Mason and Theo move on, and so do the guys, and twenty minutes later we’re running a three-on-two. Then Mason skates past me, close enough that our shoulders almost touch, and he whispers something beneath the noise of the drill and the scrape of blades.
“That birthmark,” he says. “High on the inside of her left thigh. Cute, isn’t it?”
Then he’s gone, pushing off into the flow of the next rep, and my hands tighten on my stick so hard my fingers ache inside my gloves. Because I’ve put my mouth on that spot and I know exactly what it looks like and where it sits on her body.
Mason could know from when they were dating, but Sloane told me they didn’t go that far, and Mason never gave any indication things got physical. And if he knew from before, then he’s had that information for months.
So why now?
The drill is still running, but I’m frozen on the ice with my hands locked on my stick, and the impulse is simple and total: skate after him, put him into the boards hard enough to feel it through the pads, and keep going until somebody pulls me off.
But I don’t, because if I light the fuse, the bomb might go off.
So I stand there and I run the next drill.
But the guys know. Seb catches my eye after a whistle and holds it longer than he means to, reading me the way he reads a play going bad. Luca skates close during a water break and taps his stick against my shin pads, not saying anything.
But Theo hasn’t looked at me since the remark, and that’s worse.
As the guys file to the locker room, I stay, because Theo is sitting on the bench, pulling tape off his shins, quiet and alone. That’s a warning sign, because Theo always looks for the group, and he always fills silence.
I sit next to him. “You good?”
He starts unlacing his skates. “He hit the outlet right to the spot and I wasn’t there.” A beat. “I read the rush wrong, so that was on me.”
He pulls a skate off and sets it down.
“I know he’s good, I know that, I just—” He stops, then runs both hands through his hair, damp and going in four directions. “Mason made sure the whole rink heard about it.”
“Theo, I?—”
“I’m not asking you to do anything,” he says, finally looking up at me. “I’m just saying.”
I open my mouth. The captain’s sentence is right there — I’ll talk to him, I’ll handle it, it won’t happen again — but it doesn’t come, because I already failed to say it on the ice and I’m afraid of the consequences if I do.
“I know,” I say.
Theo nods, and then he’s gone, but what he said remains. The ice is chewed up from the session, ruts and snow pushed up against the boards, which tells me we worked our asses off today even though I didn’t manage to pull Mason into line.
I used to love this part, the rink after hours, the ice to myself. It’s the same as the weight room in the morning: quiet and calm and mine. In sophomore year I used to stay an hour after every practice, skating slow figures, the cold in my lungs.
I loved it, but then people started needing things.
My father would call today clean.You ran the session. You got the result. You kept everybody moving.He used to tell methe bar moves and you rise to meet it, and I met it for so long that I stopped feeling where it cut.
Never mind the kid on the bench who needed me to stop.
Never mind being too afraid to call someone out.
I sit on the bench, pull my gloves off, and find a blister forming on my right palm from how hard I was gripping the stick after Mason arrived. I wait for some sort of peace, but it doesn’t come.
Eventually, I stand and walk down the tunnel in my skates, blades clicking on the rubber mats. By now, half the guys have cleared out with plans to shower at home before classes, while the rest are in the showers and talking shit.
When I reach my stall, a foil-wrapped plate sits on the shelf. It wasn’t there before practice. The foil is crimped the way Luca does it, which means he stole more of Sloane’s food and then portioned some out for me.
There’s a Post-it note on it:
There were leftover leftovers, so they’re yours by law. P.S. Ask Sloane to cook the meatballs again?
