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He took it back. In writing. In front of everybody.

I read it sitting on my orange couch in my boxers with a bowl of cereal going soggy in my lap. He left at six, out the front door, through the lobby, past the doorman. He kissed me at the door first. On the mouth. With the door open.

The comments under the statement are mostly good. Took him long enough, some of them say, and about time, Captain, and one that just says HE HEARD IT in capital letters, with about ten crying emojis. Somebody made a new version of the side-by-side. Varga on the left. Owen's statement on the right. Redemption arc, it says.

Maman sends me a screenshot of it with six hearts and the words THE SAD BEAR HAS A SPINE.

I laugh so hard I spill the cereal.

At morning skate, the room's different.

Not a lot. Nobody makes a speech. But when I walk in, Adeyemi looks up from his skates and nods at me, like we're agreeing about something. Pratt, the other rookie, who hasn't said more than ten words to me all season, says "Hey, Rémy," on his way to the showers. It's the first time he's used my first name.

Brandt's at his stall with his back to me. He doesn't turn around. He doesn't say anything at all, which for Brandt is the same as a speech.

Kowal's the one who surprises me. He walks past my stall on his way out to the ice, and he stops, and he looks down at me for a long moment with that parking-garage face.

Then he taps my shin pad with the blade of his stick. Twice. The way you tap a guy's pads after a good shift.

He doesn't say a word. He just keeps walking.

I sit there with one skate on and one skate off, staring after him.

"Did Kowal just—" Sorel says, from the next stall.

"I think so."

"Huh," Sorel says. "The world's ending."

My agent's name is Marc Tessier. He's from Laval, he's fifty, and he's been representing hockey players since before I was born. He wears suits that cost more than my mom's car. He flew in this morning for the meeting, which is how I know it's a big one.

We meet at a steakhouse downtown, in a booth in the back. He's got a folder.

"Frostline," he says, and puts it on the table.

I know Frostline. Everybody knows Frostline. It's the sports drink with the blue bottle and the commercials where famous athletes sweat in slow motion. They've never signed a hockey player. Never.

"They want you," Marc says. "Three years. Commercials, print, social. National campaign. You'd be the face of the whole winter line."

He slides the folder across. I open it. There's a number on the first page.

I look at the number. I count the zeros. I count them again, in French, in case English is lying to me.

"That's a lot of zeros," I say.

"That's a lot of zeros." Marc's grinning. "That's more than your contract, Rémy. For drinking blue water on TV."

"What's the catch?"

His grin changes. Not much. A little.

"There's a clause," he says. "Standard stuff. Section nine. Morals and image."

I flip through the pages until I find it. It's a long paragraph in tiny type. I read it twice.

Athlete agrees to maintain a family-friendly public image consistent with the Brand's values, and shall refrain from public displays of a romantic or sexual nature, including but not limited to such displays captured in photographs, video, or social media.

I look up. "Is this in everybody's contract?"