Page 41 of Victory Lap

“The lime tree.” My hand tightens and his head goes back against the tile. “I rated your secret lime tree an eight-one this afternoon. You are the calmest liar in professional sports.”

“Retired,” he says, wrecked, grinning, hips moving into my grip. “Calmest liar in retirement.”

I get my other hand in his hair and put my mouth on his throat and finish the argument. It doesn’t take long, for either of us. He comes first, for once, with his fingers digging into my hips, hot over my fist and my cock. The feel of it, the sound of it, this steady unhurried man shaking against tile in a house that’s now ours, drags me over half a stroke behind him. I come apart with my forehead on his collarbone, saying something that is partly his name.

The water runs over both of us for a while. His hand moves up and down my spine. The showerhead maintains its nine-one without wavering, a professional to the end.

“Emotional ambush,” I say, into his chest, “in a wet environment.”

“Noted.”

After we finish showering, he dries me off. He always dries me off. Warm towel. As thorough and unhurried as ever. The aftercare of a man who has been taking care of things his whole life and finally gets to do it in the open. I stand there and let him. Letting him is a skill I had to learn in therapy, and I am now extremely good at it.

“Rating,” he says. He knows the ritual.

“Shower: nine-six.” I hold up one finger. “Point-four deduction.”

“For what?”

“Structural interruption of a manual process. There are workflow considerations.”

He puts his hand over my mouth, and then he replaces his hand with his mouth. Outside the window, the vine keeps eating the building that belongs to us now, in a country that maybe knows our names after all. The deed knows them. That’s a start.

Dinner is in an hour. The plan is in my suitcase, columns and all, three weeks early and completely obsolete.

Some things you don’t reschedule. Some things you just move up.

Chapter 14: Wes

The retirement announcement went out in June. Two paragraphs. Kyle wrote them and I added the thank-you. My phone was loud for three days. Then it was quiet, and the quiet didn’t scare me the way everyone said it would. I’d already found the thing that comes after.

Dinner is the same place. Same outside table. It’s ours the way things get to be yours when you come back enough years in a row. The owner doesn’t know who we are but knows our order. On this island, that’s the better kind of famous. The keeper sits two tables over with a beer and the case at his feet. Off duty, in every way a man like that gets off duty.

Luca has the Cup with us, because it’s his day and his rules. It sits on the third chair wearing the sunset like it was born here. The owner looks at it for a long moment when he brings the fish.

“Big cup,” he says.

“The biggest,” Luca agrees, and that is the entire press conference. I could live here. And in fact, now we can.

He rates the ceviche an eight-four. The highest score in history. He explains the margin to me with a raised finger. The lime tree gets partial credit. The new landlord’s citrus program is apparently already showing returns. I sit there with my chin in my hand, watching him build the case like a Swiss prosecutor. I think about the first spreadsheet. Midnight in my living room, a twenty-two-year-old with wet hair defending his 6.8 against my 7.1 on principle. I knew even then.

“You’re staring,” he says.

“I’m off duty. Staring’s allowed now.”

We walk back the long way, on the beach, because the light is doing the thing. I have photographed this water on four visits now. I brought the camera tonight. Old habit. It hangs off my shoulder, and for once I don’t reach for it.

Luca stops walking at the edge of the dry sand. Sets the Cup down. It stands there on the beach like a lighthouse someone shrank. Luca looks at it, then at the water, then at me. I watch him line something up. I know the face. It’s the face from the top of the face-off circle. The one he wears when he’s about to put a puck somewhere the goalie has personally never considered.

“I need to tell you about the plan,” he says.

“The plan?”

“There’s a spreadsheet. It has columns.” He says it the way other men say I love you. From him, it is. “Location options, weighted. Dates, cross-referenced with the schedule. A contingency tab. I started it in April. I was going to do this in three weeks. In Zurich, at the rink where I learned to skate, because the weighted composite rating was a nine-eight and my sister Sina could be nearby. There was a column for what I would say.”

The water comes in and goes out. I don’t say anything. I have never once interrupted him mid-build. I’m not going to start on the most important build of my life.

“And then you bought us a house,” Luca says. His voice does something at the edges. “You retired from hockey. You bought the only place we never had to hide. You left the lock broken because it’s ours. And the plan is obsolete, Wes. The document is dead. I can’t wait three weeks. I can’t wait three days.”