Chapter 20
twenty
MIKE
The cacophony of Thursday night hockey hits me before I even settle into the booth—pucks cracking against boards on three different screens, classic rock bleeding through tinny speakers, the sharp bite of spilled beer and fried food hanging thick enough to taste.
And across from me, Rook’s on a mission.
Mission name: pickup attempt number three.
Target acquired : petite junior with a laugh that carries.
Mission status : somehow, against all logic and good taste, succeeding.
“Did he seriously just drop the parking ticket line?” Maine’s voice carries that particular tone of disbelief reserved for watching train-wrecks in slow motion, even as he slouches deeper into cracked vinyl, making the booth protest.
“Third time’s the charm, apparently.” The foam on my beer tastes bitter, or maybe that’s just my mood. “But I guess he never gets to take any shots on the ice, so he has to compensate.”
“Two rejections and he bounces back like this?” Maine’s knee bounces under the table, a restless rhythm that hasn’t stopped since we sat down. “Gotta respect the complete lack of self-preservation.”
On the screen above us, a Bruins forward splits the D and goes bar-down. Beautiful goal. Would’ve had the whole bar on its feet five years ago. Now? Nothing. When half your drinking buddies could make that shot blindfolded, the magic dims a little.
“Twenty says she shoots him down.” Maine’s eyes track Rook like a sniper, then he grins. “Actually, make it ten.”
The girl’s twirling her hair now, leaning into whatever garbage Rook’s selling. Her hand lands on his forearm—the universal signal for you’re doing something right .
“Twenty or bust, asshole,” I say.
“Fine.”
I laugh. “Look at her body language. Better get your wallet out, because he’s about to seal the deal.”
Maine squints, and I can practically hear the gears grinding. “What happened to ‘Rook couldn’t close if the door had an automatic sensor’?”
“Kid’s funnier this year.” My finger traces condensation patterns on my glass. “Should be captain next year after you graduate and I’m… gone.”
“Fuck you very much, I’m making the show too.” The humor dies in his voice. “ Rook? Captain? You serious?”
“Cooper’s technically sound but he’s got the personality of drywall. Kellerman’s too green. Schmidt thinks leadership means throwing huge benders…”
“So by process of elimination?—”
“By merit . The team needs someone who lifts morale. Someone who doesn’t make freshmen cry during bag skates.”
“Oh, so nothing like you.”
The truth of it should sting. Instead, I just shrug. “Exactly. Besides, it’ll suit Pearson’s system better—he likes his captains approachable,”
As if sensing we’re talking about him, Rook catches my eye and fires off a wink that screams watch and learn . I raise my glass in mock salute, knowing that, once upon a time, that would’ve been me collecting numbers like hockey cards, each one a tiny validation.
Now?
The only number I want is already saved in my phone.
“Look at Captain Supportive.” Maine’s studying me with an intensity usually reserved for game tape. “What happened to the post-game roast sessions? ‘Your technique sucks, Rook.’ ‘You telegraph every move, Rook.’ ‘My dead grandmother has better game than you, Rook.’”
“Character growth. Very trendy. Might do a TED Talk.”
“The fuck’s a TED Talk?”
“Exactly.”
Maine’s knuckles crack. “So. Coach’s office.”
The beer suddenly requires my complete attention. Three long swallows. Four.
“Seriously? That’s all I get? You have a closed-door with Coach and you give me monosyllables?”
“It was fine.”
“ Fine? ” His voice cracks like we’re back in juniors. “Mike, if you’re in shit, if you’re?—”
“Nothing like that.” The booth vinyl whines as I shift. “He said if I keep playing like this, scouts will forget about the lost year. Like it never happened.”
Those words— like it never happened —still taste wrong.
Like Coach suggesting I should be grateful for collective amnesia about the worst year of my life.
Just delete those months of staring at my bedroom ceiling, counting the water stains while my ankle throbbed its own rhythm.
Forget the therapy sessions where I couldn’t even say “hockey” without my throat closing up.
Pretend I didn’t spend night after night on the bench, dressed but not dressed, watching my team from the outside like a ghost at his own funeral.
“That’s… good?” Maine’s confusion cuts through my spiral. “Right?”
“Sure.”
“You sound super convinced.”
The right words won’t come. How do you explain that you’re different now without sounding like some self-help cliché? That breaking changes you in ways that have nothing to do with scar tissue and everything to do with discovering you existed as more than just your next shift?
