“You’re always welcome at my Day with the Cup,” I quip and he smiles with appreciation at the cockiness of that. Bryce was a cocky player, my dad told me once. He said it was probably his downfall. He didn’t last in the league because he thought getting there was the payoff. He thought the work was over. But I think he learned from that mistake because as a coach, he told us to never take off the pressure. Never stop going to practices or camps or learning new skills or techniques.
I decide I’m going to continue on my walk but as soon as I take a step Bryce speaks again. “Hey… so… congrats, I guess. On your marriage.”
Right. “Thanks.”
“I never saw you as the settling down type. Not in the height of your career anyway,” he confesses and swirls his drink again before poking the straw into the hole in the lid. “But it’s great. If you’re happy and can manage it—her—then it’s great.”
Manage her? Like, Tenley? Specifically? That feels… like he’s trying to say something without saying it. I nod. “Shockingly, it’s not the worst decision I ever made. Tenley is… a good fit. We’re a good fit.”
As the words leave my mouth I realize that they are not just the truth, they’re an understatement. Tenley slotted right into my life like she was a limb I didn’t know I was missing. She filled a void and I look forward to opening my front door and seeing her there every day.
“I met her once when she was younger,” Bryce said. “Went up to the Garrison hometown in Maine once to do a charity game with her uncles. She was… well, she was a drama queen and a bit much, but what do I know? I never had kids. Maybe they’re all like that. I’m sure she’s grown out of it.”
“She’s a lot of things, but over-dramatic is definitely not one of them,” I reply
Bryce shrugs as my stomach twists. He claps me on the shoulder. “Maybe I should be hoping she hasn’t changed because she could distract you and make it easier on us. Anyway, may the best team win.”
He saunters off in the opposite direction from the way I’m headed. I tap my watch and Mel Robbins’ sage advice fills my ears again but I’m not able to focus. I’m stuck on some weird loop, replaying every word Bryce said and trying to figure out why it feels so off.
I get back to the locker room and just outside the door there is a rousing game of sewer ball. It’s played with a soccer ball and the guys stand in circle and kick the ball around, the rule being it can’t hit the ground and you can’t kick it more than twice before you pass it to someone else. I don’t participate but Crew and Tate are always in the circle.
“Fuck yeah!” Crew bellows as the ball wedges itself between the light and the ceiling. “Every time the ball gets stuck we win!”
“I thought I was the superstitious twin,” I remark as I head into the locker room to get changed.
Crew and Tate follow. “How was your walk?”
“Usual,” I say as I start peeling out of my Quake tracksuit. “Except I ran into Bryce.”
“Colluding with the enemy,” Crew laughs. “It’s so weird how he helped us become the players that are going to kick his ass.”
“From your lips to the hockey Gods’ ears,” Tate adds.
I look over at Tate as he pulls on his pads. His hair is askew because he’d been wearing a baseball cap. Something pokes at my brain. A conversation we had at the bar a while ago. Tate was talking about Bryce. “Didn’t you say he went to your hometown or something?”
Tate looks over at me. “Who? Bryce?”
“Yeah. At Musica’s after our first win against them, I think it was. You said something about knowing Bryce,” I prompt as I pull on my Under Armor shirt.
“Oh yeah… Did I finish that story?” Tate wonders. “Bryce was invited one year to my uncle Luc's charity summer game. He came. Spent the week. Stayed in the old house my parents owned, where Tenley lives now in the off-season… Anyway. We had just moved into my parents’ new house on the lake so it was vacant and a bunch of other guys who were up for the event stayed there too.”
Tate pulls on his jersey. “The morning of the event, Bryce shows up with a broken nose.”
“How?” Crew asks.
Tate starts laughing. “My dad turned the old barn on the property into a gym, and Bryce says he decided to get a quick workout in. He tripped over a dumbbell that someone left out, fell, and clipped a weight bench with his face.”
“Ouch,” Crew hisses. “God, the dude is certifiably jinxed. His short career was riddled with injuries too.”
I’m standing in front of my cubby and I start to slowly sink to the bench. Something about this whole story isn’t sitting right… just like Bryce’s fascination with my marriage. “How old were you when this happened?”
“I think…” Tate’s eyebrows pinch as he does the mental math. “I was about fifteen. I remember my dad felt so sorry for Bryce because he’d just been waivered that year and his career was done and now he couldn’t even participate in the charity game after that. His nose swelled all day and he ended up at the hospital instead.”
Coach walks in and announces himself by clapping. Of course, the camera crew for Tenley's doc show is following him. "Okay, we have a game to win boys. A series to end. And a line-up to announce."
Coach Braddock goes on to tell us who is starting on the ice and I force my mind to concentrate on hockey. Everything else can wait.
Hours later, I’m on the ice as the final buzzer sounds. The score is 2-1 Quake. We are in the fucking conference finals! The entire team is on the ice in a group hug before the buzzer stops sounding. There’s a brief moment of pride that washes over me, and relief, as I untangle myself from the mass of my teammates’ arms. We’re one series away from the Stanley Cup Final. Two years in a row. Fuck me, this is beyond my wildest childhood dreams.
