Chapter 14 #2
"You know he's adopting you, right?" Murphy dropped onto the bench beside me after practice one day. "Like a stray cat. He does this sometimes."
"I'm not a stray."
"Sure you're not." Murphy grinned. "That's why you show up an hour early every morning and skate until you can barely stand."
Across the room, Vega was packing his bag. He glanced up, caught my eye, and gave me a nod so small it was barely there.
"He's never gotten anyone coffee before," Murphy said, quieter now. "Doesn't even drink the stuff himself."
I thought about the coffee and the footwork correction and the way he'd looked at Briggs in the locker room that first day, his jaw going tight for just a second.
"I'm not doing anything," I said.
"Yeah." Murphy stood and slung his bag over his shoulder. "That's probably why."
My first game was against Colorado.
Eighteen thousand people filled the stands, and the noise hit me like a physical thing when I stepped onto the ice for warmups. This was a wall of sound that vibrated in my chest and made it hard to hear myself think.
Vega passed me on the third lap and tapped my shin with his stick. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to.
The game started fast and stayed fast. By the end of the first period I'd been on the ice for six minutes, and every shift felt like trying to drink from a fire hose.
But I was keeping up.
Midway through the second period, I saw it. Their defenseman, number 27, had a habit. Every time he recovered the puck behind his own net, he took an extra half-second to look left before passing right. The kind of tell you'd never catch if you weren't actively looking for it.
I cheated toward the passing lane before he'd even started his motion. The puck came off his stick, and I was already there, intercepting it clean, turning toward the net with nothing but open ice ahead of me.
The goalie came out to challenge. I waited until he committed, until his weight shifted to his left side, and then I slid the puck through his five-hole and watched it cross the line.
The horn sounded. The crowd erupted.
Then Vega slammed into me hard enough to knock me sideways, his glove on the back of my helmet, and Murphy was right behind him screaming something unintelligible, and then the rest of the line was piling on.
Dad would have loved this. I wondered if Derek was watching. I wondered if he'd tell Dad about it tomorrow, and if Dad would understand what it meant, and if he'd remember by the time I called.
We won 3-2. I finished with a goal and an assist.
In the locker room after, Coach Barrow stopped by my stall.
"Not bad, Piper." He didn't smile. "Do it again Thursday."
Someone plugged a speaker into an outlet across the room. Music filled the space, some pop song with a driving beat.
And then I heard the voice.
I knew it before my brain caught up. Milo's voice poured out of the speakers, smooth and polished, singing about wanting someone you couldn't have.
My hands kept moving. I pulled my jersey off, then my pads. The motions were automatic, and that was good because the rest of me had frozen somewhere between my chest and my throat.
Joel was with the man whose voice was filling this room right now, whose face was on magazine covers and billboards, who got to stand next to Joel at charity events and touch him like it was nothing.
Joel had moved to Colorado Springs and found someone who could be public about it, someone who didn't have to hide.
I didn't look at the speaker. I kept undressing while Henderson nodded along to the beat, and nobody noticed that my jaw had locked or that my fingers had gone clumsy on my laces.
The song was still playing when I finished changing. I grabbed my bag and headed for the door before it could end.
Vega caught my eye on the way out. He was sitting at his stall with a towel around his shoulders, watching me go with that flat, unreadable expression.
That night I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling.
I'd called Derek after the game. Dad had been asleep already. Good day, Derek said.
He had asked about me, as if he remembered he had a son somewhere. I held onto that for a while, turning it over in my mind like a stone I'd found on the beach.
I picked up my phone and put it down. Then picked it up again.
Milo's tour schedule was easy to find. I scrolled through the dates without really seeing, telling myself I was just curious, just killing time, just doing something with my hands so I didn't have to think about the laugh I'd faked in the locker room or the song I'd fled from.
One of the stops was Salt Lake City on March 2nd.
If Milo was playing here, Joel would be here. In my city. In the same arena where I'd just scored my first NHL goal.
I could ignore it. I could stay home that night and let Joel pass through without ever knowing how close we'd been. I could keep my head down and play hockey and call Derek every night and be exactly the person everyone expected me to be.
My thumb moved before I could stop it.
I bought two tickets in the front row.
I put the phone down and stared at the ceiling some more. The room was quiet in a way that still didn't feel right. No TV playing through the walls, no rough breathing from the next room, no game shows on low volume because the sound helped him sleep.
I didn't know what I was going to do with that second ticket. I didn't know what I was going to do about any of it.
I closed my eyes and tried not to think about Joel standing in the audience while Milo sang, tried not to think about what his face would look like in the light from the stage.
I lay there until my alarm went off, and then I got up and went to practice and did it all over again.