Page 23 of He Has Trouble (Boston Brawlers Hockey)
Epilogue
Aweek after my old man died, New Year’s Day, I took the ice for my first game with the Boston Brawlers. Angela and the entire Rizzo family including a couple of cousins were in the stands. The surreal sensation that everything was right with the world shook me as I stood at the blue line, listening to the national anthem. A quick gaze into the stands to where I knew she was sitting calmed the spike of fear, letting me channel the nervous energy to where it belonged.
When the puck was dropped, I was ready. Catching the pass off the face-off, I shot up the ice, using my infamous speed and passed the puck back to our center, Ryan O’Rourke, the league’s legit superstar. He spun around a defender and I cut to the front of the net, muscling out the other defender with my oversized body. Then as if in slow motion, I watched O’Rourke take a quick wrist shot, the kind he was famous for, as the defender shoved him. Eyes on the puck as it flew low off the ice at an angle I could tell would miss the net on its current trajectory. With a quick flick, I moved my stick into position, deflecting the shot, forcing it with a hard twang off my stick into the lower right corner past the goalie.
The red goal light behind the net flashed. I’d scored my first fucking goal with the brawlers. I looked up at the clock, at twenty-three seconds into my first game with the team. The roar of the crowd was unlike anything I’d ever heard in Toronto or even in college and my teammates surrounded me, tapping their gloves against mine, patting me on the back.
As we re-assembled for a face-off at center ice, Ryan O’Rourke skated by and tapped my pads. Freakin’ Ryan O’Rourke, the next big hockey legend in the making and my team mate. I felt good for our chances to win the Stanley Cup. My next big dream. And the only quakes I felt now were from the thunderous applause of the fans and banging against the boards.
“Keep that up, Mack,” O’Rourke said, nodded. I smiled. Once upon a time I’d have bristled at being called Mack, maybe held a grudge. Mack had been my old man, not me. But somehow I didn’t mind hearing it this time. Maybe because it was O’Rourke naming me. Or maybe I didn’t mind taking up my old man’s nick name now that he was gone, now that I couldn’t be angry at him anymore.
After my shift, as I skated back to the bench and looked to the left back a few rows where I knew they were sitting, I didn’t feel any fear or nerves or anxiety or even anger at the ref’s whistle for the off-sides. I could no longer muster the rage over any of the things that used to set me off. The truth was that I owed my peace to Angela. I was certain. With her in my life, hell, with her in the universe, how could I resent fate and the gods, how could I hold a grudge at life? She was a true Angel and she’d been sent to save me and I finally got around to letting her have her way.
When I caught her eye, she smiled and put a hand to her mouth like she was blowing me a kiss. I grinned back at her like a fool, a fool in love. The luckiest kind of fool in the world. And I was okay with it, letting the joy take me without protest. Trusting my determination to deserve her and make her mine for good.
# The End #
