Chapter 9
THEO
THE CALL-UP TAKES my spot in the fourth-line rush at nine-twelve in the morning, and by nine-fourteen I have introduced him to the boards.
Gently.
Well. Gently by my standards.
His shoulder hits first, then the rest of him, puck squirting loose beneath his skates. I hook it away, turn up-ice, and hear Coach Berg’s whistle before I make it across the blue line. “Moreau.”
I coast into the circle. The call-up peels himself off the glass behind me, looking surprised but structurally intact. “Yes, Coach?”
Berg tries to drill a hole in my soul with his eyes. “Morning skate.”
“I’m aware.”
“Then why are you checking like he stole your identity?”
I look over at the kid. He’s six-two, twenty-one, and fresh from scoring nine points in six games down in the AHL. He also has my right winger and my center on either side of him for the next rush.
“Did you?” I ask.
The kid shakes his head fast.
“All cleared up, coach.”
Somebody chokes behind a glove. Berg closes his eyes for one long second, then points me toward the other line. “Again. Less murder.”
“No promises.”
“That sentence is why you lead the team in fines.”
Technically, I lead the team in fines for the things I say while hitting people, which is its own category of excellence.
I lead the Vipers in hits too, by fourteen, and those are legal.
Mostly. Being five-ten in a league where defensemen are assembled in aircraft hangars means I don’t get to approach contact with uncertainty.
I go in low and fully committed, and bigger men hit the ice trying to work out which law of physics filed a grievance.
On the next rush, the call-up gets half a stride on me. I catch him before the red line, lift his stick, steal the puck, and feed it to Lindqvist without breaking pace.
Our captain accepts the pass with Swedish calm. “Very restrained,” he says.
“Thank you.”
“I was speaking to him.”
The call-up laughs. Traitor.
Line rushes reset, and there he is again in black practice gear where my jersey usually moves. A crowded fourth line is hardly a press release. Guys come up, coaches test combinations. It’s not a big deal, really.
Still, I take notice the way you notice pressure dropping before a storm.
I have things going for me, I know that. I’m fast, and I’m loud, and I’m cheap.
Useful in all the ways that become replaceable the second somebody younger supplies the same electricity for less money.
I’ve made a career out of being the player a team loves having around. Which is a dangerous sentence because around covers a lot of exits.
So I don’t dwell. I call the call-up a stretched-out garden gnome, beat him to the next puck, and check harder.
By the time Berg ends the skate, the kid is panting with both hands on his knees and grinning at me. Good. If management wants to crowd my line, they can at least send somebody fun.
In the locker room, Dziedzic stands in the threshold and turns one of Patrick’s freshly repaired gloves under the fluorescent light for final inspection. “Grze?kowiak,” he calls, every consonant polished. Our equipment manager is the only man on the team who can actually pronounce Patrick’s name.
Half the room turns just to enjoy it.
Patrick steps over and accepts the glove. “Thanks, D.”
The name hangs in the air for two more seconds, perfect and briefly miraculous. Then our assistant coach walks past, claps Patrick on the shoulder, and says, “Looking good, Grezzy,” restoring the natural order.
I give Dziedzic a respectful nod while the man mourns in silence.
Twenty minutes later, I’m in the gym halfway through a set of split squats when my phone lights up on the floor.
Nothing from Wall. Obviously. The group thread has remained silent since the night of the call. Patrick’s recap email arrived the next morning, but it contained an attachment named FINAL_VENDOR_COMPARISON_v6 and therefore qualifies as a cry for help rather than communication.
Wall hasn’t acknowledged the call. He also hasn’t fled the country or blocked us, and after listening to him breathe while he came, I am choosing to interpret this as positive momentum.
My leg starts shaking. I finish the rep, drop the weights, and open Wall’s contact directly before good judgment can recover from whatever hit it took this morning.
Someone has to do it, and it’s becoming brutally clear it won’t be either of them.
Pride, or some shit. I wouldn’t know.
