Page 7 of Payback On The Ice

The dots come up and go away. Come up again. Go away. He doesn't send anything else, and I tell myself that's because he's at physio and his hands are busy.

I come back to the rink at ten that night because I left my water bottle in the video room. That's the reason. It's true.

The hall's dark except for one light at the end.

The stick room is a closet with a workbench and a wall of racks that smells like wax and rubber. The door is half open. I don't go in. I stand by the corner where the light doesn't reach.

He's sitting on an overturned bucket in a hoodie, with my sticks lined up across the bench in front of him. He's on the fourth one. He's doing the blade heel to toe in black, overlapping by half, slow and careful, with his tongue in the corner of his mouth. When he gets to the toe he holds the stick up to the light and squints down the length of it like a kid checking his work.

Then he frowns, pulls the whole thing off, and starts over.

I should go get my water bottle.

I stay where I am and listen to the tape come off the roll. Long and flat, then a rip.

3

THEO

On the fourth morning, I score.

It's the second puck. I come in slow, show him the forehand, and drag it back between my skates so late that his pad is still sliding when the puck crosses the line. It ticks the inside of the post and rolls in.

The sound it makes, hitting the twine, is the best thing I've heard since April.

"Yes." I'm already turning, stick up, gliding a lazy loop past his crease. "Did you see that? Tell me you saw that. Tell me you'll be thinking about that at your funeral."

Dane fishes the puck out of the net with his stick and flips it back toward the blue line.

"One," he says.

"One goal. Use the whole word. It's a nice word."

"Three more pucks."

He doesn't look rattled. He doesn't look anything. He just sets his feet and drops into his stance and waits, the same way he waited before I scored, like nothing happened.

I miss the next three. The last one I ring off the post, and the sound is so much worse than the twine was that I actually say "oh, come on" out loud to an empty building.

One for five.

He stands up out of his crease and pushes his mask up onto his head. His hair is flat with sweat and there's a red line across his forehead from the padding. It makes him look younger. I don't like that.

"Bag," he says.

"What?"

"My bag. From my car to my stall. Every day, before practice. Road games, it goes from my stall to the bus." He picks up his water bottle off the top of the net. "You don't drag it. You carry it."

"Your bag weighs more than me."

"Then get stronger."

"One for five, Kovač. I scored. I feel like that should earn me something."

He looks at me for a long second.

"It does," he says. "You don't have to carry the sticks."