Chapter Two
Felix
I had a system.
Most people found this annoying. I found it necessary.
The system was not complicated , it was just disciplined, which I'd learned early was a word people used admiringly when it applied to sport and judgmentally when it applied to everything else.
Recovery protocol after a win was the same as after a loss: ice bath, twenty minutes.
Protein within forty,five. Eight hours, non,negotiable.
Film review the following morning at seven before the rest of the team was coherent enough to argue about it.
The system worked. It had always worked. I was twenty,six years old, I had not had a serious injury in three seasons, and my plus,minus was the best on the team. The system was not the problem.
The problem was currently in the shower two stalls over, singing something that I was almost certain was not a real song.
Just syllables. Enthusiastic, rhythmless syllables delivered at a volume that suggested Shay believed he was performing for an audience of thousands rather than one irritated man and a failing shower head.
I pressed my forehead briefly against the cold tile.
The system did not have a protocol for this. I had checked.
I was in bed by 10:15pm , which was exactly on schedule.
I was still awake at eleven,forty, which was not.
The ceiling of my apartment was extremely familiar to me at this point.
I knew the crack in the plaster near the light fixture , the way it branched left like a river delta.
I knew the way the streetlight outside moved across it when a car passed.
I had been conducting an intimate and unwanted study of this ceiling for approximately ninety minutes, and it had yet to offer any useful information.
My phone was face,down on the nightstand. I had put it there deliberately. The deliberateness was, itself, a symptom I didn't want to look at.
It buzzed.
I did not reach for it. I was in control of my own motor functions. I was an adult. I was a professional athlete with an established recovery protocol and significant personal discipline. I stared at the ceiling.
It buzzed again.
I picked up the phone.
Shay, 11:43pm: [video attachment]
The thumbnail was a cat. Specifically a very large orange cat attempting to fit itself into a very small cardboard box with the total conviction of an animal that had never once doubted itself. It was failing comprehensively. It did not appear to care.
I watched it twice.
Shay, 11:43pm: this is you trying to fit your personality into the word "fine" every time someone asks how you are
I put the phone face,down again.
I picked it up.
Me: Go to sleep, Shay.
Shay: ur awake tho
Me: I'm telling you to go to sleep. That requires me to be awake.
Shay: right but WHY are you awake, felix. it's 11:45. you have a system. the system says 10:30 latest. I've seen the spreadsheet. I know about the spreadsheet
Me: There is no spreadsheet.
Shay: there is absolutely a spreadsheet and it has color coding and I love you for it but also you should be asleep
I stared at the words. I love you for it.
Shay said things like that constantly , easily, casually, the way other people said see you later or sounds good.
It meant nothing. It was just how he talked.
The warmth that moved through my chest when I read it was a response to the sentiment in the abstract, not the specific delivery, and I was going to stop thinking about it right now.
Me: Good night, Shay.
Shay: [photo attachment]
It was the gas station sushi. It was on a plate. He had arranged it.
Shay: I think it's good? it's either good or I'm about to learn something important about my own biology
Me: That is not food.
Shay: it's technically food
Me: Shay. That has been in a refrigerator case under fluorescent lighting since at minimum Tuesday.
Shay: it's fine. I've eaten worse
Me: When?
Shay: the rookie hazing thing in my first season, don't ask
Shay: okay you can ask
Shay: felix
Shay: ASK
I was smiling. I noticed this the same way I noticed the crack in the ceiling , the way you notice a thing you've been pretending not to see. I put the phone face,down, held it there for four seconds, and picked it back up.
Me: What did they make you eat.
What followed was a seven,minute account, delivered in real time with escalating horror and detail, of Shay's first,year rookie initiation, which involved a blended concoction of items sourced from the training room, a vending machine, and what Shay described as "the shelf in the equipment room that no one talks about. " It was revolting. I read every word.
By midnight,fifteen I was sitting up against my headboard with the light on, phone in both hands, and I had laughed three times. Quietly, because it was midnight, but still. Three times.
This was also not in the system.
