“Yes. It does in a way.”
We talk for a few minutes. He’s easy to talk to, interested without being intense, and he makes me laugh once about something regarding the absolute misery of coaching in Minnesota winters, and I’m aware that he’s attractive in a straightforward kind of way.
I’m also aware, with a different and less comfortable part of my brain, that somewhere on the ice behind me the guys are finishing up and starting to head towards the tunnel.
I don’t turn around.
“I’d love to buy you a coffee sometime,” Jake says. “Pick your brain about skating techniques. We’re trying to bring someone in for a similar role and I’d value the perspective.”
“That sounds good.” It will be nice to have some extra connections here. “I’ll give you my number.”
I pull out my phone.
And as I do I glance back at the ice, briefly.
Russo has stopped moving. He glances up at me briefly then starts talking to Barrett.
I smile at my phone screen and type in Jake’s number.
We file out through the emptying stands. I don’t think about the expression on Russo’s face coming off the ice.
Much.
MATEO
I’m on the ice by six because the alternative is lying in the dark replaying the third period on a loop, and I’ve already done three hours of that - it hasn’t helped.
I skate hard. Alone. The way I used to before any of this - before scouts and the weight of a captaincy that feels heavier some mornings than others. Just effort and the mercy of a rink at six in the morning that doesn’t ask anything of you except to move.
It almost works.
Except that every time I come around the far end I can see the stands, and every time I see the stands I see her up there in her scarf and then I see her filing out with him - Skelly, Northern State, the opposition, literally the team that just beat us - easy and smiling.
It’s fraternizing with the enemy. How could seeing thatnotbother me? Chatting up the coach of the team we lost to.
By the time the team arrives, I’ve worked myself into something I can’t quite name and wouldn’t want to, and I try to pull it together because that’s the job, that’s what the C on my chest is for.
Calloway gathers us before we start.
He doesn’t raise his voice. He never does after a loss - that’s one of the things about him, the way his disappointment is always quieter than his approval, which makes it worse. He talks about the second period breakdown, about transition reads, about the moments where we gave them the game instead of making them take it. He’s fair and not unkind, and every word of it lands exactly where it’s meant to.
“We were close,” he says finally. “Close isn’t nothing. But close doesn’t go on the board.” He looks across the group. “We’re extending this morning. Elida’s running the first hour. I want you snappier than you were last night, and right now your skating technique is where we find that. Questions?”
Silence.
“Good.”
She’s waiting at the far blue line, and the team spreads out without much noise, which tells you everything about the mood. Even Mercer is quiet, which is either respect for the loss or maybe only tiredness.
I find my position and wait.
She starts us on edge work, basic progression, and I go through it mechanically and try to focus on the ice and not on the image of her laughing at something Skelly said.
Then she moves into the turning drills.
At first I don’t say anything. I run the sequence - tight rotational turns, weight centered, the kind of controlled pivot that she frames as transition work - and I can feel what she’s doing, technically, I can feel the logic of it. Some of the guys are getting it. Ward is actually good at it. Chen moves through it with the quiet competence he brings to everything, and even Barrett is trying, which on another morning I’d find funny.
But we lost last night.