The photograph is already in my favorites. Patrick asleep, two days ago, flat on his back, hair pushed up on one side and both hands folded over his stomach. I took the photo at 6:14 a.m. while sitting naked on his chest, which failed to wake him and remains offensive.
I attach it to my message.
Me: your nemesis, neutralized
My next set starts immediately, because staring at a screen does not make a man answer faster. Or so they say.
Seven reps later, nothing. By the end of the set, I’ve walked one lap around the bench, finished my water, and checked again five times.
Patrick is across the room doing pull-ups with a plate hanging from his waist. He lowers himself under perfect control, dark shirt stretching over his back, and glances at me on the way down.
I’m busy drooling when my phone buzzes in my hand, and I nearly drop it.
Wall: He sleeps like he saves. Aggressively still.
I stare at the message, all seven words, then look at Patrick again. He is hanging motionless from the bar while Lindqvist adds another plate to the belt, which proves Wall’s scouting remains elite across state lines and consciousness levels.
It quickly becomes apparent that texting Wall is like feeding quarters into a vending machine that mostly does nothing and then, once, drops a switchblade in your lap.
I keep feeding it quarters.
The next one goes in from the trainer’s room.
I’m facedown on a massage table with a compression sleeve around my left calf while game film runs on the television bolted to the corner.
Tonight’s opponent fills the screen in red and black.
A Hawk forward scores on an old clip, and the room responds with the low, automatic disgust of thirty men watching property values decline.
I hold the record button and boo for nine uninterrupted seconds.
The voice memo goes directly to Wall.
The reply arrives before the pressure cycle ends.
Wall: :thumb_up_emoji:
I stare at it.
That’s it. No words. One yellow hand raised in bland approval after I gave him nine seconds of committed performance art. I drop my forehead onto the table and laugh into the paper cover while the compression sleeve tries to squeeze the soul out through my knee.
At noon, Patrick drives us to my apartment so I can collect the suit I allegedly own.
Most of my clothes are at his place now.
This happened without paperwork. First, I left a shirt after a game.
Then underwear reproduced in his dryer, my hair products colonized the space beside his sink, and three pairs of shoes established residency by the door.
I spend five nights out of seven there and remain naked for roughly sixty percent of the time, because clothes are for people with no one to fuck.
We have discussed none of this.
My apartment smells closed when I unlock it. A stack of mail leans against the door, and the plants have entered a dry and judgmental phase.
Before I can warn him, Patrick saunters to my fridge, opens it, and looks at one bottle of hot sauce standing upright under the light, constituting the fridge’s entire content. He turns his face toward me and raises a brow.
I shrug. “It’s a condiment. That’s food-adjacent.”
“Go change. And get your suit.”
I strip on the way to the bedroom, leaving practice sweats in a trail behind me.
By the time I come back in clean boxer briefs and one sock, Patrick sits upright on the couch, looking like he’s waiting for a delayed appointment.
My hot sauce rests on the coffee table beside him. “Are you evicting it?”
“It expired four months ago.”
“It has vinegar, Patrick. It’s immortal.”
I snag the bottle, carry it to the kitchen and put it back in the refrigerator, because principles matter most when they’re stupid.
On my return, his phone is in his hand and I peek over his shoulder. The group thread is open. Nothing new under the call link.
There it is. The subject standing in the room with us while neither of us says its name.
I sit beside him, bare thigh pressed to dark denim. “We should invite him over.”
Patrick locks his phone and sets it facedown on his knee and says nothing.
“He watched you fold me like a lawn chair, Patrick. The man is ready.”
“He has to ask.”
I huff internally, because I know better by now. Hell will freeze over before Wall asks for anything. “He’s asking in goalie.”
Patrick’s mouth moves at one corner. “That isn’t a language.”
“It has grunts, and evasive answers. It’s absolutely a language.”
No answer. He looks down at our legs touching, then back at the dead television.
