Page 37 of The Tryout

That deflates his smile. He shakes his head.

Crap. I just figured if he drove I could ice my knee a little sooner.

“No big deal. Let me just grab some ice and we can head out.”

At the car, he must put two and two together, noticing the bag of ice and the slightly stiff way I get into the driver’s seat.

“Sorry again about the driving. It just…there was never really a time to learn.”

Huh. I mean, I know people who grow up in New York City or whatever don’t always learn how to drive, but I figured a high school in Missouri would have driver’s ed. He sees the confusion on my face and must take pity on me, offering me a scrap of information to explain.

“My, uh, Nana got sick when I was fifteen and it…it just wasn’t a priority, you know?”

I’m interested, not just in Finn’s rationale for not having a driver’s license, but also for any scrap of information about his personal life. Other than where he grew up, I know almost nothing about his personal life – and I still have plenty of questions about that. Why did he move? What got him hooked on hockey? And how on Earth did he get so good in less than a decade?

“I’m sorry. Is she…okay now?”

A deep divot forms between his eyebrows. After a moment, he shakes his head gently.

Well, shit. Here I am trying to get Finn more comfortable talking with me and instead I drag us right into the middle of one of the most uncomfortable conversations possible. I decide to give him space, focusing on the road rather than dragging more information out of him.

As I pull up to the last turn before our street, he answers anyway.

“She died when I was sixteen.”

I turn to him, hoping I don’t miss the light turning green but not really caring that much.

“I’m so sorry to hear that. Is that…is that the picture you keep in your locker?”

He nods, silently, and I feel grateful to get this little look inside.

Sure enough, driving has not improved the state of my knee, and by the time we hit the apartment building, I’m visibly limping. The only benefit to this is that Finn’s face has transitioned from downtrodden to worried. Before we even leave the parking garage, he has grabbed my bag from my shoulder, and in the lobby of the apartment, he’s pressing the elevator button before I can even decide to do it.

Upstairs, he pushes me toward the couch before dropping our bags in the closet and heading toward the kitchen. There, he wraps the bag of ice I grabbed from the trainer in a towel before bringing it over to me.

I pull up the loose leg of my sweats, exposing the silvery scars from my surgery. Tucking the ice up against my knee, I feel relief as the cold from the ice sinks into the inflamed tendons. Finn is perched at the other end of the tiny sofa, sitting on the arm and staring at my leg, teeth digging into his lip.

“Dude, I interrogated your entire life story out of you. You can ask whatever you want.”

His eyes flick up at me, and from the guilty look I see there, I know I’m right.

“It wasn’t my life story.”

“Yeah, well, you probably won’t get mine, either. But do you want to ask a question or two?”

“How…how did it happen?”

The thing I’ve learned about injuries is that, when you play a sport like hockey, you like to convince yourself that injuries only happen when something goes badly wrong. That you’re not at risk every second you’re on the ice, that bad injuries only happen to bad players – bad people.

Unfortunately, the fact of the matter is that career-ending injuries happen the same way every other bump and bruise does. There’s often no telling why one collision leads to nothing more than a scratch while another results in a career-ending concussion.

“I checked someone into the boards.”

He looks confused, as well he might.

“Don’t you…don’t you mean someone checked you into the boards?”

I shake my head, grimacing.