12. Overtime
OVERTIME
Caleb reached the arena before Connor. That was normal on Thursdays.
Connor came straight from work and usually had only enough time to change before Kowalski yelled at them to get on the ice.
Pete was already taping his stick when Caleb entered the locker room.
Tremblay bent cautiously to one side, winced, and continued stretching.
“You look uncomfortable,” Caleb said, dropping his bag at his stall.
Tremblay gave him a flat look. “That is because I am old.”
“You’re forty-six.”
“Exactly.”
Kowalski came in behind Caleb and pointed at Tremblay without taking off his toque. “If he makes that noise again when he bends over, we’re moving him to wing.”
“I didn’t make any noise,” Tremblay said.
“You sounded like a kicked dog. An old one,” Bryce said from the far bench. Pete looked up from his tape and nodded in agreement. Tremblay muttered in French that Caleb was fairly sure he didn’t want translated. The room kept moving around it, the usual rhythm of chatter and complaints.
Connor arrived a minute later with wet snow on his shoulders. His eyes found Caleb first, then swept the rest of the room. “We good?”
“Tremblay’s back is negotiating an early retirement,” Kowalski said.
“My back is fine.”
“Bro, see a doctor already,” Pete said.
Connor sat and started unlacing his boots. “Who’s moving?”
Kowalski looked at Caleb. “Him. You can skate, you can read the play, and you’re young enough to recover from being wrong. Congratulations. You’re at center until Tremblay stops moving like a haunted coat rack.”
“Really? But—”
“You’ve played nearly every other position since you got here.”
“That doesn’t mean I’ll be any good at it.”
“No,” Kowalski said, pulling his jersey over his base layer. “Your instincts might.”
Caleb paused with one shin pad half strapped, searching Connor’s face for a reaction, but he only tightened his laces and reached for his gloves. The absence stung for a second. Then Connor turned his head as he bent down over his bag.
“You’ll be fine,” Connor said.
“That’s it?”
“You need a pep talk?” Connor asked, a cheeky grin touching the corner of his mouth.
“No.”
“Good. I’m not a very good cheerleader.”
Caleb closed his mouth. Connor was right. He didn’t have to be suddenly fearless, he just had to play through it. He had this. After gearing up, Connor nudged his shoulder as they stepped onto the ice.
Kowalski called out the lines. Connor would face Caleb, with Bryce and Pete on his wings.
Caleb had Tremblay and Luke. Bryce told Tremblay that wing suited old men in denial.
Luke had skated with them three times and still called everyone buddy.
Connor alone was chief. The comfortable language of the ice.
Caleb skated a loose circle before the first draw, trying to settle his shoulders.
From the wing, he could read the lanes. At center, he had to read everything.
Connor set his stick on the ice across from him.
Kowalski dropped the puck. Connor pulled it back before Caleb got any weight behind his stick.
Bryce drove up the wall, and Caleb followed him a step too fast and too far.
When he saw the open ice behind him, Connor was already moving into it.
Bryce sent the puck back across and Connor took the pass in stride.
Luke only just got his stick in front of the shot.
They took a water break without a goal being scored. Caleb reached the bench with his lungs burning and dropped down beside Tremblay. Tremblay passed him the water bottle.
“You are following the puck,” Tremblay said.
“I noticed.”
“No. You noticed after. Notice before.”
Caleb drank and passed the bottle back. On the next shift he lost the draw again, but he didn’t chase the puck to the wall when Bryce carried it out.
He stayed higher, watching the space Connor wanted rather than the place the puck had gone.
Bryce tried a pass through the middle, and Caleb got his stick into the lane, not enough to control it but enough to kill the play.
The puck bounced loose, Tremblay reached it first, and for a few seconds they were going the other way with Connor turning hard to catch them.
Nothing came of it, but when Caleb skated back past the bench Kowalski slapped the boards once, which was high praise, given the source.
After that, center stopped feeling impossible and started feeling busy.
Caleb still made mistakes. He drifted too low once and left Pete open in the slot.
He took a faceoff against Connor and got tied up so badly Bryce asked if they needed a minute to find their feet.
But the pieces sorted themselves. He saw when Luke needed the pass earlier, when Tremblay was cheating toward open ice because his back didn’t want another board battle, when Connor was covering for Bryce before Bryce knew he needed covering.
Halfway through the skate, Connor took the puck low in his own end and started up with Bryce on his right.
Caleb was already turning before Connor crossed the blue line.
