Chapter 22 Wes
WES
The thing about being an enforcer is that everyone sees the fights and nobody sees the cost.
What they don't see is the locker room after.
The way my hands refuse to close around a water bottle because the tendons are screaming.
The ice bags that become so routine the trainers have them ready before I sit down.
The particular silence that surrounds me in the postgame, a bubble of space that the team maintains without being asked, because nobody wants to be near the violence once the entertainment value has expired.
What they don't see is the drive home, when the adrenaline drains and leaves behind something flat and grey, and my apartment is dark and my hands are swollen and I stand in the kitchen and bake bread because kneading dough is the only thing I've found that resets the wiring in my brain.
My name is Wes Chen. I'm twenty-eight years old.
I play right wing for the Atlanta Reapers, though "play" is generous because my primary contribution to the team is hitting people.
I am six-foot-one and two hundred and ten pounds and I have been told by multiple sources that I am intimidating, which is useful in hockey and useless in every other area of human existence.
I am also, as of this morning, staring at a plate of biscotti that someone left in my equipment stall with a handwritten note that says, in handwriting so cheerful it should be illegal: Thought you might want some. You looked like you could use a cookie yesterday. — L
L.
Luca Moretti. Equipment manager. Three weeks on the job.
Italian-American. Loud. Aggressively friendly.
Completely unbothered by the fact that I had responded to his first attempt at conversation with a monosyllabic grunt and his second attempt with silence and his third attempt with what I've been told is my "murder face," which is apparently a real thing that I do and which has been known to make rookies physically relocate to different parts of the locker room.
Luca Moretti had not relocated. Luca Moretti had come back with biscotti.
I stared at the plate. The biscotti were golden brown and perfectly shaped and dusted with powdered sugar, and I knew from previous, involuntary experience that they were exceptional.
His grandmother's recipe, he'd told anyone who would listen, which was everyone, because everyone listened to Luca.
He had the kind of warmth that made people lean in.
A gravity. Not the cold, dense gravity of a planet, which was my kind. The warm gravity of a sun.
I did not want the biscotti. I did not need the biscotti.
I was a professional athlete with a nutritionist and a meal plan and zero interest in unsolicited baked goods from a man who smiled too much and talked too much and had touched my arm at a bar last week in a way that had caused a neurological event that I was still not thinking about.
I ate one of the biscotti. For quality assessment purposes only.
It was, predictably, outstanding. The almond flavor was subtle and the texture was the precise balance of crisp and tender that separates an excellent biscotto from a mediocre one.
As a man who baked, I could appreciate the craft.
The ratio of butter to flour. The restraint with the sugar.
This was not casual baking. This was someone who cared about the details.
I ate a second one. For comparative analysis.
"Good morning, sunshine."
I looked up. Luca Moretti was standing in the doorway of the equipment room, holding a cup of coffee in each hand, wearing a Reapers staff polo that was slightly too big for him, which meant it hung off one shoulder in a way that exposed his collarbone.
I did not look at his collarbone. I looked at the coffee.
"I don't drink coffee," I said.
"This one's mine." He held up the left cup. "This one's yours." He held up the right. "It's tea. Earl Grey. I noticed you drink it in the mornings but the stuff in the break room is terrible, so I brought some from home."
I stared at him. He had noticed what I drank.
He had noticed, cataloged the information, identified a problem, and produced a solution.
This was the behavior of an equipment manager in the literal sense, a person whose job was to notice what players needed and provide it, but the tea felt different from replacing skate blades or retaping sticks. The tea felt personal.
"Why?" I said.
"Why what?"
"Why do you keep doing this?"
"Doing what? Being nice? It's not a strategy, Chen. Some people are just nice. I know that's a foreign concept for a guy whose primary social skill is punching, but I promise it's a real thing that exists in the world."
He set the tea on the bench next to me and sat down two stalls over, which was closer than most people chose to sit near me, and began organizing a box of replacement laces with the focused efficiency of a man who genuinely enjoyed his job.
I picked up the tea. It was hot and perfectly steeped and the cup had a small sticky note on the side that said "For Grumpy" with a smiley face.
I peeled off the sticky note. I put it in my pocket. I did not examine why I put it in my pocket instead of throwing it away. Some actions do not require analysis. Some actions are just neurological events. Misfires. Static shocks.
I drank the tea. It was the best Earl Grey I'd ever had.
"Thank you," I said. The words felt strange in my mouth, like a language I'd learned once and forgotten.
Luca looked up from his laces. His face did something complicated. Surprise, first. Then warmth. Then a smile that was different from his usual broadcast smile, the one he gave everyone. This one was smaller. Specific. Aimed.
"You're welcome, Chen."
He went back to his laces. I went back to my tea. The locker room was quiet. My hands, for the first time in recent memory, were not shaking.
I did not think about why.