.
“Hey,” I said to the kid. “Happens to everyone. I once dropped an entire tray of food in front of my whole team. Way more embarrassing than this.”
The kid looked at me, eyes gone wide. “Really? The whole team was watching?”
“The whole team. And they made fun of me for weeks.” I started soaking up the hot chocolate, and the mom joined me, still apologizing.
“I'm so sorry,” she said to me, to the barista, to the universe. “He was so excited, and then he just?—”
“It's fine,” I said. “Seriously. No big deal.”
The barista came over with a mop, and between the three of us we got the mess cleaned up in under a minute. The kid was still staring at me, and I realized he'd probably recognized me but was too shocked by the hot chocolate disaster to care about it.
I handed him a napkin. “You good?”
He nodded, then blurted, “My dad says you're scary.”
I laughed. “Scary?”
“He says you look mean on TV.”
“Well, I'm not mean. I just focus really hard.” I ruffled his hair without thinking, and he grinned. “Next time you're nervous, just remember even hockey players drop stuff. Makes us human.”
His mom looked at me like I'd just performed a miracle, and I realized I felt better than I had all day. Not because I'd been recognized. Because I'd done something useful. Something real.
