Chapter 3 #2
"Maybe." Lou stood, legs wobbling momentarily before they found their footing. "Or maybe Mara hasn't really started yet. Today was orientation. Tomorrow's when it gets real."
Frankie groaned. "You're a joy, you know that? A real bright spot in my day."
"Just being realistic." Lou opened her locker, pulling out the towel she'd hung there that morning—a lifetime ago, it felt like now. "Astoria didn't hire Mara Ellison to make us comfortable. She hired her to make us qualify. If that means practices that feel like war crimes, that's what we get."
"You sound almost okay with it." Elise was watching her with that steady, perceptive gaze that always made Lou feel slightly transparent.
"I'm not okay with anything yet." Lou met her friend's eyes.
"But I've been grinding for nine years at this level, working maintenance shifts to afford the privilege of playing semi-pro hockey.
If someone wants to give me a chance to actually make something of it, a real shot at the PWHL, I'm not going to quit because the training's hard. "
"Even if the training's designed by a sadist?"
Lou's mouth twitched. "Even then."
The shower was too short and too cold. The ancient water heater in this building had never been reliable, and now with the whole team showering at once, the hot water was long gone.
Lou stood under the lukewarm spray, letting it rinse the sweat from her skin while the muscles in her back and shoulders screamed in protest. Tomorrow would be worse.
Tomorrow her body would remember everything Mara had put it through, and it would make her pay for the privilege.
Astoria's words from two days ago echoed through her exhaustion.
Essential. Foundational. Words that had seemed almost like compliments at the time, but now felt more like chains.
Essential meant indispensable. Foundational meant weight-bearing.
Lou was the structure this whole insane experiment rested on, and if she cracked, if she failed, if she couldn't keep up with Mara's demands, the whole thing came down.
She turned off the water and stood in the steam for a moment, just breathing.
The tile was cold against her feet, the air thick with humidity and the lingering smell of industrial soap.
From somewhere in the locker room, she could hear Frankie telling some story, the rhythms of her voice familiar even when the words were too muffled to make out.
Normal sounds. Ordinary sounds. The sounds of a team recovering from practice, the way teams had recovered from practice for as long as Lou could remember.
Except nothing about this was ordinary anymore.
By the time she made it back to her locker, most of the team had cleared out—home to sleep, probably, or to collapse in front of televisions and pretend tomorrow wasn't coming.
Lou dressed slowly, pulling on worn jeans and a flannel shirt that had seen better decades.
Her hands moved on autopilot, muscle memory handling the basics while her brain processed the morning's revelations.
This wasn't symbolic change. Astoria hadn't bought Phoenix Ridge to make incremental improvements or generate good press.
She'd bought it to transform it, and Mara Ellison was the instrument of that transformation.
Everything Lou had known about playing for this team, the comfortable rhythms, the familiar faces, the understanding that they were doing their best with limited resources, all of it was gone now.
Replaced by something harder, sharper, more demanding.
Something that might actually work.
That was the thing Lou kept coming back to, the thought that refused to leave despite every complaint her body was screaming.
For nine years, she'd watched Phoenix Ridge struggle.
Watched talented players leave for better opportunities.
Watched coaching changes and ownership shuffles and the slow, grinding reality of being almost-but-not-quite good enough to break through.
And through all of it, some part of her had accepted that this was just how it was going to be.
That dreams of the PWHL were exactly that: dreams, not destinations.
But Mara Ellison didn't deal in dreams. Mara Ellison dealt in results, in championships, in pushing players past what they thought possible until they became something new.
Lou picked up her gear bag and slung it over her shoulder, feeling the weight of it settle against muscles already protesting the movement.
Tomorrow would hurt. The day after would hurt worse.
But she'd survived Marquette in '19, and she'd survived the ownership change in '21, and she'd survived a hundred other things that were supposed to break her.
She could survive this too. And maybe, just maybe, surviving it would finally mean something more than just endurance.
She walked out of the locker room into the grey February morning, breath fogging in the cold February air, and let herself feel the first fragile stirring of hope.
Not yet, she reminded herself. Not ready to believe in it yet.
But the feeling stayed anyway, stubborn and small and refusing to be crushed.