Page 72 of Home Ice

“It’s adequate,” Trier said. He put the phone away and looked at me for a second, and said nothing else. Then he got up and left through the doorway, straight into the lights, and gave them a long, dry answer to a question nobody had asked.

They got their ninety seconds of me. I gave them all the boring answers Varga had taught me. Mark interrupted, and it was my opportunity to leave.

My phone buzzed on the way to my truck.

Niko: 3–1. Chet said your goal was “a dagger from a difficult angle.” He was very worked up. I know what a dagger from a difficult angle is now.

He’d watched. That meant he would have heard the crowd. Chet would’ve talked about the crowd. Niko said nothing about that.

Rafe: did you hear the post clink?

Niko: Like a wrench on a pipe.

Niko: Shop’s open tomorrow after your video thing. Blanket chest needs sanding. Come be useful. Bring lunch, I forgot to shop.

Useful. I sat in the cold truck in the concrete garage and looked at that word until my eyes stung.

Rafe: what kind of lunch

Niko: Sandwiches, I don’t want to wash dishes.

***

After video the next day, Coach Markel caught me in the hallway. “Rafe. Minute.”

His office at the practice facility was the size of a closet, and it smelled like dry-erase marker and the burnt bottom of a coffee pot. He leaned against the desk and folded his arms as the door clicked shut.

“What do you need?” he asked.

I stood there.

What did I need? I needed Max to answer a text. I needed to unsay what I’d said to Marta, and I needed it to be the night in Niko’s bed forever. I couldn’t say any of those things to Coach Markel.

The silence was long enough to be my answer.

“Okay,” he said. “Then here’s what I’ve got. Your ice time doesn’t change. Your matchups don’t change. You’re on the first power-play unit tomorrow because you’ve earned the first power-play unit, and if any of that ever stops being what you need, you walk in here and say so. I’ll change it right away.” He picked his tablet up off the desk, signaling the end of the meeting.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Go home,” he said. “Watch TV, and not hockey.”

I brought Italian beef to Niko’s shop, wrapped in paper. He looked into the bag, smiled, and said, “Acceptable.”

After we ate, he set me up at the sawhorses and showed me the sanding stroke once. It was long, with the grain and the full length of the board. “Patience,” he said. “That’s the most important thing.”

He liked what he saw on my first try. He made a slight correction, and then he worked while I worked.

Neither of us talked for almost an hour. I loved it.

Late in the afternoon, Niko took me upstairs. He pulled out plastic containers of vegetables chopped for soup.

“You said you forgot to shop.”

“I forgot to shop for lunch. Soup was the plan for dinner.” He started the vegetables in a skillet and heated broth in a pan. “I thought you were a little slow yesterday on the penalty kill.”

“I was fine on the penalty kill.”

“Chet thought you looked slow.”