Icould not wait anymore.
The patience that had defined my life, the goalie's patience, the patience of a man who stood still while the world moved at him, had reached its limit. I had been patient for twenty-six years. Patient in Miami, watching other kids play while I stood in a roller hockey net. Patient in juniors, earning every roster spot through endurance and positioning while the flashy skaters collected attention. Patient in the NHL, building a career brick by brick, save by save, in a position that was defined by the things you prevented rather than the things you created.
I was done preventing.
I went to the rink at 4:30 AM. Before Theo. Before the rink manager. Before the sun had any intention of rising. I used my access card, which the facility had given me after I'd been coming for six weeks straight and which the rink manager had presented with the amused resignation of a man who had given up questioning why an NHL goalie wanted to be at his rink before the lights were on.
The rink was dark. I turned on the minimum lights: the overhead banks at half-power, enough to see the surface but notenough to fill the room. The ice glowed in the partial light, blue-grey and unmarked, and the air was cold and clean and waiting.
I laced my hockey skates. I stepped onto the ice. I skated to center ice. I stopped.
And I stood there. In the dark. In the center of an empty rink. Waiting for a man who skated like flying and who had landed a quad loop while looking into my eyes and who had pressed his pulse against my thumb on a Saturday afternoon and whose heart rate had been elevated and whose elevation had matched mine.
Theo arrived at 5:02. I heard the lobby door. The footsteps on the rubber matting. The pause at the corridor, the moment where he checked for the shadow behind the glass that was no longer there because the shadow had moved to the ice and was standing at center ice in hockey skates in the dark.
The rink lights came on. Full power. The banks warming from cold to bright, the ice transforming from blue-grey to white, and at center ice, me. Standing. Visible. Not in the stands. Not behind the glass. On the ice. In his space.
He appeared at the boards. His bag was over his shoulder and his skates were unlaced and his face, in the brightening light, contained an expression I had not seen before. Not surprise. Not fear. Something closer to recognition. The expression of a person encountering something they had imagined and finding the reality better than the imagination.
"Come here," I said. My voice carried across the ice.
He laced his skates. He stepped onto the surface. He skated toward me and the skating was not the performance skating of his programs. It was the simple, beautiful, uncomplicated skating of a man crossing a distance to reach someone, and the simplicity was its own form of artistry.
He stopped in front of me. Center ice. The face-off circle's painted dot beneath our feet, which was a hockey detail thathe probably didn't know about and that I found irrationally meaningful.
"I want to try something," I said.
"What?"
"Close your eyes."
He closed them. The trust was immediate. Total. The trust of a man who had decided, over six weeks of mornings and lobbies and bossa nova and cold coffee, that the person standing in front of him was safe.
I took his hands. I pulled him forward. He glided, eyes closed, on his figure skating blades, and I guided him backward, on my hockey skates, reading his edges through the connection of our hands, feeling his weight shifts, anticipating his balance, the goalie's brain working in reverse. Not stopping movement. Facilitating it.
We moved across the ice together. His eyes closed, my eyes open. His trust, my direction. The partnership was physical and metaphorical and total, and the ice accepted us both, hockey skates and figure skates, and the sound of two different kinds of blades on the same surface was something I had never heard before and would never forget.
I stopped us at center ice. He opened his eyes.
"Hi," I said.
"Hi."
I kissed him.
The kiss was not tentative. I had been tentative for twenty-six years. The kiss was precise, the way everything I did was precise, but underneath the precision was a heat that had been building since the first morning at the glass, compounding interest on six weeks of 5 AM coffee and lobby conversations and the specific, accumulated intimacy of watching someone do the thing they were born to do.
His mouth was warm and his hands tightened on mine and the ice was beneath us and the lights were above us and the rink was empty except for us and the kiss was the most purposeful thing I had ever done with my body, including every save I had ever made, because every save was a reaction and this was a choice.
He kissed me back. His hands released mine and went to my face and his touch was the touch of a man who understood contact at a molecular level, who knew what it felt like to communicate through the body, and the communication was clear and urgent and exactly what I needed to hear.
We kissed at center ice in the Decatur rink at 5:07 AM on a Tuesday, and the kiss lasted until the arena lights had fully warmed and the ice had softened fractionally and the clock read 5:18 and the first sounds of the building waking up, the distant thud of the rink manager's office door, the hum of the Zamboni starting its warm-up cycle, reminded us that the world existed outside the circle of ice we were standing in.
We separated. His forehead against mine. His breath on my face. His eyes open and close and containing everything.
"Your coffee's going to be cold," he said.
"It's always cold."
