Chapter 1 #2
He was back on the road by nine, coffee from the lobby that was barely tolerable, and the landscape kept flattening.
Indiana was gray and endless. Illinois wasn’t better.
He crossed into Wisconsin by late afternoon, and the GPS started recalculating every few miles, which he tried not to take personally.
The highway narrowed to two lanes without warning.
He passed a farm. Another farm. A gas station that was closed.
An open bar, neon beer signs glowing in the windows of what looked like somebody’s living room.
Port Haven announced itself with a green sign at the town line: WELCOME TO PORT HAVEN—POPULATION 5,347—HOME OF THE LAKESHORE STAGS. Below it, a smaller sign from the Rotary Club. Below that, a hand-painted plywood addition: ANTLER UP.
Coach Deluca had called the day after the trade.
Gruff voice, no small talk, told Leo to stop by a bar called The Penalty Box when he got to town and ask for Gunnar.
Leo had written it off as some kind of team-building hazing ritual—show up at the local dive, buy the old guys a round, prove you’re one of them.
Whatever. If this was what he needed to do to prove he could be a team player, so be it.
The Penalty Box sat on Main Street with a hand-painted sign and a neon beer light in the window.
Leo parked his Audi into one of the angled spot out front—it looked like a spaceship next to the pickup trucks—and sat there for a second with his sunglasses pushed up on his head.
Dive bar. This was where his new coach had sent him.
Inside was dim and smelled like fryer oil and wood polish.
His eyes swept the room, looking for a hostess stand that didn’t exist—just a long bar, framed jerseys on the walls, TVs dark and waiting for the season, a booth in the corner built to look like an actual penalty box.
A guy behind the bar was restocking a cooler, lean and easy in his movements, and behind him stood someone who looked like he belonged on a construction site instead of behind the bar.
Tall, broad, silver streaking through blond hair, watching Leo with an expression that said he’d been expecting him.
“Hi.” Leo pulled his sunglasses off his head. “I’m looking for—” He glanced at his phone. “The Penalty Box?”
“You found it.” The big guy came around the end of the bar and extended his hand. “Gunnar Bergstrom. I own the place.”
Leo shook—firm, practiced, the handshake he’d been giving since his father taught him at twelve. “Leo Vargas. I just got in. Coach said I should come by, meet some of the guys.”
“Most of the guys won’t be around ’til closer to camp. Ford Callahan, Tommy Kowalski, and Tate Novak are local, but the rest start trickling in over the next couple of weeks.” Gunnar gestured at the empty room. “But you’re welcome to a drink.”
Leo slid onto a stool, set his phone face-down on the bar, then turned it face-up, then angled it. His hands needed something to do. “You got a vodka soda?”
The other guy—the one who’d been restocking—was already reaching. “We’ve got Tito’s or Svedka. And the soda gun.”
“Tito’s. Thanks.”
Leo watched him pour. When Gunnar passed behind him, his hand found the small of the guy’s back—and the guy leaned into it in a way that made it obvious they weren’t just coworkers.
Interesting
Something in Leo’s chest pulled tight. He looked away before either of them caught him staring. Port Haven was already surprising him.
“So you’re just the bar guy,” Leo said to Gunnar. Not dismissive—sorting. Trying to figure out why a coach would send a new player to a dive bar to meet a bartender.
“Just the bar guy.” Gunnar set a napkin under Leo’s drink. “I volunteer at the rink too. Drive the Zamboni, help with the youth program. You’ll see me around.”
“So,” Leo said. “What do people do here?”
The bartender—Wes, Gunnar called him—leaned his hip against the bar. “Here like the bar, or here like the town?”
“Both.”
“Bar: drink, watch the games, argue about the games, drink, and eat greasy food. Town: same, but outside.”
Leo’s mouth twitched. “Coach said it was cozy.”
“Coach is diplomatic.” Gunnar pulled a stool around to his side of the bar and sat.
“Port Haven’s small. You’ll know everyone’s name inside a month, whether you want to or not.
The grocery store has eight aisles. The nearest Target is forty minutes away.
People will bring you casseroles when you move in, and they’ll want the dish back empty. ”
“Casseroles.” Leo said the word like he was tasting something unfamiliar.
“Get used to hotdish. You’re in Wisconsin now.”
The front door opened, and a guy walked in, trailing heat from outside. Grease on his forearms, hair pressed flat from a hat, heading for the far end of the bar without looking up. He dropped onto a stool and stopped when he saw Leo.
“Dawson,” Gunnar said. “This is Leo Vargas. New forward for the Stags.”
Dawson gave Leo a once-over. Nothing on his face moved. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Leo lifted his chin in greeting. Dawson didn’t move from his end of the bar.
“Dawson’s a mechanic,” Gunnar said. “Works at his brother’s garage. He’s good with anything that has an engine.”
