Page 34 of Payback On The Ice

He's hard. His goalie pants are loose, but it's obvious, straining against the front of them. He's breathing hard through his nose. His hand, the one he used on me, is shaking just a little.

I let go of the bench. I reach for him. I want—I don't even know. I want to touch him. I want to make him make the sound I just made.

He grabs my wrist.

Not hard. But completely. His fingers wrap all the way around it and stop it an inch from his body.

"No," he says.

"Let me⁠—"

"No."

He holds my wrist for one more second. Then he lets go, and he steps back, and he picks a clean rag up off the bench and wipes his hand on it, slowly, each finger, and he drops the rag on the floor.

He picks up his chest protector.

He doesn't put it on. He just holds it. He punches the code on the inside of the door. It clicks open.

He doesn't look at me. He walks out, and the door swings shut behind him on its hydraulic arm, slow, slow, and closes.

I'm standing in Doug's cage with my shorts around my thighs and come drying on my stomach, under a bare bulb that buzzes.

I start laughing.

I don't know why. It's not funny. I put my hand over my mouth and lean back against the workbench and laugh until my eyes are wet.

At practice he's worse than he's ever been.

He doesn't look at me. Not once. In the shooting drill he stops everything I throw at him without even turning his head, and when I come past his crease he says, loud enough for the whole line to hear, "Lindqvist, pucks," and points at the forty pucks scattered across the zone, and goes to get water. I pick up every one of them. On my knees, with my stick, while the whole team stands around the bench and watches.

In the room after, he tells Jace, in front of me, like I'm not standing there, "He's at the table again Thursday. And Saturday."

"Saturday's not a team dinner," Jace says.

"Make it one."

Gunnar laughs. A couple of the freshmen look at me, then look away.

Wes Abernathy doesn't laugh. Wes is looking at Dane.

I take my time getting dressed. I sing a little under my breath. I'm fine. Look at me. I'm fine.

That night I tape his sticks.

Six of them, all lined up on the workbench in the stick room. Black on the blade, heel to toe, overlap by half. Seven wraps on the knob. Wax.

I do every one perfect.

Then I pull the tape off the first one and do it again. It wasn't wrong. My hands just won't stop shaking, and the tape gives them something to do.

10

DANE

Iwash my hands four times.

In the room, before practice, at the sink nobody uses, with the hottest water the building has. I scrub until the skin across my knuckles goes red and tight. It doesn't do anything. I can still feel him. The weight of him in my palm. The way his whole body went up on its toes, chasing it. The sound he made when I stopped.