Chapter 7
The Shutout
Luke
The puck dropped for the third-period draw and vanished in a mess of sticks. I tracked the blur long enough to see it squirt back to Caribou’s right-defense. Shot probability from there: medium. Crowd volume: stupid.
I tuned both out, set my angle, and let muscle memory finish the math.
Clack. The slapper ricocheted off our captain’s shin pad, bounced into the slot, and died in a puddle of snow nobody expected. Their center lunged. I slid, sealed the ice, and felt rubber thud into my ribs. No rebound. Whistle.
Seventeen thousand bodies erupted. Or maybe seven thousand; hard to count noise.
I skated a lazy arc while the ref fished the puck out of my gear. The student section hammered on the glass—painted faces, foam horns, a banner that read CARTER = COLD FRONT. Nice. I forced slow breaths, eyes up to the Jumbotron so I wouldn’t stare at the clock.
Instead, my gaze snagged on the north-end stands. Mid-tier, two sections left of center, somebody sat stone-still amid the chaos. Gray hoodie, elbows on knees, spine straight like a geometry proof. Hair a little too neat for a Friday night rink.
Austen.
He wasn’t cheering, didn’t have a foam finger. Watching, as if the whole sheet of ice were another chalkboard and he planned to grade it.
The ref tapped my pad. “Ready, goalie.”
I nodded and shuffled back into the crease, pulse louder than the drums.
We led 3–0 with thirty-nine seconds left when their coach yanked the goalie.
Six skaters swarmed. Caribou won the draw, swung it to the far point, quick D-to-D, then a low snap pass to the back door like the film warned.
I launched across, right pad flat. The shooter tried to roof it; puck clipped my mask cage and ricocheted into the corner.
The horn chased the rebound, and helmets slammed my shoulders—Ryan, Javier, and a couple guys whose names I hadn’t pinned yet. The bench emptied. I stayed upright long enough to tap both posts, then let myself believe the scoreboard.
FINAL: NRU 3 – CSU 0.
The building shook. Through the mess of gloves and blockers, I glanced north again. Austen was on his feet now, still silent, hands in his pockets. He turned to the woman next to him, said something, and was already moving toward the exit.
The locker room was a riot.
It smelled of victory, which mostly meant champagne (cheap stuff Ryan had smuggled in), sweat, and someone’s Axe body spray. Someone needed to put a stop to that nonsense… fast. Had to be a freshman. No adult would wear that stuff unless their goal was to repel the opposite sex.
Someone cranked the stereo to a level that vibrated my fillings. The bass line of a hip-hop track thudded against the metal lockers.
Ryan stood on a bench, shirtless, whipping a towel around his head like a helicopter rotor.
“That’s how we do it in our house!” he screamed, his voice cracking. “That’s how we do it! Whose house?!”
“OUR HOUSE!” the team roared back, twenty voices merging into one primal shout.
I put the catcher and blocker on the bench before peeling off my mask, hair plastered to my forehead. My ears were ringing.
Javier Morales slammed into me, wrapping me in a headlock.
“You stone-cold bastard!” Javier yelled into my ear. “That glove save? Are you kidding me? You’re a freak!”
“Let go, Javi,” I wheezed, laughing despite myself. “I need oxygen.”
He released me, slapping my chest protector hard enough to make a hollow thud. “First star, Carter. First star. You earned the shower beer.”
He tossed a can of cheap light lager at me. I caught it, fumbled it slightly before gripping the cold aluminum.
“Drink! Drink! Drink!” the guys chanted, pounding their sticks on the rubber floor.
I cracked the tab. Foam spilled over my jersey. I took a swig—warm and tasted like horse piss, but in that moment, the best thing I’d ever tasted.
I looked around the room. Chaos. Loud. Everything I was supposed to want.
But my head was pounding. The adrenaline was crashing, leaving behind a jagged edge of exhaustion.
Coach Harper stepped onto the rubber flooring. Conversations clipped instantly. The music didn’t stop, but someone turned the volume down to a dull roar. And the guys hid the alcohol and Coach pretended not to notice.
“Solid work,” she said, voice carrying. “Glove transition still late on high cycles—fix it before Tuesday. Once you’re showered and changed, I’ll need O’Connell and Morales for press.”
Then, she turned and looked at me. “Good start, Carter. I won’t make you step in front of the press tonight, but I can guarantee you’ll receive a few emails to your student email account.
Just politely forward any of them to the Athletic Department’s media account.