“Good to know.” Leo heard himself reach for the charm, the easy polish that usually worked. “Though I’m not sure my car qualifies as ‘anything with an engine.’ It’s more of a specialist situation.”
Dawson picked up his beer and drank. If he had a response to that, he kept it behind the glass.
The silence landed harder than it should have. Leo felt his posture shift, his spine straightening, the armor thickening the way it always did when someone wasn’t buying what he was selling.
“How long have you been in town?” Leo asked. He wasn’t sure why he was trying to get the guy to talk to him.
“My whole life.”
“And you just…stay?”
Dawson’s jaw tightened. “Some people like where they’re from.”
Leo finished his vodka soda and tried to imagine fitting in here. It was hard to picture himself in a town with tiny grocery store and casserole welcome wagons. He stood and pocketed his phone.
“I should find my hotel. The, uh…” He checked the screen. “Lakeside Inn?”
“Take Main Street to the water, hang a left,” Gunnar said. “You can’t miss it. Come back on Friday. The guys usually start showing up for informal skates the week before camp. I’ll introduce you around.”
“Yeah.” Leo pocketed his phone. “Thanks for the drink.”
“First one’s on the house. After that, you pay like everyone else.”
Leo pulled his sunglasses back on and walked out. He could feel someone watching him through the window. He didn’t turn around to check who.
The Lakeside Inn was two blocks from the bar.
Two stories, white siding, flower boxes in the windows, and a couple of rocking chairs on the front porch.
It looked like the kind of place that probably had a guest book and a basket of mints at the front desk.
An older man on the porch watched Leo park and didn’t look away.
The woman at the front desk handed him a key—an actual metal key, not a card—and pointed him down a hallway that smelled like Pine-Sol and lake water.
The room was clean. Small. A queen bed with a quilt that looked handmade, a window unit AC that hummed at a frequency designed to prevent sleep, and a framed photograph of a lighthouse above the dresser.
He dropped his bag on the bed and stood at the window.
The lake was right there—closer than he’d expected, and bigger.
Waves rolled in and broke against the shore, white-capped and restless, more ocean than lake. He hadn’t expected that from Wisconsin.
His phone had nine texts from his mother, two from Phil, and one from a teammate. Scratch that, a former teammate. It sucked that it had taken so long for anyone to reach out, but maybe that’s what his former coach meant when he’d talked to Leo about being a team player.
Leo reached back, pulled off his shirt from the collar, balled it up, and dropped it on the chair. From the window, Port Haven was a parking lot, a streetlight, and a lake that didn’t care he was here.
Cozy, Deluca had called it. Leo looked at the empty parking lot, the single streetlight, the lake stretching into nothing. Quiet was the word. Too quiet.
He brushed his teeth using the toothbrush from the travel kit he kept in his bag.
He stared at the good toothpaste, the serum for the skin under his eyes, the toner his aesthetician in Orlando had special-ordered.
Would he be able to get any of these products without having to order online or drive to Milwaukee?
His self-care routine was the same whether he was in a five-star hotel or a beige box on a lake in Wisconsin. Today, it grounded him in a way he hadn’t known he needed. Reminded him that he was still the same man, even if he was starting to question everything he thought he knew about himself.
Two days of driving and he could feel all of it now—the adrenaline gone, his body heavy with the kind of tired that sleep wouldn’t fix.
He stripped and got into bed before the sun had finished setting.
The sheets were stiff but cold, and the quilt was heavier than he expected.
The AC hummed. A cat yowled once outside, then went quiet.
His phone buzzed. His mother. He turned it face-down on the nightstand.
He’d had two days to think about what Briggs had said.
Two days of highway and silence and nothing to do but turn it over.
Think about whether you want to be part of a team.
He’d been angry at first. Then defensive.
Somewhere around Indianapolis, the defensiveness had worn thin enough for the question to get through, and the worst part wasn’t that Briggs had said it.
The worst part was that Leo couldn’t name a single team he’d been on where the guys would’ve fought to keep him.
He stared at the ceiling. The sun had gone down while he wasn’t paying attention, and Port Haven was quiet in a way that pressed against his eardrums. No traffic.
No bass from a neighbor’s speakers. No sirens, no laughter from the street, no evidence that anyone under sixty was awake within a mile of him.
He pulled the quilt up to his chin, closed his eyes, and told himself this was temporary. Phil would make calls, find an interested team in a real city, with a real scene, where Leo could walk into a bar and not be the only person in the room who’d ever used an exfoliating mask.
Temporary. He just had to wait it out.
His phone lit up on the nightstand. His mother again. He reached for it, then stopped. Pulled his hand back and stared at the ceiling instead, listening to the waves hit the shore through the thin walls, over and over, like the lake was trying to tell him something he wasn’t ready to hear.