When noon rolled around, the kids weren’t nearly asready to leave as they were normally. There were several passionate requests for Drew, Foster, and Gordy to come back every single day for the rest of the summer.
“What am I, chopped liver?” I asked with my arms out. Like, come on, way to knock a guy when he’s down. They were acting like we’d never had fun at camp before these clowns showed up.
“Can you guys play a real game?” Elias asked, practically vibrating. “Like, against each other? Please? Pretty please?”
I opened my mouth to say no—camp was over and we needed to clear the ice—but Drew was already grinning.
“What do you think, boys? Two on one, Gordy in net?”
“I’m down. Let me throw on some gear,” Gordy said.
Foster shrugged. “I’ve got nowhere to be.”
I didn’t either. That was the problem. The only place I wanted to be was somewhere I’d decided I couldn’t go.
“Let’s do it.”
The parents who were still lingering moved to the stands, and the kids pressed against the glass with their faces smashed flat, fogging it up with their breath. I grabbed a fresh puck from the bucket and dropped it at center ice.
“Alright. Me and Foster versus Drew and his ego. First to score. Gordy, try to stop something.”
“Try to shoot something worth stopping,” Gordy fired back, settling into his crease.
Drew took the puck first, because of course he did. He deked around Foster with a move that was disgustingly smooth and a little too show-off-y for my taste, but I was ready for it. I closed the gap, angled him toward the boards, and stripped the puck off his stick with a clean poke check.
“That’s my move!” Joelle called from behind the glass, and I couldn’t help the grin that split my face.
“Learned from the best!” I shouted back, then fed Foster a pass that would’ve hit net if not for Gordy’s blocker.
We went back and forth like that for a while, nobody holding back. Drew and I had been playing together since we were little, which meant he could read me as well as I could read him. Drew played like he always did, even when it didn’t matter—hard and fast with something to prove. Foster was more patient, waiting for openings that Drew was too stubborn to close. And me, I was just happy to be on the ice with my guys, doing the one thing that always made sense when nothing else did.
Hockey was always the one thing that could force my brain to shut up.
On the ice, I didn’t think about my dad or his poisonous legacy or the girl who had taken my world and flipped it on its axis.
I could just be.
It was just me and my friends with a puck and a stick.
I took the puck wide and fired a wrist shot that Gordy snagged with his glove.
“You’re gonna have to do better than that,” Gordy said, tossing the puck back out.
Gordy was a wall. Drew ripped a backhander that looked like it was going top shelf, but Gordy snagged it with his glove like it was nothing. Drew threw his hands up.
“Oh, come on!”
“Told you to shoot something worth stopping,” Gordy said, tossing the puck back out.
The kids had been cheering for Drew, but suddenly cheers for Gordy rang out across the ice, and Drew looked at the kids like they’d just kicked him in the balls.
It didn’t get any easier from there. Foster’s wrist shotfrom the slot got eaten by Gordy’s pad. I tried to sneak one five-hole and he shut me down so fast I actually laughed. The kids behind the glass were losing it every time Gordy made a save, and the guy was clearly feeding off it—he was making bigger, more dramatic stops than he needed to, which was the most personality I’d seen from him all day.
“Showboat,” Drew muttered after Gordy robbed him again with a flashy blocker save.
“Entertainer,” Gordy corrected from behind his mask.
My legs were burning and my lungs felt raw in the best way. Foster had the puck in the corner, protecting it from Drew’s aggressive forecheck, and I found open ice in front of the net.
