Page 73 of Puck You Both

The one after that beats me clean, short side, while I'm still saying it.

Down at the red line, Theo sets up his stretching routine at the absolute legal limit of center ice, facing my net.

Hip openers.

Facing my net.

An entire rink to point himself at, and he picks the one alignment with a sightline into my crease, and the single time my eyes slip, he holds the stretch longer. I spend what's left of warmup in deep study of the rafters. Oh, look, what a lovely banner.

Our crowd is loud early, chanting before the anthem's even done, and I stand on my line through the whole song thinking about chairs. Leather? Recliner? What are the dimensions of—

I catch myself at the last appropriate moment and pray for the puck to drop.

When it does, my body, mercifully, remembers its job. Live play is the last place on earth where my life is simple. The Vipers need the points more than we do and come out sharp, and for whole minutes at a time I'm just a goalie again, on vacation from my own brain.

Between those minutes, there's Theo.

Late in the first. a scrum boils near my crease and he's in the middle of it instantly, chirping both my defensemen at once, getting shoved, shoving back. Under all of it, a stick blade taps my pad, light as a knock. "Hi."

"Get out of my crease."

"Make me."

The whistle sorts everyone out, and the refs, done with the shoving, give him two for roughing. He heads for the box grinning like he won something.

Here's what happens during your team’s power play, from the goalie's perspective: nothing. The play sets up camp in the far zone, the crowd rises, and I stand alone at my end with no job.

Alone, except the penalty box is far too close for my own safety.

I feel it before I look. Then, I make the grave mistake of looking.

Theo's leaned against the glass, helmet off, curls everywhere, watching me. The game is at the other end of the rink and he's watching me stand still.

Then, holding my eyes across the ice, he starts stretching.

In the box. Nobody stretches in the fucking box.

Nobody, who doesn’t try to play dirty, that is.

But Theo is Theo, and rolls his neck, slow, Adam’s apple becoming more prominent. This is targeted. I'm being worked over by a man in a glass cage, in my own damn building, in front of a full crowd that thinks he's just sore.

A dump-in picks that exact moment to wobble into my zone, the easiest puck of my night. I play it like it's my first day on skates. Off my stick, behind the net, a scramble, and the crowd makes a nervous sound I have never once caused before. When I finally look up, Theo has a fist pressed to his mouth.

Sure, laugh it up. Two can play at this—

Who am I kidding? Two cannot play at this. One of us can, it's him, and I'm losing.

His penalty ends. First shift back, the play sweeps him past my net, and a pad tap arrives with one word. "Encore."

Washington bails my evening out in the second, tipping a point shot through traffic. An ugly, greasy, veteran-worthy goal. The building goes up, and I bang my paddle off the post like a rookie. One-nil. Something to defend besides my sanity.

The third period is Patrick's. First, he robs Ace. Then, he takes a sure goal off Groover's stick with a save so filthy my own bench swears in admiration.

Traitors.

I need us to bury this man, and meanwhile I'm rating his saves against my will. If the Vipers steal a point tonight after Patrick opened the evening with furniture talk, I will never emotionally recover.

Four minutes left, Vipers pressing, and it happens. A turnover, a step on Kane, and Theo comes down on me alone with the game on his stick.