31. Briggs
brIGGS
Igave my father five days of company. We went out to visit the cemetery on Monday, and he slowly made it across the grass on the cane, waving me off twice when I got too close.
We stopped to see Mom first and then moved the ten feet over to Zig’s plot. My dad talked to both of them out loud for over an hour. After that, he ate an entire short stack at a Denny’s while I picked at a plate of eggs.
He spent most of our time together giving me endless grief for blowing things with her, insisting she take a paid week off so I’d be forced to step up and handle his care myself.
I didn’t bother trying to defend myself. Instead, I spent those next few days trapped in a quiet, suffocating agony, wondering how Evie was passing the time and praying she hadn’t completely written me off.
On Tuesday, I sent her a bouquet of flowers, but they went entirely unacknowledged. By Wednesday night, I was on a flight back to Charlotte, bringing the long distance between us right back into play.
Now Thursday morning, I badge into the practice facility bright and early. Awake since 4:00 a.m., I figured being the very first body through the door was far better than making an entrance to a room full of guys and watching the chatter instantly die.
Kyo, however, is already in his stall, lacing up his skates—still convinced that showing up ninety minutes early proves something to a building that couldn’t care less. When he glances up, he offers me a subtle wince.
“Morning,” I say just to put him out of his misery.
“Morning, Maxie.” He immediately fumbles with a roll of tape he doesn’t actually need. “Glad you’re back.”
There’s a sheet of printer paper taped to the wood of my stall. Someone has sketched a crude stick figure flying headfirst into a wall. Underneath, in a completely different set of chicken scratch, it says WELCOME BACK ASSHOLE.
I laugh, a sudden sound that surprises me even more than it does Kyo.
I should’ve assumed this was how it would go. There’s no world where anyone here is going to have a serious discussion about the last couple of weeks, but there’s also no world where they’ll let it pass without a proper lashing.
I pull the paper down and tuck it into my bag.
The room slowly fills as the hour bleeds away. Duval comes in with his headphones slung around his neck and stops directly in front of me, hands planted on his hips.
“You are back.”
“I’m back.”
“Good.” He gives a sharp nod. “That was a shit hit.”
“Yeah.”
“I say it once, and then it is finished.” He points a gloved finger at my chest. “You made me look like a disaster. Five-one is not my score.”
“I’ll get you a shutout,” I promise.
“You are a winger; you cannot get me a shutout.” He pulls the headphones back up and walks off, and that’s Duval’s version of closure.
Hartwell finds me over at the skate rack. In New York, he’d put a hand on my shoulder and kept it moving. This morning, he stops and asks, “You good?”
“I’m here.”
“Not what I asked.”
I stand there holding a skate and think about a woman on a desert landing telling me she only gets me in fragments. In pieces from strangers.
“No,” I tell him. “But I’m working on it.”
Sam offers a single nod and lets the subject drop. But Augie, goddamn him, won’t come within ten feet of me for the rest of the morning.
In three seasons, I don’t think he’s ever once managed to pass my stall without delivering some absurd commentary. Today, he tapes his sticks four stalls down, his gaze fixed on the floor, behaving as if I’ve become invisible.
On the ice, the performance continues. He takes every rep with Fozzy and hugs the far boards during the transition drills. When Bellan calls for a bag skate, Augie stays two lines ahead of me the entire time, his back turned like a wall.
Once we’re finished, I catch him in the corridor outside the video room, away from the rest of the noise.
“Aug.”
He doesn’t even break stride.
“Augie.”
He stops, his spine going rigid. When he pivots to face me, he’s angrier than I’ve ever seen him. It’s a bizarre transformation for a man with a twice-broken nose and a permanent smirk. He’s the least serious human I know, but right now, he looks genuinely dangerous.
“Don’t,” he says.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t do the thing where you offer one sentence and act like we’re square.” He slams his water bottle onto a passing laundry cart to free his hands. “I’ve spent months asking if you’re okay. You tell me you’re good, and then you take your rage out on a kid who barely survived high school—”
“He’s twenty-two, Augie.”
