Page 25 of Top Shelf

Eli pulls his compression shirt over his head. “Everyone stop gossiping like this is my sister’s book club.”

“Lulu’s book club has excellent snacks,” Logan says. “And the content of those books? Feral. Sometimes she—”

Eli points at him. “Do not continue that story about my sister while we’re all half undressed.”

“Your sister is also my fiancée.”

Chase claps once and sighs loudly. “God, I love game day.”

I keep my head down, but the locker room has already done what it always does—pulled the outside world into pieces small enough to laugh at. Heidi on my bike becomes chirping, Priscilla becomes a target. The Swedish messages on my phone become something I can ignore for another hour because in here, there is a game to prepare for. The outside world shrinks by degrees until only the game remains.

Warmups come with cold air in the lungs and pucks snapping off sticks. Fans gather early along the glass. I take a pass from Eli, drag the puck across my body, and send it clean toward the net. Glove save. Our goalie tosses it back out with a grin.

Near the bench, Reid stands with the goalie coach, his eyes tracking Camden Cole, our rookie backup, in net. He sees differently than the rest of us. Goalies are strange people. They spend their lives watching the game come at them and call it fun.

He catches me looking and lifts his chin, and I lift mine back. Then I see my phone vibrating in my head again, though it is still buried in my suit pocket. I turn hard and take a pass from Jake, letting the puck settle against my blade.

Not now.

The anthem comes next, the arena stands, and the game starts tight. Late-season hockey is always like this. By the end of March, the standings are too close, and each team is fighting for playoff position. There are not enough points left to waste.

Their first line comes hard behind our net, and I take the hit with my shoulder braced, boards rattling through my ribs. Their winger tries to pin me and dig the puck loose, but I shift my weight and flick the puck off the wall to Logan before the second man arrives.

On my next shift, their left winger gathers speed. He thinks he has room. I can see it in the way his shoulder drops, and how his skates angle before the rest of him commits. By the time he makes the cut, I am already there. Glass booms when he meets me, and I pin him to the boards, feeling the puck spit free toward Eli.

The crowd roars, but I do not. I am working.

There is a pleasure in defending that people who only watch goals do not always understand. Taking away the thing another man wants, and reading his choice before he trusts himself enough to make it.

Heidi would understand that, I think. The thought irritates me enough that I send my next pass harder than necessary. Jake catches it anyway, because he’s Jake Brooks.

By second period, we find our rhythm. Eli jumps a puck at the blue line and sends it up to Logan.

“Vik!” he calls, feeding it to me.

Their winger lunges toward me, his stick reaching too eagerly. I catch the puck with my skate, kick it to my blade, and drag it inside just enough. A narrow lane appears through the bodies between me and the net, and Jake sees it too. He slips into open ice with his stick down, and I send the puck through the gap, hard enough to reach him before anyone else can.

Jake catches it in stride and snaps it high before the goalie can slide across. The puck hits the top corner so cleanly the water bottle jumps. Red light flashes behind the net,

the horn sounds, and the barn bursts wide open. Jake drops to a knee near the glass, shouting hard as Eli barrels into him first, then Logan, then me. From the bench, Chase is already leaning over the boards, tapping his stick against them.

“Top shelf, baby!” Chase yells. “That’s where we keep the good shit!”

Jake laughs, nodding to me. “That pass was filthy.”

I tap his helmet. “Good finish.”

“Good finish?” Logan stares at me. “The man just roofed it hard enough to reach satellites, and you give him good finish?”

“It was good.”

Eli skates past. “He is excited.”

“I am.”

“You sound dead.”

“I am very excited.”