Chapter 5 Wes
The puck comes off Paulson's stick at the half-wall and I'm already moving.
I don't think about the lane. The lane is there because I put my weight forward two seconds before Paulson made the play, and the defenseman committed inside, and the ice between the circle and the net opened up the way ice does when you stop asking it to.
I take it on the backhand. Glove side. The goalie is late because he was reading the pass, not the man without it, and by the time he picks me up I'm already releasing. The puck goes in low, clean, and the net shakes once.
"Mercy," Paulson says, skating past. "That was sick."
"You made the play."
"The pass was the easy part."
"Then we're both easy." I tap his shin guard and circle back to center.
My legs feel good. My legs have felt good for weeks, which is new, or not new but different.
I've been skating like this since September.
Taking the lane. Finishing the play. Playing the way I played when I was twenty-six and didn't know what I had to lose.
Coach pulls me after the second period. "Good game, Mercy."
"Thanks."
"That backhand. You've been taking that shot more."
"Feels right."
He nods. He doesn't push it. I go back to the bench and drink water and watch the third period with my legs loose and my shoulders down and a feeling I cannot explain to anyone, which is that the game has gotten easier because the game has stopped being the thing I'm holding onto.
The apartment is quiet when I get home. I put the keys on the counter and stand in the kitchen for a minute. The ceiling fan is going. The dishwasher finished while I was out and the light on the front panel has gone from blue to off.
I open the cabinet and take down one mug. The other mug is behind it on the shelf, handle turned the same direction.
The coffee is good. Luca found these beans at the place on Brickell two years ago. I order them by the bag. The label has a rooster on it that Luca once rated a seven-point-four for graphic design. Because everything gets rated by Luca.
I drink the coffee standing at the counter.
The camera is on the coffee table in the living room where I left it this morning.
The apartment sounds like it sounds when only one person lives in it, which is the way it sounded for years before he moved in and the way it sounds again now.
It’s about a different sort of quiet. This silence is where the chatter about the coffee, the corner restaurant, and the hotel’s thread count used to fill every space, making it feel smaller, warmer, and brimming with the best thing I had.
The only sounds now are the fan and the dishwasher turning off, with a single mug left on the counter.
I eat leftover chicken over rice, standing at the counter because Kevin is right; I do eat standing at my counter sometimes. The chicken is good. Still has the char from the grill. The rice held up overnight.
Seven-point-three.
The number arrives in my head before I can stop it. His voice, his system, his decimal-point precision. I lowered my fork, my eyes fixed on the plate, with the number waiting to be said out loud to someone who would write it down. Someone in Atlanta.
I rinse the plate and put it in the dishwasher and close the door, and stand in the kitchen.
His call comes at eleven-thirty. The phone buzzes on the counter with his name on the screen and I pick it up the way I always pick it up, on the second ring, because I will always pick up his calls and this is the thing I know about myself that will not change.
"Hey, baby."
"Hey." His voice is the same. It sounds like him, and I can picture him on the couch in the living room of the apartment I've been in twice.
"How was the game?" he says.
"Good. We won. I had a backhand goal in the second."
"A backhand? You never go backhand."
"I have lately."
"Since when?"
"September."
"Huh." A pause. When he was here, he would have wanted the details. The angle, the goalie's positioning, the lane. He would have rated the goal on his internal scale and told me the rating and we would have debated every decimal.
"That's good," he says. "That's really good, Wes."
"Yeah. How was practice?"
"Fine. Marchetti is still doing that thing where he puts his pre-wrap on top of his slides."
"He's been doing that since training camp."
"I told him it's a cry for help. He said it's a system." Another pause. Longer. "The team is good. We're, you know…It's good."
"Good."
The silence sits between us for three seconds. The space on these calls has been getting wider. Neither of us knows how to fill it because filling it used to happen in the kitchen with the laptop open and the spreadsheet loading and his bare feet on the tile.
"I should sleep," he says.
"Yeah. Early skate?"
"Seven-thirty."
"Get some rest."
"You too." A beat. "I miss you."
“Miss you, too, Luca.” I have more I want to say but hold back. Instead I give the easier words. “Love you.”
“Love you.”
The call ends. I set the phone down on the counter and look at it. The screen goes dark. I stand there for a minute, maybe two, and then go to bed.
The next night, I go to Kevin’s place for dinner. Austin is already there when I arrive. Grant is on the couch with a beer, one leg over the arm, shoes on Kevin's coffee table. Kevin has ordered Thai.
"You're late," Kevin says.
"I'm on time."
"You're late by my standards."
"Your standards involve arriving before the food, which is not a standard."
"It is a standard. It is the foundational standard. Austin, tell him."
"He's not wrong," Austin says. He is unpacking containers on the kitchen island. "The food is the event. You arrive before the event."
"The food is not the event. The food is the food."
"In this house the food is the event," Kevin says. "Grant, back me up."
"I'm not involved," Grant says from the couch. "I've been here for twenty minutes doing nothing and I intend to continue."
We eat at Kevin's table because I told him three years ago that adults eat at tables and he bought a table to shut me up. The table is too small for four people. Our elbows touch.
"Good game last night," Austin says.
"Thanks."
"You've been playing different this year," Kevin says. "Looser. More…I don't know. You're taking more chances."
"I'm thirty-six. I'm not going to get faster. Might as well get smarter."
"That's not what I mean." He picks up a spring roll and points it at me. "You're playing like you don't care what happens."
"I care what happens. I want the team to win."
"You're playing like you don't care what happens to you. That's different."
I take a bite of pad Thai. "It's a good season. I'm having fun."
"How's Luca?" Kevin asks. Casual. Not casual.
"He's good. Atlanta's good for him."
"You talk much?"
"We talk."
"How much is 'we talk'?"
"Kevin."
"I'm asking." He holds both hands up. "I'm asking because I care about you."
"We talk," I say. "We talk on the phone. He texts me. I text him. It's the season. We're in different cities. It's what it is."
"Is it what you want it to be?" Kevin asks.
"It's what it is."
He nods. Goes back to his food. The table is quiet for a few seconds and then Austin starts talking about the boat engine and Kevin tells him nobody cares about the boat engine.
Grant clears the plates. Kevin puts on a game. Austin falls asleep on the couch inside of twelve minutes, which is a personal best.
At the door, Kevin grips my shoulder. "You'd tell me if something was wrong, right?"
"Yeah."
"You'd tell me before it got bad?"
"Yeah, Kevin."
"Okay." He lets go. "Good night, Wes."
I drive home with the windows cracked. October in Miami is still warm, the air off the water carrying salt and exhaust. At a red light on Brickell I look out the window and there's a new place on the corner.
Small, brick front, a chalkboard menu in the window.
Cuban. The light turns green and I drive past it and for a half-second I am reaching for my phone to text him the address before I remember the text would arrive in a different city and the meal would never happen.
The apartment is dark when I get back. I lock the door. I brush my teeth. The bedroom is quiet and the novel is on the nightstand at page 318. I read three pages and turn off the light.
Tomorrow is a travel day. I'll finish packing in the morning.
On the plane a younger player will sit next to me and ask about my career, how I've lasted this long, whether I think about what comes next.
I will answer the question he asks and not the one underneath it.
The one underneath it is the same question Kevin almost asked tonight, which is the same question I have been asking myself since the day Luca got on the plane to Atlanta.
?