Don’t respond directly. We don’t want to encourage that behavior.
” She turned to leave. Without looking behind she said, “And make sure you take any evidence of the alcohol with you. You know you can’t have that stuff on school grounds. ”
She retreated. Chaos resumed—music back up, yelling, towels snapped like whips.
I showered fast, let scalding water hit the bruise on my shoulder, then dressed in jeans and a fresh team hoodie. My phone lit up with celebratory pings; the screen showed three missed calls from Dad, one unread text from Mom-figure #4 in New Jersey, and a group chat exploding with demon emojis.
I responded to none of it.
Ryan clipped my shoulder. “Buckman Grill in an hour? Burgers on me. We’re shutting the place down.”
“Later,” I said, shoving my gear into my bag. “Need air.”
“Suit yourself, legend.” He headed out, still chirping at a rookie.
I walked out the side door, away from the fans, away from the noise.
Campus looked dipped in liquid silver, a very light snow reflected off arena lights.
Fans spilled toward bars, dorms, anywhere warm.
A young woman in a beanie yelled, “Carter, you beauty!” before dissolving into a giggling fit with her friends.
Sure, we weren’t allowed to have alcohol back in the locker room, but that didn’t stop the concession stands from serving the crowd.
I lifted a hand, kept walking. Halfway to Stony Creek, the adrenaline crash arrived—hands shaking, vision grainy at the edges.
I exhaled through a four-count the way a previous sport psychologist had taught me.
In two, three, four, and out two, three, four.
I ran through a couple of cycles, bent over with my hands on my knees.
“Is that dude about to throw up?” I heard someone ask. I lifted a hand with a thumb in the air, showing I was fine. With my back to the unknown person, no one knew who I was.
Austen had been there. I grinned at the thought. I recounted my breaths until the quiver eased.
When I got back to the room, I found Austen sitting cross-legged on his bed, laptop balanced on his thighs, earbuds in. He looked up, paused whatever glowed on the screen, and pulled the buds free.
“I felt more invested. Normally, when I watch sports, I don’t care who wins or loses. And people yelling at the players or referees like their single loud voice is going to change anything is beyond me. And even more absurd when I observe people yelling at a television screen.”
He looked at me, and I gestured for him to continue as I sat down, kicking off my sneakers. Austen’s eyes tracked them immediately as they tumbled onto the rug. I caught the look. Without a word, I leaned down, grabbed the shoes, and lined them up neatly under the bed frame.
“It’s statistically insignificant,” he continued, leaning back in his chair.
“Inputting energy into a system that cannot receive the signal. But tonight… the variable had a name. It wasn’t just ‘the goalie.’ It was the person who sleeps with me.
It changes the equation when you know the person inside the mask isn’t just a data point. ”
Sleeps with me? I wanted to crack a joke, but I held back. “So, you yelled?” I asked, amused.
“I… observed with high intensity,” he corrected.
I shrugged out of my coat. “Crowd was louder than the pipes tonight.”
“I noticed.” He set his mug down. “Nice glove on the back-door play.”
I froze, one arm halfway out of my sleeve. I stared at him. “You know what a back-door play is?”
“I do now.” Austen adjusted his glasses, looking slightly defensive. “I didn’t know the terminology at the time. I just saw the geometry of it—the cross-ice pass, the calculated open space. I had to consult a secondary source to acquire the correct nomenclature.”
He tapped a key and swiveled his desk chair, turning the laptop screen toward me.
The glow from the monitor lit up his face. It was a YouTube window, paused on a post-game media scrum. Ryan stood in the center, grinning, a cluster of microphones in his face.
“Your defenseman seems to enjoy talking to the press,” Austen said. “He broke down the sequence in the second period. He called it ‘robbery.’”
My cheeks went hot—ridiculous after surviving Caribou’s top line. “You saw that?”
“North-end view caught the whole angle.”
Silence stretched, not awkward, just full. I smelled peppermint from his mug, the lingering sweat from my underlayer, and the faint, clean detergent scent from his blanket.
I cleared my throat. “So. Did the chaos behave?”
Austen took a slow sip from his mug. “It was… loud. At first. Too many variables.”
“But?”
He picked up his mug and took a sip. He licked his top lip when he pulled it away. Wonder what that tastes like? Down boy! I said to my hormones as I felt them rising. Post-game always made me a little on edge, sexually. Austen’s probably not even gay. He seems more… asexual, if anything.