Page 72 of Breakaway
I almost smile. The bus turns. The city passes outside the window, marble and granite and government buildings under gray sky. I am sitting in a window seat answering a man about eggs while Luca's phone rings in Atlanta and nobody picks it up.
The skate is clean. My legs work. The ice is fast beneath me and the puck finds my tape. I take my shifts. I run the drill. Coach nods from behind the glass.
In the locker room after, Reeves is retaping a stick.
"Mercy, you looked sharp out there. Twenty-nine tonight?"
"We'll see."
"That wasn't a we'll see kind of shift. That was a twenty-nine kind of shift."
"Every shift is a we'll see until the light goes on, Reeves."
"That is the most patient thing anyone has ever said about scoring goals."
"Patience is the job."
"Your patience is everyone else's torture. You know that, right?"
I pull my skates off. The tape comes off the shin pads in strips. The routine does not change. The routine has not changed in fifteen years. I have changed cities and teams and the tape comes off the shin pads the same way every time.
I shower. I change. I sit at my stall and look at the phone. His feet on the sand. No missed call. No text. Nothing with his name on it.
Marchetti's voice has been in every room I have walked into since the call. The word mercy sitting in the air beside me the way it has been sitting in the air around Luca all season, except he has been carrying it alone. I have been carrying the distance and thinking that was enough.
I go back to the hotel. I lie on the bed and look at the ceiling and think about what I have been doing for six months. Holding. Waiting. Being patient. Playing the best hockey of my life in an apartment where the second coffee cup sits behind the row of mugs I use. Holding a line that I told myself was keeping him safe.
Atlanta is two hours from here. Two hours on a plane. Less than that if everything goes smoothly. I have been hundreds of miles from him and right now I need that distance to be zero.
I sit up. I call Kyle.
He picks up on the first ring. "Wes. What's going on?"
"I'm in D.C. on a road trip. Game tonight."
"I know you're on the road trip. What's up?"
"I need to get to Atlanta."
Silence. I can hear the office behind him.
"When?"
"Today."
"Today? You have a game tonight, Wes."
"I know I have a game tonight."
"Tell me what’s going on."
"Marchetti called me a few days ago. Kid from the Firebirds. He told me he’s worried about Luca. That he’s not himself. I noticed it in Aruba, but I didn’t think it was this bad.”
Kyle breathes out slow. He is quiet for longer than I have ever heard him be quiet on a call.
"I've called him three times since," I say. "He's not picking up."
"He’s not? I called him Tuesday about a media request and it went to voicemail. I followed up yesterday but nothing."