“That year rewired me.” Each word feels too heavy for bar conversation. “Not saying I’d sign up for the ankle destruction tour again, but it changed me.”
“Jesus, you’re deep tonight. Next, you’ll tell me hockey isn’t life.”
“It’s not.”
The silence that follows could stop hearts. Maine stares like I’ve announced I’m joining a monastery or following Declan to set up a gallery in France, his beer frozen halfway to his mouth.
“OK, who are you and what kind of weird shit did you pull with my captain, asshole?”
“Still me. Just with adjusted priorities.”
“Like what, your whole ‘try-new-things’ experiment?” His air quotes nearly take out his beer. “How’s that going, by the way? Learn to juggle yet?”
“Among other things.”
His grin turns predatory. “Other things like Coach’s daughter?”
The look I give him could freeze hell.
Maine, immune after years of friendship, just laughs. “Whatever, man. I’m just saying you seem…lighter lately. Less likely to murder freshmen for existing.”
“Was I really that bad?”
“You were a miserable bastard.” He says it cheerfully, like commenting on the weather. “Snapping at everyone, acting like the world owed you something. I get it—your ankle was fucked, dreams were on pause, whatever. But you were actively unpleasant to be around.”
“Sorry.” The apology sits heavy because every word’s true.
Maine waves it off with the casual grace of someone who’s never held grudges. “Ancient history. Point is, whatever you’re doing now—therapy, new hobbies, definitely something involving Coach’s daughter—keep doing it. You almost seem human.”
“Highest praise from you.”
“Only kind I give.”
On screen, the Bruins pot another one. We both track the defensive breakdown automatically, our brains cataloging the missed assignment without conscious thought. Shared hockey DNA, speaking a language that needs no words, and is as easy as breathing.
My phone sits heavy in my pocket. Sophie still hasn’t texted since Tuesday. Not that I’m counting. Not that I’ve typed and deleted twelve different messages ranging from casual (“hey”) to pathetic (“can’t stop thinking about you against that wall”).
“Housing situation still fucked?” The subject change feels about as smooth as sandpaper, but I need distance from thoughts of Sophie.
Maine’s groan could wake the dead. “Six interviews. Six different flavors of psychopath.”
“Your standards can’t be that high.” I laugh. “I’ve seen your apartment, and the strange mold growing in your bathroom.”
“There are limits , Michael.” He sighs. “Guy number three collected toenail clippings. In a jar. For ‘art.’”
Beer nearly exits through my nose. “What kind of art requires?—”
“Serial killer art. The kind where I end up in multiple garbage bags because I needed rent money.”
“I could help?—”
“Don’t.” His hand cuts through the air, final. “I’m not taking your money.”
“Pride’s expensive.”
“Says the guy who wouldn’t accept a ride to physio for three months.”
“Exactly. Learn from my stupidity.”
Maine’s attention drifts to the TV, but his leg keeps that anxious rhythm, and now it’s his turn for a topic change. “You hear about Coach’s wife?”
My chest tightens. “What about her?”
“She’s sick. Really sick. MS or something. That’s why he left Michigan—some clinical trial in New York.”
I know. Sophie told me at the batting cages, words tumbling out like she couldn’t hold them back anymore. How her mom had good days and bad days. How the good days were getting rarer. But Maine doesn’t know any of that, so I just stay quiet.
“Twenty years at Michigan,” Maine continues. “Dynasty program. And he walks away for a clinical trial.”
“Family first.” The words come out rougher than intended.
“Is it though? I mean, yeah, family’s important, but giving up everything you’ve built…”
That question hangs between us, heavy with implications neither of us wants to examine too closely. The Old Mike would’ve agreed with hockey first, everything else second. Hockey was religion, and anything that pulled you from the ice was heresy.
But now I think about Sophie reading that poem at open-mic, voice shaking but determined. About the way she looks when she talks about her sister, diligent and loving and exhausted. About how she carries her family’s weight like armor, but the sort she can’t take off.
“I used to think nothing mattered more than making the show.” The admission feels like stepping off a cliff. “That everything else was just noise.”
“And now?”
“Now I think Coach made the right call.”
Maine’s laugh holds no humor. “Bullshit. You’d never walk away from the NHL. Not for anyone.”
