Times Square assaults me with its usual aggression, screens casting neon onto wet pavement, tourists teeming the streets. Normally I’d dodge through side streets to avoid the madness. Tonight I let myself sink into it and become just another anonymous figure in a sea of people who don’t know I just failed to live up to my own billing.
Who am Iwithout hockey?
The question I’ve been avoiding sits down next to me like an uninvited companion. What does life look like without the game? Without the adrenaline, the brotherhood, the simple clarity of knowing exactly what you’re supposed to do with your body and when? The only thing that makes the prospect halfway bearable is her. Petra.
If there’s no hockey, there could still be her. Late nights in the city, traveling together, a life beyond ice and its expectations.
But she’s leaving tomorrow for Saint Petersburg. We’ll try the long-distance thing, make promises about FaceTime and time zone coordinating, but we both know how that movie ends; geography is undefeated.
I pass Radio City, its marquee mocking me with its indifference, and keep walking until my legs join the general chorus of complaint from my body.
When I reach my building on West 52nd Street, the elevator ride feels longer than the eight-story ascent it actually is, every floor a reminder that I’m heading toward an empty apartment.
I open my front door, already mentally preparing to let the night swallow me whole in that specific way that only furniture understands.
Until I walk into the living room.
She’s there. Petra. On my couch. Hands clasped like she’s about to deliver news that requires sitting down.
“We need to talk,” she says.
This is it. The goodbye I’ve been dreading. I was supposed to drive her to the airport tomorrow morning, but I guess tonight is when we say goodbye. She’s here to pull the band-aid off before her flight, to make it clean, to—
“Well, first off,” she starts, and I realize I’ve been standing frozen like someone hit pause on me, “I know you’re probably frustrated, but you did great tonight. For your first game of the season, you really were impressive. I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks,” I manage as I take a seat beside her. “Didn’t feel impressive, but it’s a start.”
The lie tastes familiar. We both know I was mediocre at best, but she’s being kind and I’m too tired to argue with kindness.
“So,” I start. “Is something wrong? I thought you were going to pack at your place tonight and then come over in the morning.”
She exhales, not giving away anything. “Do you remember when I told you about my little sister applying to schools?”
“I remember you saying she was finishing high school this year and filling out a bunch of applications.”
She nods. “Exactly. And she applied to a number of colleges…and she got into her dream school.”
I swallow. “Which is…?”
She takes a deep breath. “Parsons School of Design. In New York. Just found out tonight.”
“Wait…she’s coming here?”
Petra nods. “She’s moving here in three months. And she’s young; she’s never lived alone, and—” her voice falters, “I can’t leave. She needs me here. I need to be here for her.”
“So…you’re staying? You’re staying in New York?!”
“Yes!”
Relief crashes through my system, dissolving every ache from tonight’s game, every doubt, every fear that I was about to lose the only thing that made sense when hockey stopped making sense. I run a hand through my hair, laughing because what else do you do when the universe decides to stop kicking you?
She gives me this small, almost nervous smile. “And for you, too. I need to be here for you.”
I close the distance between us, cupping her face, kissing her before either of us can say anything that might complicate this perfect reversal.
The city outside is still loud, still moving, still indifferent to individual dramas. But it no longer feels empty.
Here’s what they don’t tell you about relief: it’s exhausting. All that tension you’ve been carrying suddenly has nowhere to go, so it just dissipates through your skin like emotional perspiration.
