“Yeah?” I say, not amused. I don’t care.
He looks at me and holds my eye. There’s a small pause in him that I don’t like. “Melly cried.”
The locker room continues.
Walker is laughing at something Tate has said in the corner. Drew is bent over cursing at his skates. Percy is decompressing while Stanley whispers something to him. Somebody in the showers is singing.
“What?”
Benson says, “Not about her ex.”
My stomach does a thing. “What do you mean?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know everything, man. Lucy told me she was crying.”
“Reeve.”
“I don’t know why she cried.”
He looks down at the floor between his feet. He looks back up. He does the thing he does where he chooses the next sentence carefully because he knows the sentence is a knife and he is, despite the captaincy, despite the easy charm, one of the most careful men I have ever known, and he is about to slide the blade in clean, and there is nothing I can do to stop him.
“Why are you in the penalty box every single game, Goldie?”
The question lands the way Bauer’s elbow landed an hour ago, except this one I see coming the whole way in and cannot get my stick up.
I have no answer, because we both know the answer. I’m running from my personal shit and taking it out in the rink like any other bastard in the sport.
He says, “I think she was crying for the same reason, bro.”
I still.
He reaches over and rubs my good shoulder once with the heel of his hand, a small clean brotherly gesture, and says, “The girls are coming to Hawthorne tonight.”
“What?”
“They’re going to the house after the game.”
“What the fuck do you mean?”
“Lucy and Gianna invited them. You know how they are.”
I shake my head. “Reeve.”
“What?”
“What the fuck?”
The smallest possible smile pulls at one corner of his mouth, the smile of a man who has, with the calm patience of a chess player three moves out, set the board exactly the way he meant to and is now politely watching me discover it.
“It’ll be good.”
Stanley, who’s been pretending he hasn’t been eavesdropping, chimes in, “It will be good.”
I stand up and throw my glove at my stall. It hits the back panel, bounces, and falls into the boot of my own skate, and I don’t pick it up. I walk to the showers with my shoulder aching, my chin throbbing, and my third knuckle pulsing in time with my heartbeat.
I stand under the shower for a long minute trying to figure out what the hell Benson is up to. He told me that she cried for the same reason I get put into the penalty box every game. He’s hinting at something, and I don’t want to figure it out. I rinse my hair, get out, and dress fast.
The trainer slaps a square of medical tape over the split in my chin and tells me to ice it tonight and tomorrow morning. I nod the small lying nod I have been giving her for the past month, and she narrows her eyes at me and lets me go.