There was a pass open to Pete, but Connor’s shoulders didn’t match it.
Caleb held the middle and waited. Connor changed direction, and Caleb moved with him.
The pass came hard and flat across the ice, just behind Bryce’s line.
Caleb reached back for it, caught it awkwardly, and nearly lost it under his own skate.
Then Tremblay yelled from somewhere to his left, and Caleb shoved the puck into space without trying to make it pretty.
Tremblay got there in time to shoot. The puck hit the goalie’s pad and kicked out into the slot. Caleb had kept moving, staying close enough for the rebound. He reached it before Pete, pulled it around the goalie’s stick, and put it in low.
Bryce threw his hands up from the other side of the ice. “I made that happen.”
“You weren’t even involved,” Connor said.
“I drew attention.”
“You were standing still.”
“Yes. Impressively still.”
Caleb skated past Connor on the way back to the bench. Connor tapped the blade of his stick against Caleb’s shin pad once and kept moving. Caleb kept skating, but he felt it.
They kept scrimmaging, mixing up the teams, until the buzzer told them their ice time was up. By the end Tremblay had stopped pretending his back was fine and Kowalski had moved him fully to wing. Caleb stayed at center. Nobody asked if he wanted to switch back.
In the locker room afterward the talk turned to practical things: who owed for ice, whether Pete’s truck would start, whether Bryce’s pass in the second half had been visionary or an accident.
Caleb showered and dressed while the conversation moved around him.
His hands were rough from stick tape and cold, his knuckles red where the gloves had rubbed.
Bryce stopped beside him on the way out, keys in hand. “You were less terrible at center than expected.”
“Thank you?”
“You’re welcome. Take that confidence to Thunder Bay and ruin someone else’s night with it.”
“That sounded almost… kind,” Caleb said.
Bryce grimaced. “Then I said it wrong.”
He left before Caleb could answer. Pete nodded on his way past. Tremblay clapped Caleb on the shoulder and told him he had decent instincts for a kid. Kowalski was last except for Connor.
“You can play center when you come back,” Kowalski said.
Caleb paused with one sock in his hand. “When?”
Kowalski regarded him as if the answer were obvious. “When you come back.”
Then he pushed the door open and left.
The room was nearly empty, the benches wet in places from gear and shower steam. Connor was still at his stall, tying his boots with unnecessary attention.
“He said when,” Caleb said.
“He did,” Connor said.
“Not if.”
“No.”
Caleb pulled on the sock and reached for his boot, holding back a grin. “That’s presumptuous.”
“Very.”
“I might be busy.”
“You probably will be.”
“I might forget how to play center.”
“You barely know now, so that seems manageable.”
Caleb threw his other sock at him. Connor caught it against his chest and laughed, the real one, quick and surprised.
They walked out together. The vending machine hummed in the hallway, and someone scraped a gate closed near the lobby.
In the parking lot, Caleb stopped beside Connor’s truck and looked back at the arena.
It was an old building with bad lighting and a locker room that smelled permanently of wet gear.
He loved it. Connor unlocked the truck. Caleb climbed in, and as Connor got behind the wheel, the windshield fogged at the edges.
The truck took two tries to start. Connor muttered at it, then adjusted the heat and backed out slowly.
They were halfway to the apartment before Connor spoke again.
“You really did look good tonight.”
Caleb watched the dark storefronts pass outside his window. “At center?”
“At center. On the bench. In the room.” Connor kept his eyes on the road. “All of it.”
Caleb turned that over. “I still felt like I was guessing half the time.”
“You were.”
“Great.”
Connor glanced over, mouth curving. “We all are, dumbass. The trick is to keep doing it until the guesses merge with instinct.”
Caleb laughed, his attention dropping to his hands. Connor reached across the console, palm up. Caleb took it.
They drove the rest of the way without needing to fill the silence. When Connor pulled up behind the Sin Bin, he left the engine running and looked toward the back stairs.
“You’ll come back for a skate soon,” he said.
“Yeah,” Caleb said. “I will.”
Connor nodded once. “Good. Clothing optional?”
Caleb laughed, squeezing his hand before letting go. Then he got out, shouldered his bag, and climbed the stairs toward the apartment with his legs tired and the rink still moving in his head.
The locker room was louder than usual before the Prospectors’ final scheduled game. Kowalski shouted across the benches, and the others kept up a steady exchange of insults and complaints. Everyone knew the winter schedule ended tonight. No one mentioned what came after.