“I don’t give a damn about his age,” he snaps, his voice scaling up. “You tell me you’re good. Every single time. And I believed you because I thought you’d find your way back eventually.”
“I know.”
“You know.” He lets out a sharp, humorless bark. “You let me sit next to you for four months just handing you beers. You can talk to me before things get physical. I’m supposed to be your friend. You have, what, two of those? It’s a short list, and I’m on it, and you didn’t use me once.”
The hallway goes dead quiet. In the room behind him, a sudden eruption of laughter sounds, bright and oblivious.
“My brother was fucking my fiancée,” I say.
Augie’s mouth snaps shut, his expression going blank.
“Two and a half years ago. I know you read the headlines, and for once, they’re true.” My voice feels thin and strange, but I don’t stop the momentum. “I found the evidence on his phone, and I cut him out, and then he died.”
“Briggs.”
“He got clean that same week. I found that out Saturday.” I stare at the wall over his shoulder. “He was an alcoholic, and I didn’t know. That’s how he and Ophelia found each other—because I wasn’t there for either of them.”
Augie doesn’t move for a long moment. Then he steps into my space and pulls me into a hug right there in the open hallway.
“Okay,” he mutters against my shoulder. “Okay.”
“I should have told you.”
“Yeah, you definitely should have.” He thumps me on the back and pulls away. “You’re a dipshit. I would have driven you to Vegas myself.”
“It’s a thirty-four-hour drive, Aug.”
“Yeah, well, I would’ve found another way, then.” He retrieves his water bottle from the bench. “Have you discussed any of this with Izzy?”
My brow lifts. “Izzy?”
He pivots and starts walking, jerking his chin for me to keep pace. “Isabelle. Our therapist.”
“Oh, er, I’m overdue for a check-in.”
“Christ, bud. Do I have to make the appointment for you?”
He does not, in fact, make the appointment for me, but he stands at my stall with his arms crossed until I’ve booked one myself for Monday.
Then he makes me sit through forty minutes of lunch and tell him the rest of it, all of it, every piece I’ve been sitting on since Halloween.
He doesn’t say much. He just eats his sandwich and lets me get it out.
I’m summoned to Bellan’s office at eleven o’clock sharp.
The room is a study in organizational focus—a whiteboard covered in rotations and a single framed photo of his daughters on the desk, positioned for the public. “Sit,” he commands, his gaze anchored to a stack of paperwork. “You’re in the lineup tomorrow.”
“Yeah.”
“Fourth line.” He looks up now, his expression unreadable. “You’ll log eight minutes of ice time, and you won’t get a sniff of the power play.”
A few weeks ago, I’d have deployed an argument before he’d even finished the sentence. Today, I’ve got nothing to defend.
“Okay,” I say instead.
Bellan drops his pen, the plastic clattering against the wood. “That’s all?”
“That’s it.”
“Huh.” He leans back, the leather creaking under his weight. “I had a four-minute lecture prepared.”
“You can still deliver it if you want.”
“No, I think I’ll pass.” He studies me for a long moment. “You’ll have to earn the climb back up, Briggs. I’m not being cute. I have a room full of men who watched you make that hit, and they need to see you buy your spot back. Do the work in front of them.”
“Understood.”
“Cardone wants an audience at one.”
I stall halfway out of the chair. “The GM wants me?”
“That’s what I said.” He’s already retreating back into his papers. “Close the door on your way out.”
I text her from the players’ lot at twelve forty, sitting in the rental with the engine idling.
Briggs
back at the rink. the guys are giving me a hell of a time
hope the day is treating you better than the coaching staff is treating me
I watch the screen for several minutes, waiting for the dots that never arrive. When it stays dark, I shove the phone into my pocket and head back inside.
Gio Cardone has occupied the GM chair for nine years, and our interaction history consists of maybe six conversations, all of them conducted in transit. His office sits on the third floor, dominated by a window that offers a clinical view of the practice rink below.
“Briggs.” He offers a firm hand and gestures toward a guest chair. “How’s Murphy?”
