Chapter 16 Retreat
RETREAT
The new gym is in a strip mall, wedged between a vape store and a donut shop that’s never once turned on its “Open” sign.
The parking lot is empty except for a landscaping truck, two Teslas, and a Corolla with a cracked bumper held together by packing tape.
The universe is not subtle. It’s a bad gym for bad decisions.
I park, kill the engine, and sit in the stale air for a minute, knuckles white on the wheel.
There’s a soreness in my chest that’s not from lifting, or cardio, or the bullet that carved through my life like a machete, it’s the leftover taste of last week, last month, the way Ash’s voice still rings in my skull when the world goes quiet.
“You good?” he’d always say, but it’s been days since I heard it anywhere except in memory.
I chose this place because I knew he wouldn’t.
It’s twice as far, three times as ugly, and the clientele is mostly old guys who grunt through their sets like they’re prepping for war. None of the trainers know me.
The front desk kid barely looks up when I swipe my new tag, just points at the cubbies for bags and goes back to scrolling his phone.
The floor is all rubber mat and iron, no frills, no branding, just rows of aging equipment and the faint tang of Lysol and sweat.
I like it. It doesn’t ask anything from you except pain.
I scan the room. No familiar faces. No one from the team, no one who’d recognize me from the locker room or the rink or the stories that keep running even after the season’s done.
It’s almost peaceful, this total erasure.
I hit the free weights first, starting light, letting my shoulders warm up until the click and pop of old injuries fades to background noise. The bench press is next.
At the old place, I’d always wait for Ash, he’d spot me, chirp my form, sometimes deadlift the bar off my chest if I bit off more than I could handle.
Today, it’s just me and the bar.
I rack the plates, lie back, and stare at the ceiling, where the tiles are yellowed and one is missing, revealing the pink insulation behind it.
I do the set slow, five reps, then another five, the metal biting into my palms, the bar feeling heavier with each rep. I rack it, sit up, and try to shake out the weird, empty ache in my arms.
I catch myself looking around, expecting to see him stretching in the corner, or reading the cryptic motivational signs posted over the water fountain. But there’s nothing.
Just a couple of powerlifters grunting over by the squat rack, and a woman in pink headphones pounding out leg curls like she’s trying to erase the world one rep at a time.
I move to squats. The bar is cold on my neck. I go heavy, because fuck it, what’s the worst that could happen.
With every rep, my quads scream, but I force the set, telling myself this is what getting better feels like.
When I finish, my vision goes black at the edges for a second, the blood in my head ringing loud enough to drown out the gym’s shitty pop music.
I lean on the rack, breathing hard, and again, there’s that instinct to look for Ash, to see if he’s counting the seconds on my rest, or making the “nice ass” face he used to pull when he thought I wasn’t looking. Nothing.
I try to laugh it off, but the sound comes out cracked.
I go to the cables, run through rows and pulldowns and whatever else will kill another hour.
The only time I talk to anyone is when I nearly drop a forty-pound dumbbell on my foot and a guy in a Seahawks hoodie says, “Careful, man,” with the deep, patient boredom of someone who’s watched a lot of people fuck up their lives in slow motion.
I do a last set of incline bench, pushing it, just to see if I can.
Halfway through, I get stuck, the bar dropping toward my chest with a suddenness that’s almost funny.
There’s that flash of panic, if I drop it, I’ll look like an idiot, if I yell, I’ll sound like a rookie, if I just hold it here maybe I can…
A hand reaches down, grabs the bar, and helps rack it. It’s the Seahawks guy again.
He doesn’t say anything this time, just nods and moves on, but I catch the flicker of “what the fuck” in his eyes.
I wipe down the bench, towel off, and pretend not to care that my hands are shaking.
It’s not the weight, or the effort. It’s the adrenaline dump after a near-miss, the realization that if I’d needed help, no one would have noticed for a solid thirty seconds.
I check my phone, more out of habit than hope. There’s a text from Ash, timestamped twenty minutes ago:
where’ve you been?
I read it three times, staring at the words until the screen goes dim.
The gym is suddenly too bright, too loud, every voice amplified, every sound bouncing off the walls and back into my skull.
I type a response, then delete it.
Type again, “Had to switch up routine. Too crowded at the other place.” But I don’t hit send. Instead, I shove the phone back in my pocket and head for the exit, ignoring the way my pulse tries to claw up my throat.
