Page 42 of Payback On The Ice

I drive around for a while after practice. I don't go anywhere. Out Route 9 past the Kwik Stop, past the truck stop, out to where the road turns to gravel by the frozen lake, and back. I sit in the lot behind Kettle with the engine running and the heat on and look at the side door.

I get my phone out.

Me: Back lot. Now.

He shows up in five minutes in a hoodie and shower shoes, and gets into my passenger seat with his hair still wet.

"What's up?"

"The knee."

He blinks. "What knee?"

"In the pile. Somebody put a knee in his ribs."

"Oh, that." Gunnar shrugs. "I mean, I didn't do it on purpose. It was a pile, D. Shit happens in a pile. Besides—" and he grins, "isn't that kind of the point? You said nobody talks to him. Figured that meant nobody helps him up either."

I look at him.

I made that. Every word of it. Nobody talks to him. I said it in the kitchen to Jace and it went around the room in a day, and now it's sitting in Gunnar's mouth like it belongs there.

"You cross-check him again," I say, "you're done in this room."

He laughs, like I'm joking. I'm not smiling. His face changes.

"Dude. You're the one who⁠—"

"I know what I said."

"Then what the⁠—"

"I know what I said, Gunnar. And I'm telling you now. Nobody puts a stick on him in practice. Nobody. Anybody does, they deal with me."

He stares at me. Then he says, "Okay, man. Whatever. Your guy," and he gets out of the car in his shower shoes, shaking his head, and slams the door.

My guy.

I sit there with the engine running until he's back inside.

I wait up.

I don't tell myself I'm doing it. I sit on my bed with my laptop open to the power-play video and don't watch any of it. At eleven I hear the house go quiet. At midnight, Kasper's video games go off. I keep sitting.

It's past one when I hear the front door.

I hear him take his shoes off. I hear him on the stairs. It takes him forever. One step. A long stop. Another step. I can hear him breathing through the floor, short and careful, like a guy carrying something heavy. On the top step he stops for a long time, right outside my door.

Then he goes into his room.

I go downstairs.

The freezer has a bag of peas in it that's been in there since Nico lived here. The first-aid kit under the sink has a bottle of ibuprofen. I fill a glass of water. I go back up the stairs, and I stand outside his door with the peas in one hand and the glass and the pills in the other, and I stand there a lot longer than I want to admit.

I knock.

Nothing.

"It's me," I say.