Page 43 of Slapshot Baby

"Sharpen your blades, kid."

When Jordan pinches at the wrong time and gets burned on the backside, I take two steps left like I'm covering the point myself.

When Brennan runs a power play set and nobody rotates to the bumper position, I call it out loud: "Bumper's empty. Somebody fill the bumper."

I'm pacing the observation area like it's a bench. Hands on the glass, leaning, pulling back, shifting my weight. Reading the ice the way I've read it since I was a teen.

My feet move on instinct, mirroring what I'd be doing down there.

Twenty minutes of this before I stop.

My reflection stares back at me in the glass. A man in street clothes and sneakers, hands pressed flat against a barrier, talking to a room that can't hear him.

I drop my hands.

Brennan blows the whistle. The team stops running drills. The pucks have stopped hitting the boards with their familiar sharp crack.

And I'm up here watching.

The walk to the locker room is automatic. My legs carry me down the corridor without thinking. The smell hits first: sweat, tape adhesive, the sharp chemical bite of equipment sanitizer. Then the noise.

Wyatt's voice bounces off the concrete walls before I even open the door.

"...and then Theo tried to deke, which was like watching a grizzly bear try to parallel park..."

Laughter. Sticks clattering. The hiss of shower steam.

I push through the door.

The room goes quiet for exactly one second. Then it erupts.

"Cap!" Wyatt vaults off the bench. "You're here. Are you skating? Please tell me you're skating."

"I'm not skating."

"But you're here. That counts. Theo, he's here."

Theo glances up from unlacing his skates. His blue eyes find mine, steady and warm.

"Good to see you, Kai."

Jordan lifts a hand from across the room. Cole calls out a quick, "What's up, Cap?" while Dmitri gives me a nod from where he's stripping off his gear.

Camden looks up from his phone. "You voluntarily came back to this?"

"Don't know what got into me. Must've actually missed you assholes."

Easton's at his stall, peeling tape off his stick. He doesn't look up, but he shifts over to make room on the bench beside him. The invitation is silent and specific.

I sit.

The room resumes its rhythm around me.

Wyatt launches into a play-by-play of a goal he scored in last week's game, complete with sound effects. Theo corrects him on every detail. Someone throws a roll of tape at Wyatt's head and misses.

They move around me with the ease of men who share this space daily. Inside jokes I'm not part of. References to games I haven't seen. A shorthand built over years I can't remember.

Wyatt drops beside me, still in half his gear, and nudges my shoulder.