Page 41 of Puck the Coach's Son
Phoenix hears it. Phoenix hearsI don't know yetand reads it asyes.Captain reading a second-liner's stickwork, already knowing what system the guy came up in. He does not smile. His face stays where it is. But a small line comes in between his eyebrows, a line I have seen before only when he is working through something on the ice that he is going to have to solve later.
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay.”
He shifts his weight to his other foot.
“You're a grown man.”
“I'm aware.”
He wipes his palm on his shorts.
“He's not.”
“He's twenty, Cap.”
The vent overhead cycles on. Cold air moves across the top of my head.
“He's a kid and his dad runs the bench, Creed.”
“I'm aware of that too.”
My jaw sets.
Phoenix nods. Once. He picks up the water bottle, realizes it is empty, drops it.
“I'm going to ask you one thing,” he says. “And then I'm not going to ask you about this again until you want me to.”
“Ask.”
“Are you going to hurt him?”
My hand is on the rack. I become aware of my hand. I become aware of the bar. I become aware of the plates on the tree and the smell of rubber flooring and the fluorescent light in the ceiling and a guy three racks down who is grunting through a deadlift. I become aware of everything in the gym at once, which is a tell, and Phoenix sees the tell, and Phoenix is the only man in this building I would let see it.
“No,” I say.
“Creed.”
“No.”
My hand comes off the rack.
“Okay.”
“I mean it.”
He nods once.
“I know.”
He picks up the empty bottle. Slaps me on the shoulder once. Walks toward the water fountain.
Jax and Grayson both look at me at the same time, like boys who have been told not to look at the accident on the highway.
“What?”
“Nothing,” says Grayson.
