Page 78 of Unmanageable

Cash hoists the massive bag onto his shoulder with ease. He looks back at me, his eyes momentarily drifting from the mask of politeness. “Don’t eat my cookies while I’m gone.”

“Go skate, O’Connell,” I say.

The heavy doors swing shut behind him, leaving me alone in the lobby with Sal and Brenda. I turn around to open my laptop at one of the plastic tables, but Sal immediately leans his elbows on the counter, pinning me with a determined glare.

“So,” Sal says. “You’re from Boston, right? You see what they’re doing with the zoning laws down by the harbor?”

“The harbor development?”

“The harbor development! It’s a total disgrace, Scottie. You give the developers three inches of tax abatement, and before you know it, the public parking is gone, the local fishermen are priced out, and you’re paying twelve bucks for a cup of chowder that’s eighty percent cornstarch! It’s the exact same crap we’re dealing with here with the county commission!”

I blink. “Well, city development is always a pretty complicated balancing act—”

“Balancing act? It’s a racket! Let me tell you about the local developers…”

For the next twenty-five minutes, I am trapped in the most agonizing, droning lecture on local municipal corruption in human history. Every time I try to politely excuse myself, Sal just raises his voice and transitions from the concrete lobby to the school district pension funds, then to the water purification plants.

My brain is actively dying.

Out on the ice, Cash is fully dressed in his gear. He takes a few warm-up laps, his skates carving deep, beautiful grooves into the clean sheet. He glides past the viewing window, looks into the lobby, and stops dead.

He sees my desperate, wide-eyed stare. He sees Sal, who is currently gesturing wildly with a stapler.

Cash lets out a visible laugh behind his goalie mask. He skates over to the bench, pulls his mask off, and rests it on top of the boards. He watches us for another ten seconds, clearly enjoying my suffering, before he finally shakes his head.

The rink door jingles open, and Cash steps through, his skates clacking on the black rubber flooring of the hallway. He walks right up to the lobby counter, towering over both of us in his full pads.

He reaches out, wraps one giant, heavily padded goalie glove right over the top of my head, and physically pushes me three inches to the left, stepping directly between me and Sal.

“Alright, Sal, cut her some slack,” Cash says. “If you talk to her about sewage management for another five minutes, she’s going to sue both of us for emotional distress.”

Sal blinks, looking at the giant, sweaty glove resting over my hair. “I’m just educating the youth, Cash.”

“She’s entirely ineducable,” Cash says smoothly. “Come on, Sharky. You’re on the clock. I need you to hold the radar gun or you don’t get a cookie.”

“Oh, thank god,” I mutter. “Goodbye, Sal. I’ll look into the gravel contracts, I swear.”

Sal just waves us off with his stapler as Cash guides me down the hallway, his giant hand still loosely hovering near my shoulder, the cold air from the ice sheet hitting my face like a blessing.

The door clicks shut behind us, locking out the lobby.

I lean my back against the yellow plastic boards, letting out a massive, dramatic sigh of relief. Cash stands on the ice, leaning on his goalie stick, looking smug as he stares down at me.

“You’re welcome,” he says.

“You let me suffer for so long,” I say, smoothing down my hair where his glove had messed it up. “I was about to bite my own arm off just to have a reason to leave.”

“I had to see how long you’d last,” he laughs, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “You had the exact same look you give me when I start talking about advanced goalie analytics. The ‘please-kill-me’ look.”

“Your analytics are boring, O’Connell. Sal was a threat to my very sanity.”

He steps closer to the boards, his chest nearly level with my chin. He looks down at my face, his voice dropping. “You survived. That’s what matters.”

“Shut up,” I say, but I’m smiling. “Go back out there and show me you can actually move. I need to see some real hockey, please.”

He spins on his skates, his blades spraying a sharp, rhythmic shower of white ice against the boards, and glides back toward the net. I lean my elbows on the top of the boards, resting my chin in my hands, and just watch him work.

He tracks edge to edge for an hour. No whistling, no talk of rivers, just the raw, rhythmic sound of steel carving up frozen water.