Page 12 of Caught Offside

The kids were out there too, fifteen or sixteen of them in helmets too big and jerseys hanging to their knees. They swarmed Patrick like he was a jungle gym. A girl with a ponytail sticking through her helmet grabbed his jersey and said something Asher couldn’t hear. Patrick looked down at her, and something in his posture shifted. He made himself smaller without actually getting smaller.

He ran a drill. Skate to the blue line, stop, come back. Half the kids wobbled. One ate it hard on his hip and bounced right back up. When a boy with tape holding his shin guards together couldn’t get his crossovers right, Patrick skated over and showed him. Slow and exaggerated, his blade carving a clean arc. The kid tried it and fell. Patrick didn’t react. The kid got up. Patrick showed him again.

Asher’s chest did something inconvenient.

The girl scored on a breakaway drill and came straight for Patrick with both arms up. He held out his glove, and she smacked it so hard the crack echoed across the rink. Patrick looked at his glove. Looked at her. Looked at his glove again.

“Nice shot,” he said. Completely deadpan. Like he was filing a scouting report.

She skated off, beaming. Asher was pretty sure he was too, which was embarrassing for a grown man sitting alone in the bleachers at a kids’ hockey practice.

Then Patrick’s eyes found him through the glass.

It lasted maybe two seconds. Patrick’s stride hitched, and then he was skating again, calling the next drill like nothing had happened. But Asher had seen it. That tiny pause when Patrick registered he’d actually come.

He sat through the rest of the session with numb hands and a grin he couldn’t get rid of. When a kid wiped out near the boards, Patrick got there first, down on one knee, checking the kid’s helmet strap with hands that were way too big for a child’s face. Something shifted behind Asher’s ribs, and he decided not to think about it too hard.

Patrick came out of the locker room in jeans and a dark jacket, hair still damp. The scar on his cheekbone was more visible without the helmet.

“You came,” he said.

“You invited me.”

“I made an observation about your schedule.”

“And I observed myself in a car at seven a.m. Weird how that works.”

Patrick’s mouth twitched. Not a smile, but closer than Asher had gotten before.

“You look frozen,” Patrick said.

“Because I am frozen. Denim jacket. Hockey rink. I didn’t think this through.”

“Come on. I’ll make coffee.”

The apartment was exactly what Asher expected. Small and precise. A couch aimed at the window instead of a TV. Books on the side table with cracked spines. One mug on the kitchen counter next to a French press.

“One mug,” Asher said.

Patrick opened a cabinet and pulled down a second without a word.

Asher leaned against the counter and watched him work. Patrick measured everything like it mattered. Beans. Water. Ratio. He ground the coffee with the same focus he’d used checking that kid’s helmet strap twenty minutes ago, like every task deserved the same level of attention regardless of stakes.

“You were good with them,” Asher said.

“I ran drills.”

“You showed a kid his crossover four times without getting frustrated. That’s not just running drills.”

Patrick poured the water. Didn’t look up. “I don’t know what I’m doing with kids. I just know what I would have wanted someone to show me at that age.”

Asher took the mug Patrick slid across the counter. Black because Patrick hadn’t asked how he took it and Asher wasn’t about to correct him. It was bitter and too hot, but he drank it anyway.

They ended up on the couch. Patrick at one end, feet on the floor, mug balanced on his knee. Asher at the other end, arm along the back, legs stretched out, taking up as much room as possible because that’s what he did when he was nervous and didn’t know what else to do with his body.

“Tell me about catching,” Patrick said.

“What do you want to know?”