Page 6 of Five Hole

“Who?”

“Not decided.”

“It’s me. Say it’s me. Say it out loud in front of witnesses and I’ll get it in writing.”

“It isn’t you.”

“You didn’t even think about it.”

“I did,” Rocco says, and goes back to his food. “That was me thinking about it.”

His and Casimir’s both. The whole senior class walks in the spring, and I try not to think about that, and I think about it anyway. A team’s only a team for a little while. Then it scatters, the corner table belongs to strangers, and you become a name a freshman says wrong.

The table takes it. A roll comes flying at my head. And I catch it out of the air, take a bite of it, just to be a menace. Down the way somebody argues whether a hot dog’s a sandwich. Loudly. With citations. Girard, our quiet junior D-man who says maybe nine words a season, picks that moment to spend one of them.

“It’s a taco,” he says, then goes back to his food, and the table detonates.

Vinh nearly puts a drink up his own nose. Somebody bangs the table so hard the trays jump. The freshman with the cruel nickname laughs the loud grateful laugh of a kid who can’t believe his luck at being here. I file the taco line away for the group chat, because it’ll run for a week. Good chirps run for a week. Great ones you’re still saying at graduation.

I love this. That’s the part nobody tells you the backup gets to keep. I don’t get the net. But I get this. The corner table. The roll out of the air. The boys. Ask me when I got here and I’d have told you the net was the only thing worth having. I’d have been lying. But I’d have told you.

Tucked in next to Vinh Tran, who’s telling a story with both hands, is Bruno Thibault. That’s the one that gets me, if I’m honest, and I try not to be.

Bruno doesn’t play anymore. Coach invented a title so he could stay, student assistant coach, which isn’t a job that exists in this program and is his job anyway. He’s in this building more hours than most of us. And here he is on a Tuesday with the team, because Vinh’s here. The two of them have ended up with half a bench to themselves, and a couple ends up with half a bench without noticing they did it. Vinh gets to the end of his story. Bruno laughs, this big helpless laugh that uses his whole body, then puts his hand flat on the back of Vinh’s neck. Just lays it there. Warm. Easy. Vinh leans back into it without even looking, like the hand’s been there his whole life and will be there the rest of it.

And I sit there with a torn-up roll and watch. A guy who used to fight the whole league on other people’s behalf lets another guy hold him by the back of the neck. In the middle of the Trough. In the open. In front of the team. And not one person so much as blinks.

How? One word, and it’s all my head will make. How do you let a hand land on you like that and not spend the rest of the night waiting for the bill?

That one, I’ve got nowhere to put, so it goes in the drawer where I keep the things about people that don’t fit anywhere yet. It’s a big drawer. It gets more use than I’d like. I shut it. Vinh catches me looking and grins, and I go find something else to do with my face.

Bruno catches me on his way back from the drink station and knocks his knuckles against my shoulder, easy, same as he does with everyone. “Fortin. Staying out of trouble?”

“Never once in my life. You?”

He laughs like that’s the correct answer, which it is.

He doesn’t sit back down right away. He stands there a second being enormous and kind, which is all he has ever been.

“You settled? Room all right?”

“Same one they’ve given me since I got here. I’ve worn a groove in the floor.”

“Second floor.” He says it like he already knew, because he did. “Who’d they put next door to you?”

“Guess.”

“Ah.” That’s what I get. Not a wince, not a laugh. He knocks two knuckles on the table like a man checking that the wood is real, then leaves it there between us without picking it up. “Long season, then.”

“Everybody keeps saying that to me tonight.”

“Everybody’s right.”

And I think about how a guy like that used to drop the gloves for the whole bench. Now here he is on a Tuesday with a hand that only knows how to be gentle. People change shape. And nobody warns you. I file that one too. The drawer groans.

Down the table the hot-dog-sandwich argument mutates into a hot-dog-taco schism. A freshman makes the mistake of taking it to the head of the table.

“Cap. Settle it. Sandwich or not?”