Page 29 of Payback On The Ice

Nico: you have that face in the OT clip

Nico: the face from april

I put my phone face down on my leg.

I don't have to ask him which face. I know which face.

Monday morning, he's on the bench at five-twenty-five.

He's in full gear, helmet on, gloves on, stick across his knees. The pucks are on the blue line. My water bottles are on the net. His face is blank behind his visor.

"Morning," I say.

He looks up at me. He holds it for a second longer than he should.

"Yes," he says.

I scrape my ice. I tap my posts. I drop into my stance, and I don't think about the hotel. I think about the puck. That's what I do. That's what I've always done. The world gets small, and still, and clear.

He misses the first one. He tries to go high glove and I've got it before it gets there. He skates back to the line without a word.

The second one goes in. He makes me bite on a shoulder fake and walks it around my pad and tucks it in the far side, like he's putting something on a shelf.

The third one goes in. A snap shot from the slot, five-hole, so fast I'm down a half second late.

The fourth one I stop. Pad save. Kick it into the corner.

He stands on the blue line with the last puck under his blade, and for a long moment he doesn't come. He's breathing hard. His chest is going up and down under his jersey. He looks at me down the length of the ice and I look at him, and something in me goes very cold and very calm, the way it does in the last minute of a one-goal game.

He comes.

He's not trying to trick me this time. He comes straight down the middle at full speed, and at the top of the circle he gives me nothing, no shoulder drop, no look, just a quick flick of the wrists, and the puck goes over my glove and under the bar and hits the twine so hard the whole net jumps on its pegs.

Three.

Three for five.

He doesn't skate a loop. He doesn't skate back to the line. He comes straight at me.

He stops so hard at the top of my crease that the snow comes up in a sheet and hits me in the face mask, and then he's in my crease, he's in it, which nobody does, and he's right up against my mask with his visor almost touching the cage.

"Three," he says. "Three. Say it. Say it, Josip."

My middle name. In his mouth. On my ice.

"That's not yes," I say.

"I don't give a shit." He bangs his stick on the top of my mask, tok-tok, the way you'd knock on a door. "Three. Two more and I'm done with you. Two more and you don't get to tell me when to eat. You don't get to tell me when to sleep. You don't get to look at me like⁠—"

He stops.

"Like what," I say.

"You know like what."

I put my blocker in the middle of his chest and shove.

He goes back a step. He comes right back. He shoves me, both hands on my chest protector, and I go back into the net, into the twine, and I come off it like it's a spring, and I've got two fistfuls of his jersey and I'm driving him backward behind the net, his skates scrabbling, until his back hits the boards with a bang that echoes through the whole empty building.