Before I headedinto the locker rooms, I went to check on my skates and found Kyle in the skate-sharpening bay, his back to me, ear defenders on, running a pair of skates over the wheel. When he’d finished a skate, and the machine was momentarilysilent, I knocked on the door frame, then moved where he’d be able to see me.
He turned, pulled his ear defender off. "Hey Chip! Your skates are next; I was actually just thinking about you. Your edges were off last week, not by much, but I could tell, so I adjusted the hollow a fraction, and I want to see how that feels for you after Thursday."
"I could feel it in the second period."
"Right? I knew it." He turned back to the wheel, pleased with himself. "I've got you on the chart now. I'll check them every game."
"You do a really good job with my skates."
He looked back at me over his shoulder. "Yeah?"
"Yes."
"Thanks." He set the skate on the rack and picked up the next one. "I know I’m only part-time, but I really love it here, honestly. My dad's been showing me stuff, and I've been watching videos online and it just—it clicks. Like I actually get it. I didn't think I'd be good at anything like this, but apparently I have very steady hands." He held one up as evidence.
"That's useful."
"Super useful." He grinned. "Okay, so Thursday, are you on the?—"
Cap came through the door. He was looking at something on his clipboard, and he went to the rack on the back wall where they kept spare stick tape and equipment, unhooking a roll without breaking stride. He glanced up and registered Kyle.
"Kyle."
Kyle's hands didn't stop moving, but something in them changed. "Mr. Hannan."
“Please call me Walker, or Cap.”
“Sure. Sorry.”
Cap held his look for a moment, nodded once, and left.
Kyle turned back to the wheel. The easy set of his shoulders was gone. He worked in silence, precise, careful, and very focused on the skate. I knew what had happened between Kyle and Cap—that Cap had hit Kyle because Kyle had tried to steal from him, but Kyle was okay, and Cap was okay, so I’d filed the information away as not important.
Cap said the two of them had fixed things up, but Kyle clearly hadn’t gotten that message. I wish I knew what to say to Kyle or knew whether it was even my place to reassure him that Cap was a good man. It might help if I came out and just said it.
“Cap’s a good man,” I said.
Kyle threw me a smile. “I know.”
“You should call him Cap. He’d like that.”
Kyle frowned. “I will,” then he pulled his ear defenders back on. "They’ll be ready in fifteen minutes," he said, and I knew that meant we were done talking.
So, I left.
Social things were so damn complicated sometimes and anyway, tonight was all about our fourth game of the season against the Lehigh Valley Vortex. I knew where Dane was sitting, because thirty-eight minutes before puck drop, he texted me a photo from his seat with Tim next to him. I didn’t look up at the section during warm-ups. I would look once at the start of the second period after I’d stretched at our bench in the first TV timeout, because I had told myself I was allowed exactly one look up at his face during a game, and that was the look. Until then, he was a known quantity at a known coordinate, and I was at work.
The Vortex put Janne out against me, along with a left-handed defenseman named Pellegrino, who had a slow crossover. Two shifts in, when he wasn’t busy chirping me, Janne had stepped up at our blue line with bad timing, and Cap had gone around him on the outside without breaking stride.Three shifts in, Pellegrino was already breathing through his mouth.
Their goalie, Tucker, a rookie call-up—I’d watched two periods of his on tape that morning—kicked out a save off Taft’s shot, and the rebound came out flat to my stick. Cap had half a second and an open net at the wrong angle. He shoveled it, and it went in off the post. The horn sounded. Their bench groaned. My bench knocked gloves on the boards.
Janne was super unhappy, but I didn’t care when he glowered at me.
The Vortex tied it at 14:04 of the first on a power-play one-timer from the left circle. I watched it develop one full beat ahead of the puck and couldn’t get to it in time because their forward Bernier was already clearing the lane for it, and I was on the wrong side of the slot. One-one. We took it back at 1:58 of the second with Taft on a wrap-around that shouldn’t have worked. Tucker had just enough rookie in him not to seal off. Two-one.
I went to the bench, drank water, and this time let myself look up at Dane, who was wearing my jersey tonight and a black wool hat pulled low over the bandage. He had his left ear turned slightly toward his right shoulder, the position the hospital had told him to favor while the auditory damage healed, so he could hear what Tim was saying. Tim was wearing a Copperheads hat and holding a Coke. My boyfriend mentioned that Tim was being friendly and talking at length about his family, so I was starting to like him a bit. Dane had invited Tim to his mom’s house for Memorial Day if his family still hadn’t worked through their shit—Dane’s words, not mine—so that was in the plans, but that was something else I couldn’t think about when I was playing.
The third period was messy because the Vortex came at us with the desperation that comes when you are losing by one to a team twelve points up on you in the standings. They pulled the goalie with five minutes left for an extra attacker but puthim back in when the Vortex got the puck deep, then pulled him again at three minutes. I was on the ice for the four-on-five with eighteen seconds left on the clock. The Vortex cycled it once, and then Janne tried to thread the seam to their off-side winger, but I was already there.
