Page 24 of Locke

“Dive into the food,” she says, reaching for an olive.

We eat for a while without talking.The valley is quiet and a gentle breeze starts up to help cut through the sun’s warmth.The scenery is spectacular which I have come to love during my short time here in Portland.I’ve spent a lot of time hiking and there’s not a bad view anywhere.

I don’t hate it.

Livia refills both glasses without asking and I don’t stop her.

“Okay.”Her tone shifts.Not dramatically, but enough of a gear change that I know we’re past niceties.“I want to talk to you about how this is going to work between us.”

Here it is.I set my glass down on the board and wait.

“We’re going to do just three sessions,” she says, and I open my mouth to object, but she holds out her hand, palm up, and I snap it shut.“Be thankful it’s three and not ten.And in those three sessions I’m not going to ask you about your past.I’m not going to push you to open up about anything you don’t want to open up about.No couch, no probing questions, no clinical anything.”She holds my gaze.“You just have to show up.”

I study her, suspicion running through me in hot waves.“That’s it?”

“That’s not it.There’s a condition.”

I knew it, and I’m strangely disappointed because I’d started to think that maybe she’s different.“What’s the condition?”

“You know that word that got yelled from the Calgary bench.”She says it plainly, just a statement of fact, delivered with the same tone she used to describe the wine.I freeze.“I heard it.I know it struck a chord in you.I’m not going to ask you what it means or where it comes from, but I know something is eating at you, Locke, and I know it’s older than this season and older than this team.It’s causing you problems and I hope one day you’ll trust me enough to tell me.But until then, I’m telling you directly that I will never push on it.”

My heart is beating a hundred miles an hour.She named it.She walked right up to the edge of the thing I carry everywhere and then she stopped and took a step back and I don’t know what to do with that.I expected the push.I was braced for the fucking push.

And she’s telling me it’s never coming.She reaches for a dried apricot, completely calm, without any idea that she almost gave me a heart attack and then completely soothed away the angst in the same breath.

“What I do need from you,” she continues, “is camaraderie.”

I come back online, confused.“Camaraderie?”

“You don’t have relationships with any of your teammates.Not real ones.Every other player on that roster has built some degree of personal connection with the people they play alongside, and you have built none.”She’s not unkind about it, but she is accurate.“That has to change.”

“I do my job.”

“You do your job exceptionally well, until you fuck it up.”

Ouch.I blink at her crudity in calling out my mistakes.But again… she’s not wrong.

“You do your job completely alone and this is a team sport.The two things are not unrelated to each other.”She takes a sip of wine.“Part of our arrangement is that you make a genuine effort to be present with this team off the ice.Team events, gatherings, whatever comes up—you show and you actually try.”She tilts her head slightly.“You give me that and you get to keep your past exactly where you want it.We do three sessions that won’t feel like sessions and then I’ll push Patrick Rowe to leave you alone.”

I look at her, considering her terms.

She’s offering me the thing I didn’t know I needed—a way to comply without surrendering anything.Rowe gets his mandate fulfilled.She gets whatever she’s building toward.I give up nothing of actual consequence.

I’m suspicious of how clean it is.Nothing this clean is ever actually clean.“Why the team?Why does that even matter?”

“Because a man who has everything to lose plays differently from a man who doesn’t,” she says without hesitation, like she’s thought about this carefully.“Right now, you play like someone who genuinely does not care what happens to him on the ice.That’s dangerous for you and it’s dangerous for the people around you.If you care about the men you’re playing with—actually care, the way you let yourself care about people before whatever happened that made you stop—you’ll think twice before you make a mistake that costs them.”

I pick up my wineglass.“Three sessions?”

“Three sessions, plus your commitment to the personal side of being on a team and having teammates.I expect you to attend the team get-together for Thanksgiving.”

“And you’ll stay off my past?”

“Completely.Promise me you’ll go to the Thanksgiving get-together.”

“Why?”I grumble.“I don’t even celebrate that holiday.”

“Doesn’t matter.It’s about developing a bond and that’s part of our deal for three sessions.”