Page 28 of Payback On The Ice

Saturday night, back at the Country Lodge, he comes out of the bathroom after a five-minute shower in sweatpants and a T-shirt. No singing. No towel. He gets into his bed and turns on his side, facing the wall, away from me, and pulls the blanket up over his ear.

"Night," he says to the wall.

That's all.

I lie on my back in the dark with the window open and listen to him not sleep for the second night in a row.

Go to sleep, Theo.

I'd never said it before. His name. I've been calling him Lindqvist for three weeks like it was a word for something you scrape off your skates. I don't know why it came out. I opened my mouth to tell him to go back to bed and that's what came out instead, and he just⁠—

He went.

He turned around and went, like I'd pulled a string. And when he lay down I heard the breath go out of him, and it didn't sound like he lost something. It sounded like relief.

I don't know what to do with that.

He was an inch away. I could feel his breath. He had one hand on the mattress by my hip and I could have turned my head an inch and that would've been it, and every part of my body wanted to, and I sat there and didn't, and I told him to go to sleep instead, and he went.

I've been on the other end of a thousand shots. I know what it feels like to make a save you had no business making. That's what it felt like. Like I'd stopped something with everything I had, and I wasn't sure I'd be able to stop it again.

On the bus home Sunday, Nico texts.

Nico: saw the OT goal on the stream

Nico: you ok? that's not like you

Me: Fine. Didn't close my glove.

Nico: I know I saw it

Nico: you never don't close your glove. you closed your glove at the lake when dad threw a beer at you to test it

Me: I was nine.

Nico: and you closed your glove

I look at that for a while. Across the aisle and two rows back, Lindqvist is asleep for real this time, hood up, head against the window, his mouth a little open. He sleeps like a kid on a long car ride, his whole body loose.