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I don't do the slide. I turn around and look at the penalty box, right at him, and I smile. My best one. The one I use on reporters.

He doesn't smile back.

We lose game two. Four to one. It's not close. Their goalie stops everything, and Varga scores twice, and on his second one he skates past our bench on the way back to center ice and says, loud enough for the front row to hear, "Enjoy it while it lasts, old man."

Owen doesn't look at him. His jaw's doing the thing. The muscle jumping under the skin.

In the room after, Dana drains his knee in the side room with the door closed. I sit in my stall and watch the door and wait, and when he comes out, he's walking like the floor's tilted.

"Series is tied," he says, sitting down next to me. "One-one. That's all it is."

"Your knee⁠—"

"One-one," he says again, and starts untaping his stick.

That night, at his place, I tell him about my parents.

"They're coming," I say. "For game five. Here, in Chicago."

He's on the couch with his leg up on the coffee table and an ice bag wrapped around his knee. He looks up from the TV, where he's watching the tape of game two with the sound off.

"Both of them?"

"My dad's driving. Seventeen hours. Maman wanted to fly, but he says he doesn't trust planes, which isn't true, he's been on a plane like three times. He just wants to bring the truck." I sit down on the other end of the couch. "He wants to park it outside the arena. So people can see the Rimouski plates."

Owen almost smiles. "That's a lot of driving."

"He looked it up. He's very proud of how far it is." I pull my knees up. "Maman wants to have dinner. After game five. At a restaurant. Her treat."

"That's nice."

"She wants you to come."

He goes still. The ice bag slides a little on his knee and he doesn't fix it.

"Me."

"The sad bear," I say. "She said, and I quote, Bring the sad bear. I owe him tourtière, and this will have to do."

"Rémy."

"You don't have to. I'll tell her you've got a thing. Treatment. Video. I'll make something up." I pick at the seam of the couch cushion. "I'm very good at making things up now."

He's quiet. On the TV, with the sound off, Varga scores his second goal again and skates past our bench and says something to Owen, and Owen doesn't look at him.

"What would she think?" Owen asks. "If I came."

"That you're my captain. That you're nice to me. That you're lonely and she wants to feed you." I look at him. "She'd think what she wants to think. She always does."

"What about your father?"

"My father will talk to you about his truck for forty minutes. He'll ask you about your plus-minus. He'll tell you you need to keep your head down."

"I've heard that one before."

"I know."

He looks at me across the couch. At the gap between us, one cushion wide.