Page 24 of Victory Lap

Ash

this is a SUPPORTIVE community

Soucy

i am supporting the horse

Mueller

update. i finished the part with the horse

Ash

mueller it’s been THREE WEEKS

Mueller

the horse remembered him. i needed a minute

Novák

my mother also cried. she says the horse deserves a series

Kowalski

noted

Ash

noted??? kowalski you’ve said two words in three weeks. what are you NOTING

Chapter 8: Teo

My day with the Cup has a schedule that Nonna has been managing from New Jersey like a wedding planner with a landline. Family lands at ten. The pavilion at five, where the entire state of Georgia is apparently invited, because when I asked Ma to keep the list small she said, “Small like what, like a funeral?” and hung up to call more people.

But that’s later. The schedule everyone has starts at ten.

The schedule that matters starts now, and has one name on it.

The facility at six in the morning is a sound I know better than almost any other sound. Which is to say, no sound at all. Empty hallway. Sleeping weight room. The lights come up in banks when I badge in. The Cup rides next to me on a wheeled equipment cart, catching every one of them.

The treatment room is dark. I don’t turn on the big lights. The corridor light is enough to see everything I need to see. It’s the same thing it always is. This room has never once been out of order. Tape sorted by width. Bands by resistance. Rollers by density on the lower shelf. A whole season of my body got rebuilt in here between those shelves and this table. Three sessions a week. Door open. I used to lie there and count the ceiling tiles to keep from saying anything I couldn’t take back.

I lift the Stanley Cup onto the treatment table.

It looks insane there and it looks perfect there. I stand in the half-dark grinning at it like an idiot. The most famous trophy in sports is sitting on the exact spot where a man with warm hands once told me that what happened between us doesn’t exist here.

“Okay,” I tell it, because apparently I narrate to trophies now. “Quick briefing. The man who is about to walk in rebuilt my whole career on this table. Be normal about it. Do not let me cry before six fifteen.”

The Cup says nothing. Unbelievable listener. Best in the organization.

Footsteps in the corridor at 6:04. I texted him one line last night. Be at your room at six. And he came, because somewhere in the last year we became people who show up when the other one asks, no questions. I still can’t entirely believe I get to be in that category.

Zay stops in the doorway.

He’s in a T-shirt and athletic shorts and his badge, because even summoned mysteriously at dawn in July, the man badges in. He looks at me. Then at the table. I watch it land on him one piece at a time. The room. The trophy. The spot. The math of it. His face pulls into a smile.

“That’s the Stanley Cup,” he says. “On my table.”