Chapter 20
FEbrUARY
The weight room was supposed to be empty.
After practice, most of the guys cleared out fast, headed home to wives or girlfriends or whatever filled the hours between ice times.
I always waited because it was easier to do my hip work when no one was around to watch me load the bar with plates that would've been a warm-up for anyone else on the roster.
But Jean-Luc Bouchard was still here.
He was on the bench press, working through reps at a weight I'd never touch. Six-two, two-oh-five, with a frame that made the bench look undersized. When he racked the bar and sat up, his eyes moved over me once and then away, already done with whatever calculation he'd made.
We'd been on the same team for a year, and I still couldn't read him.
JL was the team glue, the guy who'd held the blue line together through three coaching changes and two rebuilds.
Twelve years in the league. No trophies, no headlines, and the same twenty-five minutes of ice time every night while the sports blogs wrote love letters to flashy centers who showed up out of nowhere.
Flashy centers like me.
"Piper." He went back to adjusting his grip on the bar.
"Hey."
I grabbed a foam roller and found a corner, putting as much distance between us as the room allowed. My hip flexor was screaming from the extra power play work. I dug the roller in and tried not to make any sounds that would carry.
JL started his next set. The weights clanked in a steady rhythm. I worked the knot in my hip and kept my eyes on the wall.
Joel was in Colorado. One time zone away and it might as well have been the moon.
He'd texted yesterday morning: Training went well.
Thinking about you. I'd read it four times before typing back something careful, something that wouldn't look desperate if anyone ever scrolled through my phone.
Then nothing for the rest of the day. My phone sat in my bag across the room, and I kept not looking at it.
"Your hip's getting worse."
I looked up. JL had finished his set and was watching me, towel around his neck. His mouth was flat, his eyes giving nothing away.
"It's fine."
"You've been compensating all week. Favoring your left on the breakouts."
"I said it's fine."
He shrugged and loaded more weight onto the bar. "Your career."
The dismissal landed harder than it had any right to. I dug the roller into the muscle and watched him settle back onto the bench, watched his hands wrap around the bar with the ease of someone who'd been doing this since before I could skate.
This was how it always was with JL. Polite enough in the locker room, solid enough on the ice, but there was a wall underneath that he kept maintained.
I'd watched him laugh with the veterans, clap the younger guys on the shoulder, sit with the coaches and talk strategy for hours.
With me, he was careful. Professional. His sentences clipped short, his attention always sliding somewhere else.
Maybe he didn't like rookies who got too much attention. Maybe he'd been doing this too long to care about another kid who'd probably wash out in three years. Maybe I reminded him of something he didn't want to think about.
Or maybe I was reading into it because I was tired and my hip hurt and I couldn't stop wondering when my phone would light up again.
"You watch All-Star Weekend?"
His voice surprised me. I looked over and found him sitting up again, drinking from a water bottle, sweat darkening his brown hair at the temples.
"Some of it."
"Catch the skills competition?"
"Yeah." I wasn't sure where this was going. "Your hardest shot was clean."
He shrugged with one hand, already looking away. "Doesn't matter. The save streak was the real show, anyway. Did you see ?těpán Sabatyn?"
"Goalies always get the highlights," I said. "Defense doesn't sell tickets."
JL laughed. It was short and dry, and it was the most human sound I'd ever heard him make.
"Tell me about it."
He moved to the cable machine and started adjusting the weight. I stayed on the floor with my foam roller, but the knot had loosened and I was running out of reasons to be here.
"Toronto was a lot," he said. His back was to me, his hands steady on the cable grip. "All those people. The cameras everywhere. Everyone wanting something."
"Yeah."
"And then you come home and it's..." He didn't finish. The cable clicked through its rotation in a steady rhythm.
I knew what he meant. The apartment that was too quiet, the phone that might or might not light up, the hours stretching out until you heard from whoever you were waiting for.
Except JL was married. His wife, Katelynn, showed up to every home game and posted Instagram stories with heart emojis.
"Katelynn didn't go with you to Toronto?"
His hands paused on the cable for half a second. The movement resumed, but something in the line of his back had changed.
"She had work." He kept his rhythm, not turning around. "Couldn't get the time off."
"That sucks."
"Yeah."
The word closed a door. I recognized that too.
"Long distance is hard," I said, not sure why I was still talking. "Even when it's not that far."
His grip on the cable handle went white at the knuckles for a beat, maybe less.
"Yeah." He started moving again. "It is."
Neither of us said anything else for a while. I switched to my other hip and worked the roller into the muscle, watching him from the corner of my eye. His jaw was set. His reps had gotten slower, the automatic quality gone.
"You do anything for the Foundation while you were up there?"
The question came out before I'd fully decided to ask it.
Everyone knew about the Blue Line Foundation.
The provided mental health resources for athletes, crisis lines, the kind of work that got mentioned in press releases and was promptly forgotten by anyone who didn't need it.
JL's name was on the board of directors. I'd never thought much about why.
His whole body went still for a moment before he forced it back into motion.
"Some meetings. Fundraiser stuff." He finished his set and turned around, reaching for his water bottle. Whatever had been open in his face a moment ago was gone. "Stu's wife runs most of it now. I just show up when they need a name."
He meant Stu Sobylk, one of the greatest players of all time. Right up there with Grezky. The guy’d had everything. Best stats in the league, a loving wife, all the fame and fortune that came with a successful career.
