Page 66 of Slashed Bonds

Fuck. I don’t like that.

I don’t like that at all.

Because the thought that comes in behind it is worse.

She fits.

Not the way a signing fits a roster. The way a keystone fits an arch. You can build an arch without one. It’ll stand for a while. Then the load finds the gap and the whole thing comes down on whoever’s underneath.

Three of us have been standing in an arch with no keystone for four years, and it’s held, and I’ve never once let myself think about what we’d look like if it didn’t have to.

She’s carved to be ours.

There it is.

The dangerous thought, in the dangerous shape, and I can’t put it back.

She nods again. Coach says something and points down the ice, and she pushes off the boards and glides toward the center dot, and I watch her skate for the first time.

Different animal.

Every hint of it was there in the lobby, but you can’t see a skater until she’s on blades. Her stride is longer than her height should allow. Her edges are deep and quiet. She doesn’t bounce, the way forwards bounce when they’re excited to be on a sheet. She flows, low and settled, and the ice hisses under her like it’s making room.

She stops at the dot and turns to face the far net.

Then she brings the back of her wrist across her mouth.

One pass. Slow. And the dark red comes off, and what’s underneath is bare, and pale, and about nineteen years old.

She doesn’t play in it.

I file that. It goes in the drawer with the shoulder and the scent and the way she stood off-square to the door. The drawer is filling faster than any drawer I’ve kept on a person.

“Second group,” Roz calls. “Off the bench.”

The other half of the team goes over the boards.

Which leaves the dog unattended, and the dog knows it, and he comes trotting down the length of the bench with the ruined stick in his mouth like he’s bringing us evidence.

He stops in front of Niko.

Niko looks at him. Then he looks at Greenie, a long, flat look that promises a conversation in a parking lot. Then, with no transition whatsoever, he looks back at the dog, smirks, drops to a crouch, and starts rubbing the animal’s belly.

The dog goes over onto his back like he’s been shot.

Surprising. All of it.

I’ve known Nikolai four years. I’ve seen him cheerful, feral, bleeding, bored, and asleep on the bus with his mouth open. I’ve never seen him tender with anything that couldn’t skate.

Cash catches my eye across Niko’s bent back.

Neither of us says a word.

Too many emotional changes for one fucking day. I’m going to need a cigarette and a floor plan.

The whistle goes.

Mock scrimmage. Four-on-four, half ice, Coach’s usual way of looking at a new body without letting a new body get killed. He’s got her on the right side, utility forward, with Dubois carrying on the left and two of our second-pair defensemen behind. Against them, the second line and Pruitt in the far net.