Page 85 of Breakaway
"I didn't have anything to check."
"That's not why." He grips my shoulder. The Kevin grip, brief and firm, the same one from a hundred doorways. "For the first time in as long as I've known you, I think the thing you care about most is not on the other end of a score update. And I think you already know what that means even if you're not ready to say it out loud."
"Good night, Kevin."
"Good night, Wes." He closes the door behind him.
I go to the balcony. The ocean is dark. The boat from earlier is gone. The running lights along the shore make a line that I have photographed a hundred times and that has never come out the way it looks.
Kevin asked what next season looks like in my head. I told him it looks like playing. The answer was true. I am not sure it is the only answer anymore. For the first time in fifteen years, I am not sure the ice is where I need to be.
I go inside, brush my teeth, and get into bed. The bed is made because I make the bed every morning even when there is no one to see it, which is most mornings. Every morning except the ones in Atlanta where the bed was his and the sheets smelled like him and we made the bed together.
The phone buzzes on the nightstand. Luca.
mouse is screaming at nothing. thought you should know.
tell her I said good night.
she says good night is insufficient. she requires an apology for your departure.
tell her I'll be back.
I set the phone down. His feet on the sand. I lie in bed and think about what Kevin said and what Kevin saw and what I haven’t said out loud yet.
The ice will be there in the morning and I will be on it. But the question Kevin asked runs through my head. I am not ready toanswer it and that’s fine. I don’t have to answer it tonight. I just have to know it is there.
?
Chapter 30: Luca
The bar is a block from the hotel. Different city, different wood, same brass rails, same television behind the bar running highlights. The team has pushed tables together and the noise is right and I am in my chair with a glass of water and the ice in the glass is melting at a rate I could calculate if I cared about the math.
I don't care about the math.
The game was bad. Not team-bad, not a loss anyone will replay in the morning. Me bad. Second period, a turnover at the blue line that gave their winger a clean breakaway and I was the last one back and I wasn't back enough. The puck went in. The bench was quiet when I came off. Nobody said anything. Nobody had to.
Thompson is telling a story about the hotel gym. Mueller is drinking a beer with the steady focus of a man who has earned exactly one beer and will drink it at the pace he has decided. Marchetti is beside me.
I turn my glass on the coaster. The ice shifts. I know it’s better for me to be here and not alone in my hotel room. But the game is still playing in my head and the turnover is still in my hands.
"Berger." Marchetti looks at me. "You okay?"
I haven’t told him everything that happened but some. He was worried and deserved some answers. He doesn’t know about Gwen but I will tell him when I’m ready.
"Tired. Long game,” I say. Marchetti keeps watching me. "The turnover was mine."
"It was. I let a D-man get around me in the first. Every guy here can point to a mistake they made and want to do over.”
“Not everyone got scored on.”
“No, but there have been lots of nights where you didn’t let that happen. We have another game tomorrow. Let it go."
"Working on it."
He nods. He doesn't push. The table starts to thin and we walk back to the hotel with Hájek, who has said four words all night and whose silence beside me is companionable, not worried.
"Good night," he says at his door.