And none of it had been enough to keep him from killing himself.
"I didn't know him," I said. "Before my time."
"He was good." JL's voice had gone flat. "Had me in Juniors. Taught me everything about reading the ice, anticipating the play before it happened." He took a long drink from the bottle. "I was angry back then. Didn't know what to do with any of it. Stu figured me out."
"I'm sorry," I said. "That he's gone."
JL looked at me for a long moment. His brown eyes were steady, unreadable, but something in the set of his mouth had shifted.
"Yeah," he said. "Me too."
He turned back to the cable machine, and I went back to my foam roller, and we existed in the silence together. Two men who didn't particularly like each other, sharing space because neither of us wanted to go home.
My phone buzzed in my bag.
The sound cut through the quiet, and I was on my feet before I could stop myself, crossing the room in three strides, digging through the side pocket with hands that weren't quite steady.
Joel's name was on the screen, and my chest loosened.
Landed the quad loop three times today. Coach finally stopped yelling.
I typed back without thinking: Show off.
The three dots appeared immediately. He was there, on the other end, waiting for me the same way I'd been waiting for him.
You like it.
I did. I hated how much I did.
When I looked up, JL was watching me. His expression was hard to read, but the way he'd gone still was familiar. It was the way I went still when someone caught me in a moment I hadn't meant to share.
"Sorry," I said. "I should go."
"Yeah." He was already turning back to the cable machine. "I'm gonna finish up here."
I grabbed my bag and headed for the door. At the threshold, I stopped.
"Hey, Bouchard."
He looked over his shoulder.
"For what it's worth," I said. "I hope it gets easier. The long distance thing."
For a second I thought he was going to say something, ask what I meant, call me out for whatever I was implying. But he just nodded once and looked away.
"Yeah," he said. "You too."
I walked out before either of us could make it weird.
The rest of February passed in a blur of road games and ice time and texts that came more often than they used to.
Joel sent me clips of his practice sessions, the camera angled to catch the height of his jumps.
I sent him photos of terrible hotel room views, and he responded with commentary about the curtains, or the suspicious stains on the carpet, or whatever else caught his eye.
We were building something without naming it, and I was too tired and too hopeful to examine it closely.
March came and went. Both teams started to fade.
Vegas dropped seven of our last ten, the blue line decimated by injuries that left JL carrying a load no single defenseman could handle.
He played thirty-two minutes in a loss to Edmonton, and I watched him afterward in the locker room, bent over his knees, breathing like he'd been underwater.
Nobody said anything. There was nothing to say.
By April, the pressure had lifted. No playoffs meant rest, recovery, time to let the bruises heal. It meant summer stretching out ahead of me with nothing to do but train and visit my father and wait for Joel's schedule to open up.
It meant, for the first time in months, room to breathe.
Andy called on a Tuesday afternoon while I was icing my hip.
"Lynx wants you," he said. "The athletic wear brand. Their 'Elite Doesn't Have a Look' campaign."
I sat up so fast the ice pack slid off my leg and hit the floor. "What?"
"They saw the playoff run. Liked how you 'defied expectations.'" I could hear the air quotes in his voice. "It's a multi-athlete shoot in LA. August. Real money, Red. Like, endorsement money."
I made him repeat the numbers twice. Then I hung up and stared at my phone for a full minute before opening my messages.
Red: got a call from my agent
Joel: good or bad
Red: lynx wants me for a campaign
Joel: the elite doesnt have a look thing
Red: you know it
Joel: i know them
Of course he did. Joel had sponsors I couldn't pronounce, contracts with companies that had never looked twice at undersized centers from New Mexico. He moved through that world like he'd been born to it, and I was still trying to figure out which fork to use at team dinners.
Red: this is real money joel. endorsement money.
Joel: you deserve it
Red: i dont know what im doing. ive never done anything like this.
Joel: you show up. you stand where they tell you. you dont smile too much because it reads fake on camera.
Red: thats it?
Joel: thats most of it. the rest is waiting around while they adjust lighting for three hours.
I was typing a response when Andy's email came through. I opened the attachment and scrolled through the details. Shoot dates, location, wardrobe requirements. And then the list of athletes.
My thumb stopped moving.
Red: joel
Joel: yeah
Red: youre in this campaign
Joel: am i
Red: dont play dumb. youre on the athlete list.
Joel: i have a contract with them. didnt know who else theyd pick.
Red: and you didnt think to mention it
Joel: it didnt come up
I could picture his face. That careful blankness he wore when he was hiding something in plain sight.
Red: were going to be on set together
Joel: yes
Red: in the same room. with cameras. with other people watching.
Joel: red. breathe.
Red: im breathing
Joel: youll be fine. its just standing around looking athletic. you do that every night.
Red: thats different. thats hockey.
Joel: its the same muscles. different context.
Red: easy for you to say. youve done this before.
Joel: once or twice
Red: show off
Joel: always
I put the phone down and picked it up again. The ice pack was still on the floor, condensation pooling on the hardwood. I should pick it up. I should put it back in the freezer and stretch my hip and do any of the things that made up a normal afternoon.
Instead, I kept staring at the screen, waiting for him to say something else.
Joel: youll be great
Red: you dont know that
Joel: i do
Red: how
Joel: I believe in you Red
I read that last message three times. Then I put the phone face-down on the table.