13. Off Season #2
They stopped at a diner before leaving the city. Caleb ate most of a burger while Connor stole fries from his plate and kept his knee against Caleb’s beneath the table. They did not discuss the skate.
Once they were back on the highway, with Thunder Bay receding behind them, Connor said, “What did you see?”
“You’re asking me?”
“Frank gave you his notes. I want yours.”
Caleb considered it. “I’m slower than those other guys. I don’t know the systems yet. And I tend to chase when I should hold my position.”
“Why?”
“Standing still feels too much like being wrong.”
“Sometimes holding the middle is the job.”
“I know that now.” Caleb shifted in the passenger seat. “I made that pass in the third drill.”
“You did.”
“Was it… was it good?”
“It nearly made me spill my coffee.”
Caleb turned toward him. “That good?”
“It was very good.”
The highway narrowed ahead of them, bordered by rock and spruce.
“I still want it,” Caleb said. “More than I did before.”
Connor reached across the console and rested his hand on Caleb’s knee. “Then we know what we’re doing this summer.”
“We?”
“You think I’m handing you six pages and leaving you to figure it out alone?”
“No.”
“Good.” Connor squeezed his knee. “And Caleb?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m proud of you, babe.”
The word hit Caleb somewhere in his gut, warm and thrilling. “So, we’re talking like boyfriends now?”
“Don’t get used to it.”
“Too late.”
By June, the snowbanks were gone. Gravel shoulders widened the roads, and the green started filling the ditches.
The lake had turned a deep blue, darkening whenever clouds crossed overhead, alive with the movement of the wind on the water.
At the cabin, Connor kept the windows open and swore at every mosquito that found its way through the screens.
Caleb trained four days a week and worked regular shifts at the Sin Bin.
Maya paid him every Friday now and no longer described the arrangement as temporary.
He ran the lake road before the heat settled in and followed the recovery days Connor had written into the plan.
In the evenings, he watched game footage at the cabin, usually with his feet stretched across Connor’s lap.
By July, Caleb could read the play before Connor reached for the remote.
They argued twice about the training plan.
The first argument came after Connor added a session on a morning following one of Caleb’s closing shifts.
“Just because I can finish it doesn’t mean it’s helping,” Caleb said. Connor read through the week again, took out his pen, and crossed out the session.
“Fair,” he said.
The second argument began when Jessie asked Caleb about his sprint times that morning.
“Um… I moved that session,” Caleb said.
“To when?” Connor asked.
Caleb had no answer.
They argued during the drive back to the cabin and continued in the kitchen while Connor made dinner. Over dinner, they made two changes to the arrangement: Caleb would tell Connor when he needed a day off, and Connor would ask before treating a missed session as evidence that Caleb was giving up.
Riley’s Saturday route expanded after a Thunder Bay supplier lost a driver. The extra work brought longer days and better money, along with a manager who changed delivery windows after Riley had already loaded the truck.
During one of Caleb’s Thursday shifts, Riley sat at the end of the bar and told Maya about the latest change. Before Riley had finished, Maya had taken out a pen and written down three possible solutions.
“You’re allowed to listen to my complaining without reorganizing the entire distribution network,” Riley said.
“I am listening.”
“You made a flow chart.”
Maya laughed and set down the pen.
By July, Caleb had found a room near the Thunder Bay rink. The lease was month-to-month, and he would share the house with two other players. The landlord promised reasonable Wi-Fi and kept ceramic owls on nearly every shelf in the front room.
Frank reminded Caleb that finding housing didn’t guarantee him a roster spot.
Caleb signed the lease anyway.
Connor’s message came on a Wednesday afternoon while Caleb was locking the youth center equipment cage.
mom’s having a bad day. jessie’s with her. going over after work. i’ll call tomorrow.
Caleb read the message twice.
His hand stopped on the open padlock. He was back at Maya’s kitchen table in February, watching his message remain unread and wondering what he had done wrong.
On the second reading, he reached the final fragment again: i’ll call tomorrow.
His mother would have objected to four fragments standing in for a sentence. Caleb cared more that Connor had told him why their plans had changed and when he would be in touch.
He typed: Okay. Thank you for telling me. Let me know if Jessie needs anything.
Then he put the phone in his pocket and finished locking the cage.
The evening program started at six. A group of teenagers had turned the foosball table into a formal tournament and knew Caleb understood how brackets worked.
He spent twenty minutes settling an argument about seeding.
