Page 107 of Breakaway
"I just shot it."
"And now we're in the playoffs."
"Yeah." His voice catches on the word. Just for a half-second. Then the grin returns, wide and young and open, and I reach across and put my hand on the back of his neck the way Avi puts his hand on shoulders, the gesture that says the room knows you are here.
"Nine-point-four. Final answer. The shot was a nine-point-four. The face you made after was a ten."
He laughs. The laugh is young and fills his stall the way laughter fills stalls when the season is still going.
The room empties slowly. Showers. Clothes. Guys on phones calling whoever they call when the news is good. I change into my clothes and pack my bag and the stall is clean, the way my stall has been clean since September, skates aligned, helmet on the shelf, tape to the left. The alignment is just how I keep a stall. Not a system holding anything together. Just a stall, kept well, because I keep things well.
I pick up my phone. Mouse's face on the screen. I open FaceTime and call Wes.
He picks up on the first ring. His face fills the screen and behind him I can see his kitchen, the low light, the counter with two mugs on it, the camera bag by the sliding door. He is on the couch. His hair is damp. He has been watching.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey."
"You're soaked."
"Thompson." I angle the phone so he can see the champagne still dark across my chest and shoulders.
"You look good, Luca. Happy."
"Mueller rated the clinch a seven," I say. "A seven, Wes. He said he was averaging."
"He's not wrong."
"You are not allowed to side with Mueller on the night we clinched."
"I'm observing that he has a point."
"The spreadsheet will reflect this betrayal."
He laughs. The laugh is low and quiet and easy and it comes through the phone and I lean against the stall and the locker room behind me is almost empty now and the champagne smell is settling into the carpet and the room holds all of it the way rooms hold nights that matter.
"Ten days," I say.
"Ten days. Enjoy the win, but get some sleep tonight."
"I'll be at film at seven-thirty."
"I know you will."
"Good night, Wes."
"Good night, Luca."
His face goes dark. I hold the phone for a second. The screen is Mouse again, her paw on the lime, her face the face of a cat who has never been impressed by anything and is not going to start now.
The playoffs are in ten days. The wild card is Atlanta and Miami. I will stand on the ice and he will stand on the ice and nobody in the building will know what they are seeing except us.
I push through the doors into the Atlanta night. The air is warm. Not salt-warm. Not coastal. The landlocked heat that sits on your shoulders and stays. I have been here for seven months and the heat is still not the heat I got used to in Miami.
But the heat here is mine.
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