“He’s alright. Thanks for asking.”
“I lost mine four years ago.” He sinks into his seat. “It never quite gets to be okay, I suppose. It just gets further away.”
We trade another minute of empty dialogue—weather, travel schedules, the state of the locker room coffee. Then he clears his throat, and the pleasantries end.
“So, I have a question,” he says. “I’d like the honest version, because I’ve been hearing your agent’s script since the fall.”
“Ask it.”
“Do you want to be here?”
I don’t have a workshopped response ready, mostly because I’d braced myself for something more corporate. The bluntness catches me off balance.
“Because from where I’m sitting,” Cardone continues, “your camp has been exploring your options for months. Then I open my phone last week to a story about a Las Vegas homecoming. It’s a hell of a coincidence, Briggs.”
“I didn’t know about the Vegas story until it broke.”
“You didn’t know your agent was shopping your services?”
“I knew he was doing his job. I didn’t know about Vegas until Saturday.” I plant my hands flat on my knees. “I fired him Saturday afternoon.”
Cardone’s eyebrows climb a half inch. On him, that’s a standing ovation.
“You fired Ted Vasquez.”
“I did.”
“In February. Of a contract year.”
“In a Del Taco parking lot,” I say. “It wasn’t my most polished performance.”
He lets out a short, real laugh that evaporates before it can reach his eyes.
“Alright.” He turns a silver pen over on the mahogany.
“Let me tell you where we are. The deadline is arriving. I’ve had three serious inquiries about you since the suspension landed.
You’re on an expiring deal, and we’re clutching a wild-card spot by a single thread.
The smart move is to move you next week for picks, because otherwise I lose the asset for nothing on July first.”
“I know the business, Gio.”
“Then you know I’d just be doing my job.”
“You would.”
He waits, letting the silence do the heavy lifting.
“I don’t have an agent,” I say. “I can’t negotiate, and I’m aware of that.
But for what it’s worth, I want to stay in Charlotte.
I’m not going to shop around, and I’m not having anyone do it for me.
When I find new representation, you’ll hear from them, but I’m not chasing the highest bidder. I’d like to be here.”
“You understand what you just did,” he says flatly.
“Yeah.”
“You gave away every ounce of leverage you possessed. In a contract year. Sitting across from the man who signs the checks.” He shakes his head slowly. “That’s the worst business decision I’ve seen a player make in nine years.”
I think about how to frame it. There isn’t a clever deflection left in the tank, so I go with the truth.
“I’ve spent a long time avoiding setting down roots,” I say. “I’d like to stop doing that.”
Cardone watches me for a long moment. “I’m not about to tip my hand regarding the deadline. I have an organization to run.”
“I understand that. Better than most, honestly.”
“Regardless, that was the first bit of honest dialogue I’ve had about your career in nine years. Find new representation, Briggs. Someone legitimate. I’ll give you three names; just keep my name out of the referral.”
He scrawls on a scrap of paper and slides it across the polished wood. I pocket the list and stand. Once I’m free of the office and into the relative quiet of the stairwell, I take out my phone to text Evie.
Briggs
just told the GM I’m not interested in leaving charlotte. no agent, no leverage. might get shipped out regardless
I wanted you to hear it from me before the ticker gets a hold of the news
I linger on the landing for a minute, but the screen stays dark.
On Friday, Pittsburgh comes into our building, and I log exactly eight minutes of ice time.
I’m on for four shifts in the opening frame and three in the second, then I spend the entire third period of a one-goal game anchored to the bench.
Kyo buries his second of the year and looks like he might vibrate right out of his gear.
We walk away with a 3–2 win. Duval claims a shutout for the final twenty minutes and informs the room that it counts, and that I contributed nothing to it from where I was sitting.
By the time I clear the garage at the condo, the city is already quiet. I grab a beer from the fridge and collapse onto the sofa, still in my overcoat, and pull up her thread.
Briggs
we won. kyo scored and did a celly that’s going to get him run next week
eight days until the deadline
I’m still right here. wishing you were here, too