Outside, the air is cold and sharp. I get in the car, start the engine, and let it idle while I stare out at the donut shop and the dying light of the evening.
I think about the last time we ran together, the way Ash would always finish a workout by buying two glazed and pretending one was for a friend he never actually met.
I think about the text, about how easy it would be to answer, to pretend things could go back to normal, to pretend I’m not actively running away.
But I don’t answer. I just sit, engine running, while the world keeps moving and the gym lights go dark behind me.
I drive home with the radio off, the only sound my own breathing, slow and ragged, and the creak of my hands on the wheel.
At the first red light, I check the phone again. No new messages.
I drop it in the cupholder and watch the seconds tick by.
If this is what freedom tastes like, it’s bitter as hell.
———
Practice is at 7:00, which means I arrive at 6:59, bag already half-zipped, skates laced and ready to go.
The parking lot is a patchwork of dirty slush and fresh tire tracks, and the only people outside the rink are a couple of kids playing keep-away with an empty Gatorade bottle.
Inside, it’s all halogen glare and the chemical stink of disinfectant, the halls echoing with voices that mean nothing to me.
I time it so I’m the last one in the locker room, but not so late that I draw attention.
There’s a rhythm to these things, too early, you get the small talk, the teammates who want to fill the silence with stories about who they fucked last night or which D-list celebrity DM’d them; too late, you get the side-eye, the “thinks he’s better than the rest of us” vibe that never goes away, no matter how many years you play.
I split the difference, slide into my stall, and start gearing up with my head down.
There’s a blur of noise around me, the slap of tape on shin guards, the hiss of someone spraying on deodorant like they’re dousing a fire, the low rumble of Raz and O’Doul arguing about whether a hot dog is a sandwich.
I tune all of it out, moving through my routine in total silence. I don’t make eye contact. I don’t laugh at the jokes, even when they’re good. I just suit up, helmet last, and head for the tunnel.
On the ice, everything changes. Out here, I have a job. Out here, every ounce of emotion is a liability, so I strip it down to the parts that matter: angles, reaction time, the thousand-yard stare that lets me see the puck before it’s even left the stick.
I set up in the crease, slam my pads together, and wait for the first shot.
The guys cycle through the warmup, one-timers from the blue line, tip-ins from the slot, cross-crease passes that test my lateral speed.
I stonewall every one. I'm playing the best hockey of my life, and I know exactly why, the net is the one place where shutting everything out is a skill, not a flaw.
Out here, the thing that's destroying me everywhere else is the thing that makes me untouchable.
The sound of puck on pad is the only music I need.
The team is still winning. Three straight, our best streak of the season. Nobody talks about why.
Coach Vasquez runs the drills with her usual clipped intensity, voice echoing off the glass.
She doesn’t coddle, doesn’t let up, and for that, I’m grateful. She runs us through power play, penalty kill, odd-man rushes. My save percentage climbs with every rep.
Nobody chirps, nobody celebrates, and nobody, least of all me, mentions the wall I’ve built between myself and the rest of the world.
I see Ash across the ice.
He’s skating with the third line today, maybe punishment for something, maybe just the rotation.
He looks smaller in the jersey, like the weight loss is finally catching up to him, but his stride is clean, his stickwork sharp as ever.
He doesn’t look at me, not directly, but every time the play runs my way I can feel the heat of his focus, the question hanging in the air: “Are you okay?” He never asks it out loud, but it’s there, circling the rink with every lap.
Midway through practice, we run a drill that simulates traffic in front of the net.
The idea is to desensitize you to chaos, to let the bodies and the sticks and the trash talk blur into white noise so you can still see the puck through the storm.
O’Doul parks himself in my crease, chirping nonstop, but it doesn’t get to me. What gets to me is Ash, sliding in from the left, taking a shot low-glove, then crashing the net for the rebound.
I catch the shot clean, trap it in my glove, and hold it high. Ash keeps coming, and for a split second, we lock eyes, just long enough for the whole world to compress into that space between us.
Then he tries to pivot, maybe to avoid collision, maybe not, but the blade catches an edge and we tangle.
He falls, hard, skates taking out my legs, and I go down on top of him, the two of us sprawled in the crease.
There’s a split second where it’s just us, helmet to helmet, breath clouding in the cold air.