Page 30 of Omega’s Forward

“Tremblay and Marchetti go,” Sacco continues. “The rest of you go home.” He puts his eyes on me and keeps them there. “You especially. Go home, Callahan. Ice your hand. Talk to nobody. When the league calls tomorrow, and they will call, you say the words ‘through my representative’ and nothing else. You hear me?”

Everett is looking at me too. Both of them, coach and owner, shoulder to shoulder, one message. It would take an hour to explain to anyone in this room why that’s the funniest thing that has happened to me all season.

Go home. Sure, Coach. You have no idea.

“Fine,” I say.

I get my bag on my shoulder. Nobody says anything. JP catches me at the door, hand around my arm above the elbow, same grip as the bar, and says, low, “I’ll call you from there.”

“Tell him I’ll come tomorrow.”

“I’ll tell him you cried.”

“Haha. He’ll believe it too.”

I go out past Everett Rourke close enough that our sleeves nearly touch. Neither of us moves an inch out of the way. His scent slams into me and I keep walking.

The drive home is twenty minutes and I spend all of it wondering what they’re going to hit me with.

Instigator, aggressor, game misconduct. That’s two minimum. If they’re looking to make an example? I don’t know.

Say four. Four is survivable. I’ve missed four games with a groin pull and the world kept turning. We won that season too. Only just.

My hand throbs on the wheel in time with my heartbeat. I run the video from the ice back one more time, the whistle, Linus turning his head to find the play, the hit arriving a full second after everything had stopped. The sound the glass made.

I’d do it again. That’s the truth and there’s no use lying to myself about it in my own truck. Whatever number they hang on me, I’d do it again.

The house is dark. His rental isn’t back. He’s probably cozying up with Sacco now that the two of them are suddenly best of buds.

I don’t turn the lights on upstairs. I go down to the basement, wrap my bad hand until it’s a club, and get on the bike.

If I sit still in that quiet upstairs, I am going to start replaying the sound of the glass again. My head is a mess. Berg is going to be okay. I took hits like that when I was a kid on the ice. He’ll probably survive them too.

I don’t want to think about the other injuries. The career-ending ones. I’ve been lucky. Others I know have not.

I ride until my legs burn worse than my face and then I keep going, sweat running off my nose onto the crossbar. The gym is the one room in this house that’s all mine. There’s no scent of orange down here. Nothing down here but me and the wheel whirring.

I go back upstairs, my legs so numb, I almost fall off the bike, then go back down again when my head starts filling with stupid thoughts.

I get back on the bike.

The garage rumbles overhead at midnight.

I hear the car door. The connecting door. His footsteps cross my kitchen, stop, cross back. Then I hear him on the basement stairs, which he has never once used.

He comes down them now.

He’s lost the tie somewhere between the arena and here. His top button open, jacket still on, phone in his hand.

He stops at the bottom of the stairs and looks at me, and I stay on the bike, coasting, chest heaving, dripping, and watch him take in the room. His gaze slips to my taped hand on the handlebar.

“You were told to ice that,” he says.

I shrug, feeling a fresh ache as I do. “Not like I’m going to need it for a while.”

It comes out more childish than I intend.

“I’ve been on the phone.” He holds the thing up like evidence. “The league office. Then the league office again. Then a sponsor’s damn lawyer. Why they have a say is beyond me.”