Shay: okay okay the point is I survived and I am FINE and gas station sushi is basically gourmet compared to that
Me: I want it noted that I've never participated in rookie hazing.
Shay: noted. you're very moral. gold star. I'm still eating the sushi
Me: How is it?
Thirty seconds of nothing. Then:
Shay: ...it's not great
Shay: it's not NOT food though
Shay: I've committed, felix. I can't back out now. it's a respect thing
I laughed again. Out loud this time, to the empty room.
It bounced off the walls and disappeared, and the apartment was quiet again, and I sat in that quiet for a second and thought: this is the problem.
This right here. Midnight,twenty, laughing at gas station sushi, the ceiling forgotten, the system in ruins.
Shay had been dismantling my system in small increments for four years.
A text at the wrong hour. A chirp that was too specific, too accurate.
The way he said my name , not Wren, the way everyone else did, not hey, the way he addressed the world , but Felix.
Always Felix. Like the name was something he'd decided to keep.
I was aware of what that meant and I was choosing, actively and with great effort, not to mean it.
Me: Eat something real tomorrow. Before skate.
Shay: yes dad
Me: Good night.
Shay: night felix
I put the phone down. Face up this time. Watched the streetlight move across the ceiling.
The crack near the light fixture branched left.
I knew what it meant. I had known for longer than I wanted to admit.
I was a man who noticed things , patterns, angles, the precise weight of what went unsaid in a room , and the thing I had been not,noticing about Shay O'Brien for the better part of two years was frankly an embarrassment to my own intelligence.
I turned the light off.
Eight hours, I told myself. Non,negotiable.
I was asleep by one, which was fifty,five minutes behind schedule.
For Shay, that was practically discipline.
The next morning's film session was at seven. I was there at six,fifty with coffee and the defensive zone breakdowns queued up on the laptop. Hartley arrived at six,fifty,four, nodded once at me in the manner of a man recognizing a kindred spirit, and sat down with his own coffee.
"Good win last night," he said.
"Sloppy on the transition in the second period."
Hartley made a sound of agreement. This was the full extent of our emotional communication, and it worked extremely well for both of us.
Mivo arrived at seven,on,the,dot, which I respected. Reeves arrived at seven,oh,three, which I tolerated. Kieran came in at seven,oh,seven still eating something, and I made a mental note.
At seven,twelve, Shay blew through the door with the energy of a man who had either slept incredibly well or not at all, a coffee in each hand , one of which he set in front of me without asking, without breaking stride, without looking for acknowledgment.
He dropped into the chair beside mine, pulled out his phone, and leaned back with the ease of someone who owned the room by simply being in it.
The coffee was exactly right. He knew my order because he'd been getting it for three years, since the day he'd come back from a coffee run with the wrong one and I'd had the misfortune of explaining why it mattered, and Shay had listened with the focus of a man filing information for future use. He'd never gotten it wrong again.
I looked at the coffee. I looked at the film paused on the laptop. I did not look at Shay.
"You look terrible," Shay told me, which was his version of a greeting.
"Film starts now," I said, which was mine.
He made a sound that meant sure, but also you look terrible. I clicked play.
The room settled. For the next forty minutes, I ran the breakdown , transition gaps, neutral zone coverage, a defensive pinch from Hartley in the third period that had worked but wouldn't work twice against the same team.
People asked questions. I answered them.
The session was good. Focused. Exactly what I needed it to be.
And the entire time, Shay sat beside me and said nothing that wasn't useful, and at one point leaned slightly forward to look at a timestamp I'd called out and his shoulder pressed against mine for approximately four seconds, and I kept talking about defensive zone coverage like a professional, which I was, and which was the only reason I made it to the end of the session without doing something I would need to add to the system as a category under do not.
Afterward, when the room cleared, Shay gathered his things and stood and stretched , arms up, back cracking, a sound of pure satisfaction , and said, without particular weight: "Gas station sushi verdict: 4 out of 10. Would not recommend. Would probably do again."
He picked up his coffee and walked out.
I sat alone in the film room for an extra two minutes.
The system, I decided, needed a new column.
I hadn't figured out what to call it yet.