She stopped.
The realization settles somewhere unpleasant beneath my ribs, like a bruise you only notice when you press on it. For two days straight my phone lit up with her name, apologies and explanations and requests for five minutes of my time, and I told myself it was annoying, that it proved my point, that persistence was simply another form of pressure and I wanted no part of it.
Now the silence feels worse than the noise ever did.
I set the phone down harder than necessary and swung my legs off the bed. If I think too long about what it means that she stopped, I might start wondering whether she finally listened to me.
And that is a thought I don’t allow to take root.
Today is about hockey and about proving that nothing off the ice bleeds onto it. That is the only reason I’ve survived as long as I have.
The away arena smells different from ours. The lighting is harsher too, brighter and less forgiving, like it wants to expose every flaw. I can tell what kind of building it is the moment Iwalk into it, the kind that holds noise in the walls and spits it back at you.
None of that should matter.
I move through the familiar routine anyway because routine is something I can control, and control is the closest thing I have to calm. I drop my bag at my stall, strip down, start dressing in the same order I always do, layering gear over muscle with the kind of focus that has nothing to do with comfort and everything to do with armor.
Because my mind keeps replaying the moment I saw her in the stands, the cap pulled low over her face, the stubborn set of her shoulders as if she could hide from me and still refuse to back down. It replays the moment she said she didn’t sleep with me for leverage, as if she could find the one sentence that would cut through my certainty and make me hesitate.
JP plops down next to me. "You look like you’re thinking too hard."
"I don’t think," I reply, and I can hear the dryness in my own voice even though my throat feels tight. "I react."
"That’s not always better," he says, half joking, half not.
I don’t answer.
Because he’s right and I hate that he’s right, and I don’t have the patience to let anyone see the crack.
Warm-ups should be automatic.
The puck comes to me clean off Slade’s stick, and I mishandle it just enough that it skips off my blade instead of settling. I recover quickly, fast enough that no one says anything, but I notice. I notice because I don’t make small mistakes.
My timing feels half a second off, and my edges aren’t as sharp.
I tell myself it’s travel, fatigue, unfamiliar ice, anything except the truth, which is that my focus is fractured and I can’t put it back together no matter how hard I try.
Wolf skates past me, grinning. "Dial it in, Popeye."
I nod once—dial it in. That is the job.
The first period starts, and I tell myself to keep it simple, to play smart, to read the ice instead of chasing impact. For the first few shifts, it works. The rhythm comes back. The puck moves how it should. My body remembers what it knows.
Then I see a lane open and I take it without thinking, stepping up for a hit I don’t need to make, chasing contact instead of position. The puck slipped past the space I had just abandoned. Their winger cuts inside.
Goal.
The sound of their arena erupting feels sharp and ugly, as if it’s celebrating my mistake specifically.
I glide back to the bench without looking at anyone, but I feel the subtle shift anyway, the recalibration of energy when the room decides something has just changed.
Between periods, the locker room air is thick with sweat and controlled frustration, and Slade drops down beside me with the kind of quiet presence that says he isn’t here to chirp. He’s here because something is off.
"You good?" he asks.
"Yes."
He studies me. "You’re playing angry."
