The puck drops. Drew’s stick flashes out, but Brickwood’s center is faster, knocking the puck backward. I angle to cut off the passing lane, and everything around me fades to white noise. Nothing exists but blade against ice, and that crystalline moment when instinct takes over and thought disappears.
One of Brickwood’s defenseman tries to thread a pass up the boards, but I’m there, my stick intercepting the puck with a satisfying crack. Without needing to check, I know Gerard’s breaking toward the net. We’ve run this play a thousand times. I bank the puck off the boards, right onto his tape.
“Let’s go!” Drew shouts, already in perfect position for a give-and-go.
Gerard feeds him the puck, and suddenly we’re flying. Three on two. Brickwood scrambles, but we’re a well-oiled machine. Drew fakes a shot and slides the puck to me. I one-time it back to Gerard, who finds a seam between the defenders.
The Brickwood goalie sprawls, his pads stretching desperately across the crease in anticipation.
Gerard takes his shot—top shelf, where Mom keeps the good cookies.
PING!
The puck rings off the crossbar, and my heart drops into my skates. So close. But there’s no time to dwell on what almost was. Brickwood’s already transitioning, forcing me to hustle back.
This is going to be a war.
A Bluetooth speakerhas been cranked to maximum volume, but it’s hard to tell what’s playing over the sound of thirty guys screaming at the top of their lungs. The fluorescent lights overhead catch the mist of champagne spray,turning it into the world’s trashiest aurora borealis. In the center of the madness is Gerard. Buck-ass naked, his blond hair plastered to his forehead, and his dick swinging with reckless abandon as he shakes a bottle of champagne from between his legs in an obscene gesture. His eyes roll back, and he lets out a guttural war cry as foam erupts in a geyser, arcing across the room and catching Nathan Paisley square in the face.
“Three-peat, baby!” Gerard bellows, his bright blue eyes wild with an almost feral glee. He tosses the now-empty bottle into the trash can, grabs another from only God knows where, and pops the cork with his teeth. It ricochets off a locker and pegs Mason in the ass.
“Gerard, for the love of God, put some underwear on!” I shout, but I’m laughing too hard for my command to carry any authority.
“Pants are for losers, Captain!” He sprays me point-blank, forcing me to take it on the chin…literally.
I can’t be mad, though. We won another Frozen Four. He could dunk me in a vat of champagne for all I care.
SMACK.
“Champs, baby!”
SMACK.
“That’s what I’m talking about!”
SMACK.
Drew Larney, wearing nothing but a jockstrap, struts through the locker room, his chest puffed out and a devilish grin plastered on his face. He winds up his arm and delivers another thunderclap to some poor freshman’s backside.
“Larney, you’re gonna bruise someone,” I say.
Bolstered by my comment, he pivots and catches Kyle with a slap that echoes off the tile walls. I brace myself for murder.
Kyle Graham does not get his ass smacked. The guy is a stone-cold wall of a human being who once stared down a charging six-foot-six defenseman without blinking. But tonight, he throws his head back andlaughs. Full-bodied, from-the-gutlaughter that I’ve heard maybe all of three times in the years I’ve known him.
“Kyle! Tell me again how you made that save in the third!” Drew says.
“I…I jus’…I put my—my fuckin’ pad there,” Kyle slurs, gesturing vaguely. “An’ then the puck was likeWHAM, but I was like,NAH.”
Drew dissolves into hyena-like laughter, doubling over and clutching his stomach. “NAH! He was like, NAH!”
I lean back against the wall, the cold cinderblock pressing into my shoulder blades. The concrete floor has become a collage of wet footprints—some bare and slapping, others still in socks, leaving damp ovals. Mason’s jersey dangles from an overhead pipe, dripping onto his shoulder pads below, while his helmet has somehow migrated into the garbage can. In the corner, Gerard’s lucky jockstrap—the one he refuses to wash mid-season—floats in a puddle of shampoo, the label peeling off in the sticky mess.
Kyle appears at my side, quieter now, the laughter faded to something softer. He takes a swig from his bottle and nods. “Hell of a season, Cap.”
“Hell of a season,” I parrot.
We stand there, two guys watching the beautiful disaster unfold around us.