“I’m not walking away.” I drain my beer. “I’m just… recognizing there’s more to life than ice time.”
“There’s nothing more than hockey.” He says it like scripture. “That’s why I don’t do relationships. Girls are fun, but they’re not the dream . Even when I make it, I’ve got years before I need to think about settling down. Different girl in every city, living the life.”
Something in his certainty grates against me. That used to be my plan too—make the show, make millions, make memories. Mike Altman: Norris Trophy winner. Mike Altman: Stanley Cup Champion. Mike Altman: defined entirely by what happened between buzzers.
“What Coach did was love,” I hear myself say. “Real love. The kind where someone else’s fight becomes yours.”
“Sure, it’s romantic or whatever.” Maine pulls at his beer label, shredding it. “But we’re twenty-three, not forty-three. Our careers haven’t even started.”
True. Also increasingly irrelevant. When Sophie and I were dancing, career timelines stopped mattering. When she laughs—really laughs, not the polite sound she makes when she’s faking it—I’d trade every goal song for the privilege of causing it again.
“I think I’m jealous,” I admit. “Of what they have and that kind of support system.”
Maine’s eyebrows climb. “Your parents not supportive? They’re doctors. They’ve got to understand dedication.”
“They’re…invested in their own careers.” It’s the diplomatic version I’ve perfected.
Better than explaining how Dad’s attempts at emotion come through incomprehensible meme texts, or how Mom still emails articles about medical school applications.
“One game a year is all I get, and they wouldn’t move for me. ”
“My parents don’t come either.” Maine shrugs, but tension bleeds through. “Too busy, and Chloe’s too sick to travel.”
“Does it bother you?”
“Nah. I don’t play for anyone but me.”
Liar , I think, but don’t say. We all play for someone, even if we won’t admit it. I used to play to prove I was more than the kid who broke. Now? If Sophie showed up tomorrow, I’d play every shift like poetry, just to see if she’d notice and to try and make her smile.
“Altman. Earth to fucking Altman.”
Maine’s hand waves inches from my face. I swat it away. “What?”
“You went full space-cadet. Thinking about a certain coach’s daughter again?”
“Wondering when’s the last time you washed that hoodie?”
“Wednesday. Or last Wednesday. Time’s a construct.”
Rook materializes at our table, radiating success. His phone waves like a trophy. “Date tomorrow. And her roommate’s number as backup.”
“Strategic redundancy, that’s smart,” Maine approves. “And that’s twenty bucks for Altman.”
I manufacture a smile while my stomach turns. The backup plan. The numbers game. The casual calculus of college hookup culture that used to be my native language. Now it feels foreign, like trying to remember lyrics to a song I’ve outgrown.
Rook slides into the booth. “Speaking of hot, Amber was asking about you earlier.”
“Not interested.”
The silence that follows could be measured in epochs. Maine and Rook exchange the kind of look that usually precedes interventions, and I know where this is headed.
“Amber,” Maine clarifies slowly. “Legs that could stop traffic. Tits that could start religions. Does that thing with her?—”
“I know who Amber is.”
“And you’re not interested?” Rook looks genuinely concerned for my health. “You dying? Should we call someone?”
“He’s hung up on Coach’s daughter,” Maine explains with the subtlety of a slap-shot.
Rook’s eyes go wide. “ Sophie Pearson? Dude. That’s…”
“I know.”
“Like, spectacularly stupid.”
“I’m aware.”
“Career-endingly stupid.”
“Got it, thanks.”
“But worth it?” His voice drops the jokes, goes serious.
The question hangs there, demanding truth. Worth risking Coach’s wrath? Worth complicating everything? Worth upending the careful balance I’ve built between who I was and who I’m becoming?
“Yeah,” I say, meaning it down to my bones. “Worth it.”
The bar noise swells around us—laughter, arguments, the eternal soundtrack of almost-adults pretending we have answers. But all I can think about is Sophie, somewhere else, maybe thinking about me too, maybe typing and deleting her own messages.
“Another round?” Maine asks.
I check the time. 11:47. “I’m out,” I say. “Early practice.”
“It’s Thursday night,” Rook protests. “Live a little.”
I think about Sophie’s poem. About living like you’re not afraid of the landing.
“Maybe next time,” I lie, already moving toward the door.
Because the truth is, I’m already living.
Just not in any way these two would recognize.