At seven, he checked his phone once. Nothing new.
He put it away and returned to a dispute over the semifinal.
Connor called the next afternoon.
Ann had missed work and started drinking before noon. Jessie found her and called Connor. He reached the bungalow to find Ann asleep. He stayed there overnight and drove Jessie to practice in the morning.
“She’s up now,” Connor said. Caleb could hear a cupboard close in the background. “Embarrassed. Angry. Mostly at herself.”
“And you?”
“Tired.”
Caleb wanted more than one-word answers, but Connor had called when he said he would. It wasn’t that long ago that he wouldn’t have called at all. This wasn’t about him.
“Do you need anything?” Caleb asked.
“No. Maybe. I don’t know yet.”
“That’s allowed. Let me know when you know.”
“Sure. How was the center?” Connor asked.
Caleb told him about the foosball. Connor listened. The conversation lasted six minutes, falling into the comfortable pattern of an intimacy that could handle small talk. When they hung up, Caleb stood in his small room above the bar and looked at the phone.
He was still uncertain, but not afraid anymore.
The Prospectors held a summer skate on the last Thursday in August because Kowalski had declared Caleb incapable of leaving town until the team confirmed that Frank had not ruined him.
The arena smelled different in summer. Without winter coats in the lobby and snow melting beneath the benches, the old rubber and concrete came through more clearly.
Half the team arrived in shorts. Tremblay complained that hockey in August violated the natural order while lacing his skates with obvious satisfaction.
Caleb played center again.
He lost the first draw to Connor, won the second by getting lower through his hips, and on the third tied Connor up long enough for Pete to collect the puck. Connor’s eyebrows lifted before he turned into the play.
The scrimmage was loose but fast. Caleb’s conditioning held. He made fewer desperate corrections. When he made a mistake, he could usually identify it before Tremblay explained it from the bench, though Tremblay explained it anyway.
They played until Kowalski called the final goal regardless of the score. In the locker room Pete produced beer and soft drinks from a cooler. Nobody asked how long he had been planning it. It was what he did.
Kowalski stood with a bottle in his hand and waited until the room noticed him.
“This kid,” he said, “showed up outta nowhere, dropped his shoulder on his outside edge, and iced the puck three times in his first practice.”
“Twice,” Caleb said.
“Nobody asked you. He has been a liability, an occasional asset, and an unexpected pleasure.” Kowalski looked directly at him. “Go find out how good you are. Then come back and make fools of us on the ice.”
The room made approving noises. Tremblay clapped Caleb on the shoulder and told him not to let the big city go to his head. Pete handed him two fresh rolls of tape. Bryce raised his bottle from the far bench, still wary and keeping his distance.
Connor waited until the room thinned. He was sitting at his stall unlacing his skates, head down, curls still wet at the edges.
“You won the second draw,” he said.
“I won the third.”
“Pete won the third.”
“Because I tied you up.”
“You’re going to be annoying about this,” Connor said.
“For the whole drive.”
Connor laughed and threw Caleb’s towel at him.
Maya helped Caleb pack, though most of her help involved removing things from boxes.
“You don’t need six hoodies.”
“It’s Thunder Bay.”
“It’s ninety minutes away, not the Arctic Circle.” She returned two of them to the bed. “And that lamp is mine.”
“You said I could have it.”
“I said you could use it. In this room.”
They worked around the narrow room until boxes covered most of the floor. Caleb had less than he expected. Hockey gear. Clothes. A few books. The Bible from the top drawer of the dresser.
Maya noticed it in his hand. “Do you want to take that?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Then take it until you do. Thunder Bay has drawers.”
Caleb packed it beneath a sweater.
Maya had also found a framed photograph in one of the storage boxes. It showed the two of them beside a Christmas tree, both much younger. Caleb held a wrapped present against his chest. Maya stood beside him with her arms folded, already suspicious of whoever was taking the picture.
She wiped the dust from one corner of the frame.
“You should take this too.”
“Are you sure?”
“I remember that Christmas. It was a good one.”
Caleb wrapped the frame in a shirt and placed it near the top of the box.
His room in Thunder Bay was paid through September.
Frank had sent the camp schedule, the medical forms, and another reminder that an invitation to camp was not a place on the roster.
Caleb had arranged two shifts a week at a sporting-goods store near the arena.
If the answer was no, he wouldn’t have to come back to Veil Lake with empty pockets.