Patrick has never met a silence he couldn’t use as leverage. With Wall, he’s gone professional. Every open door and carefully framed camera has led farther into the woods, and now he’s waiting beside the trail for a big red to wander into the snare himself.
“You’re running a trapline,” I accuse.
He picks a piece of lint off his jeans and doesn’t deny running a trapline.
“Why does he have to ask?”
Patrick takes long enough that I almost fill the space for him. “Because he needs to know he wants it.”
I know all about wanting something and keeping my mouth shut so it can’t be taken away. Patrick provides what I need without me asking. Orgasms. His charger beside my phone every night. The exact shape of my body he makes room for in his bed.
Did I mention orgasms?
Still, I don’t ask for any of it. The second you name a thing, it grows a handle. People can grab handles. They can carry things out.
An ex once kissed my forehead after six months and told me, You’re a great time, Theo. Warm voice, soft hands. Past tense before he reached the door.
Patrick and I have no label and no drawer declared mine.
If we never define this, it can’t end. That is excellent logic, if you don’t count the fact I’m basically living at his apartment while my last surviving condiment expires alone, because if I throw it out it means I’m leaving there and he can kick me out when I inevitably become too much.
I hook my chin over Patrick’s shoulder and reopen the group thread on his phone. “Fine. We wait for him to ask.”
“We do.”
“Patiently.”
His eyes slide toward me.
I roll mine. “I can be patient.”
His keep sliding.
“Oh, shut your judgmental face.”
Patrick takes his phone back before I can prove patience by texting Wall from it.
I last until he goes to check whether I have a clean dress shirt. Then I take out my own phone, open Wall’s direct thread, and type from the couch.
Me: settle a bet. best hands in the division, you or him? be honest. only one of you gets to be smug.
Patrick returns holding a white shirt and eyes my screen. “There is no bet.”
I grin. “There will be once he answers.”
The dots appear before Patrick makes it back to my bedroom. They disappear, then come back. Wall takes longer with a few words than most people take with tax returns. By the time the answer arrives, Patrick’s back and I’m standing on the couch for no reason I can defend.
Finally:
Wall: I think it’s clear. Best hands in the division never have to ask.
I read it twice, then turn the screen toward Patrick.
His eyes move over the message. One corner of his mouth lifts, and he lets the silence do rest of the talking.
Nine hours later, game adrenaline has replaced my blood.
The Hawks spend three periods trying to pin me to the boards, and three periods discovering I consider this a recreational activity. I finish with an assist, seven hits, and a ten-minute misconduct for explaining to an official where he could store his whistle. The Vipers win 3–1.
By the time Patrick drives us back to my apartment, which I insisted on to keep up appearances, the city is glossy with cold and my knee won’t stop bouncing.
He opens the refrigerator, looks at the hot sauce, and puts his coat back on to find us food.
I drop onto the couch still wearing my celebratory suit pants and open Wall’s thread.
Adrenaline has replaced judgment too. I type before it wears off.
Me: serious question. that night on the call. did you like hearing him or watching him?
The refrigerator hums behind me while traffic whispers over the wet street below. The message changes from sent to delivered, and my heartbeat climbs with it.
Nothing.
Thirty seconds. One minute.
I put the phone on my thigh, last three seconds, and pick it up immediately. Still nothing.
Maybe this is the line. Photos and voice notes are games. The hands question had a joke tucked inside it. And the call night can stay safely unnamed if nobody points at it, and I have just pointed with both hands.
The dots appear.
My breath stops.
They vanish.
“No, no, no. Come back.”
Dots again. Gone again.
He’s composing an answer, deleting it, constructing another. My stomach climbs toward my lungs while I watch evidence of the decision appear and vanish.
The radiator knocks once and settles.
Still nothing. Patrick will be back with takeout soon, and he’ll read my face before the door closes behind him.
My phone buzzes.
Wall: Yes.
Yes.
I grab the nearest pillow, bury my face in it, and scream.