The night drags on. Guys start to peel off, heading home to wives, to empty apartments, to whatever passes for comfort these days.
Caleb stands, stretches, and says, “Thanks for letting me hang.”
Ash says, “Any time, man. You’re team.”
Caleb nods. He leaves, and for a second the cold rushes in behind him.
I watch Ash as he watches the door. His face is set, but his eyes are soft, and I can tell he wants to say something. I want to say it for him.
Instead, we clean up, tossing bottles into the bin, wiping chip dust off the table.
At the door, Ash says, “You think he’ll be okay?”
I shrug. “Eventually.”
He doesn’t move. “You coming to the gym tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” I say.
He chews his lip, then, “You want to grab breakfast after? Real food?”
I blink. “Yeah. That’d be good.”
He nods, and for a second he’s about to reach for me, but he shoves his hands in his pockets instead. “Cool.”
I watch him walk to his car, shoulders hunched against the night, and I know, absolutely, that tomorrow I’ll be at the gym at 5:00 on the dot. Maybe even 4:58.
I walk home, thinking about Cap, about Caleb, about Ash and his scone and his hoodie and his hands. I think about how easy it is, sometimes, to want something, and how fucking impossible it is to say it out loud.
I sleep, eventually, and in my dream, we’re back at the rink, all of us, alive and stupid and yelling at each other. Ash is there, laughing, and for once, I don’t want to wake up.
—
Morning. The gym is open. I’m early. Ash is earlier.
We lift. We sweat. We don’t talk.
But when I spot him, hands hovering just over his chest, he looks up at me and grins. “Don’t let go.”
I never would.
———
Practice days are always the same.
The city half-dead with fog, the rink alive with fluorescent glare and the hum of rental compressors.
The temporary facility is basically a meat locker, cinderblock walls sweating condensation, the locker room crowded with bodies and wet gear and the sick-sweet stink of disinfectant.
I sit on the bench, head down, taping my stick. Left over right, three wraps, then spiral the knob, old habit from peewee.
The tape is new, but already sticky, already bleeding glue onto my fingers. Ash sits across from me, unlacing his shoes, mouth set in a line, eyes fixed on the scuffed concrete.
Around us, the room buzzes, guys trash-talking, rookie singing off-key, O’Doul holding court about “the time he knocked a guy’s tooth out and made a necklace.” The noise is a comfort, a blanket over the real tension underneath.
I ignore my phone at first.
The only thing I care about is finishing the stick, testing the flex, imagining the puck rocketing off the blade, clean and pure, the way it did when I was a kid and everything was simple.
