Page 73 of Take Two

Without thinking, I find myself cheering with them, pumping both fists overhead as I shout, “Let’s go!” Nobody pays me any attention. I’m just another guy caught up in the game, same as everyone else in the building. Which is maybe the highest compliment I could give everyone involved.

Mercer slams the bench door after an icing call, wheeling toward the nearest official with his clipboard raised and enough conviction behind his eyes to make me laugh out loud.

“Are you kidding me?” he shouts.

Hell, he could give Coach Lennox a genuine run for his money. That’s not a small thing to say.

A sharp whistle slices through the noise.

“Cut!”

The transformation is instant, the way it always is, though it never quite stops catching me off guard. The roar dissolves into quiet as the extras drop back into casual conversation, the players coast to a stop and reach for water bottles, and crew members spill onto the ice from every direction. A member of the ice crew skates over to smooth out a rut near the crease while makeup hurries toward the bench blotting papers in hand aiming for Cyaire, and Kirk leans over the monitor with his hands braced on either side of the frame, studying the playback frame by frame, his face giving nothing away.

“That was really good,” he says after a moment, looking up with an approving smile that carries genuine warmth. “Let’s grab one more for safety.”

Nobody argues or complains as the actors’ skate back to their marks, loosening their shoulders as they go. The extras sit down in their seats with the patience of saints at this point. Camera operators reposition for the next angle while an assistant director waits with one hand raised, ready.

“Background!”

The arena begins to breathe again.

Conversations swell into anticipation, building gradually, a crowd warming itself back up. Foam fingers rise. Rally towels start spinning overhead in widening circles.

“Action!”

The puck drops.

Everything clicks.

The Red Hawks establish the cycle below the goal line with the kind of patience that takes real discipline to sustain, moving the puck without rushing it, waiting for the seam to open. They work it low to high, and the pass slides cleanly across the blue line to the weak-side defenseman, who wastes no time getting the puck toward the net.

Traffic builds in front of the goalie. Bodies crowd the crease. The shot changes direction just enough.

The red light flashes.

The goal horn blares.

The arena erupts.

Red jerseys pour over the boards in a wave, gloves flying as teammates mob the goal scorer against the glass in a chaos of arms and helmets and pure, uncomplicated joy.

I throw both fists into the air with everyone else, “Yes!”

Laughter bursts out of me a second later, and I don’t bother trying to contain it.

The celebration is completely infectious. It doesn’t matter that another take might follow, that Kirk might call for a different angle and run it all again. For a few seconds, all I can see is a team winning the biggest game of their season, and the crowd losing their minds around them, and it is just hockey, joyful and stupid and completely irresistible.

A sharp whistle cuts through the celebration.

“Cut!”

While the actors skate back to their marks and crew members move onto the ice to reset cameras and check sight lines, Kirk glances in my direction and crooks a finger with a small, deliberate smile.

“Jamie. Got a second?”

I push away from the boards and skate over, resting my forearms across the top of the glass beside him, falling into the familiar posture of a bench player watching a shift play out.

“What’s up?”