Afterward, we stay tangled, neither willing to be the first to let go. Her fingers trace absent patterns on my back—infinity symbols, figure eights, shapes that have no end.
“Can you see if they’ll let you come later?” I ask quietly, hating how much hope leaks into my voice. “Like in a few months?”
She closes her eyes. “I tried. If I want the spot, it has to be now.”
“So,” I finally say. “I did some time zone math.”
She laughs, soft and sad. “Of course you did.”
“If we time it right, we’ve got solid overlap for FaceTime. Morning calls before rehearsals, late nights after games. It works.”
She studies me with those eyes that make me want to be better than I am. “You really think we can keep this up?”
I hold her gaze. “I think I’m not ready to say goodbye to you.”
“Me neither,” she whispers.
What I don’t say: I think I’m in love with you. I think you’re the first real thing that’s ever happened to me. I think my apartment isn’t the only empty space that you’ve started to fill.
I kiss her again, slow and sensual. We pretend this isn’t goodbye. We pretend it’s just a pause, a commercial break, an intermission before the real show continues. But as I hold her in my empty apartment, I can’t shake the feeling that this is it. This is the moment I’ll measure everything against. The before that makes every after feel like not quite enough.
In the kitchen, the extrasolyankaI made is probably cold by now. Three trips to Brighton Beach, an afternoon with Russian grandmothers, and a crash course in dumpling folding.
I finally learned how to cook, and now I’m about to lose the only person I want to cook for.
Chapter Fifteen
I step out of my Uber onto 7th Avenue. Tonight, I want to feel it. All of it. The full assault of New York on game night. The city delivers immediately: that particular cocktail of roasted nuts, subway steam, and collective anticipation that makes Manhattan feel like it’s vibrating at a frequency only athletes and gamblers can hear. A group of fans spills out of Mustang Harry’s, already plenty of beers deep into their pregame ritual, and I catch sight of my name on their backs—LECLERC stitched across jerseys that have seen better days, better seasons, better versions of me.
But hey, they haven’t forgotten me.
Then I spot the scrolling text across the Madison Square Garden marquee in big neon letters: LIAM LECLERC RETURNS TO THE ICE TONIGHT.
The marquee’s message is certain; I’m anything but. I stand there like a tourist in my own life, staring up at those LED letters. Do I warrant the electricity I feel in the city tonight? Do I even warrant the literal electricity lighting up the marquee? Tonight represents everything I’ve been breaking myself apart and reassembling for. This is the test that matters.
The stick taps start before I’m even through the locker room entrance.
“Welcome back, Clerky!” Dewey shouts as he works on the meticulous preparation of his sticks.
I beeline it for my stall to retrieve my skates to make sure they’re sharpened just how I like them, and as I reach inside each boot to grab them—
Squish.
My fingers sink into something. Cold. Viscous. Not leather.
Four ketchup packets tumble out, and Dewey absolutely loses it.
“My god, Clerky. You walked right into that one.”
I hold up my defiled skate. “You know I like mustard better, Carts.”
“Hey,” he manages between gasps, “just making sure you’re really ready to get back in the trenches.”
I’m cleaning ketchup out of my skates, and I can’t stop smiling. This is exactly where I’m supposed to be. Ketchup packets in the skate are akin to the Park Avenue doorman tipping his cap to the tenant who just arrived back from a long weekend in the Hamptons. It’s expected and damn well appreciated.
Rocky appears, smiling widely as he approaches me. “Game’s completely sold out. And not just because it’s Toronto—your return is the story tonight.”
Sold out. People buying tickets to watch me either triumphantly return or spectacularly implode. But really, there’s only one person in the arena who matters tonight. She’s spending her last evening in New York watching me play, and that’s either poetry or tragedy, depending on how this goes.
