17. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN #2
“I am.”
Then the puck drops again. That’s hockey. You get maybe half a minute to feel anything before somebody sends you back over the boards.
Ohio State ties it early in the third.
2-2.
After that, the game gets tighter. Percy stops a tip that should go in. Mackey clears a rebound. Blue gets cross-checked after a whistle and somehow skates away without giving them what they want. That might be the most impressive thing anybody does all night.
Seven minutes left, Stanley gets the winner. Of course he does.
Benson wins a battle below the goal line. Blue gets a touch. Stanley finds space inside. Again. Not the wall. Not floating. Inside. He buries it.
3-2.
The building explodes.
Stanley celebrates like he’s never scored before.
I laugh from the blue line.
The last two minutes feel longer than the entire clinic did this morning, and I wasn’t even the one running that. Fuller has Benson, Blue, Trent, and me out there in front of Percy, and Ohio State pulls their goalie as soon as they gain possession. Six on five.
They work the puck low first, trying to drag us down with it, but we get it out and force them to regroup through neutral ice.
They come right back. Forty seconds. A shot gets through from the point, and Percy tracks it cleanly all the way into his glove.
The whistle goes with twenty-three seconds left.
Nobody says much before the faceoff. There isn’t anything useful left to say.
Benson wins the draw toward the wall, and Blue gets there first, pinning the puck against the boards while two Ohio State players dig at his skates.
Ten seconds. Somebody finally kicks it loose, and it slides far enough into the slot for me to get my stick on it.
I don’t try anything clever. I send it as hard as I can down the ice.
Five seconds.
The puck keeps sliding.
Then the horn goes.
I let out a breath so hard my chest almost hurts.
3-2.
We needed that.
It isn’t a title, and it isn’t a tournament game anybody is going to talk about five years from now, but nobody in our room gives a shit about that when we come off the ice.
We came into tonight seventeen, twelve, and two after losing to the same team less than twenty-four hours ago.
Now we have another win, and for the first time in a while, the room feels like ours again.
Somebody gets music going before half of us have even taken our helmets off. Stanley is already watching clips on somebody’s phone, bouncing between his game-winner and my goal like he personally produced both of them.
“Run it back,” he says.
“You’ve watched it four times.”
“Five.”
He ignores me and starts the clip again. Apparently scoring one goal has made my entire night public property.
From somewhere behind me, Stanley shouts, “She fixed you.”
“I fixed me.”
Stanley says, “She provided the data.”
By the time I shower and change, the room has started settling. Guys are still talking, but the volume has dropped, and the adrenaline is finally wearing off enough that I remember I have a phone.
Fourteen messages.
Mom. Dad. Derek. The team group chat, even though half the people in it are standing within thirty feet of me. A couple former teammates.
Five from Gianna.
I open hers first.
Gianna: ROWAN FUCKING LAURENS!
Gianna: FIRST GOAL!
Gianna: I TOLD YOU!
I smile.
Gianna: YOU ACTUALLY DID IT!
Gianna: I’M SO PROUD OF YOU!
I stare at that one longer than the others.
Me: You screamed.
Her answer is immediate.
Gianna: OBVIOUSLY.
Me: Heard you from ice.
Gianna: No, you did not.
Gianna: Come find me.
I put the phone in my pocket.
The girls are waiting in the hall near the family area. Benson gets to Lucy first. Stanley opens both arms at Aspen. Blue goes straight to Melly. Percy disappears toward Penelope.
I find Gianna.
She is standing beside Mara in a Camden sweatshirt, hair still in the same ponytail from this morning. She looks exhausted. Happy. She sees me and her whole face changes.
Mara looks between the two of us, and something smug immediately settles over her face.
“I’m going to find a bathroom,” she announces with absolutely no subtlety.
Gianna points toward the wall beside us. “There’s one right there.”
Mara doesn’t even look. She just keeps walking down the hall.
Gianna watches her go and shakes her head. “She’s terrible.” Then she turns back to me, and whatever annoyance Mara caused disappears from her face almost instantly. Her smile comes back, bright and tired and completely impossible to miss.
“You scored,” she says. “You actually scored.”
I laugh. “You told me to.”
“I’m serious.”
She steps toward me automatically, then seems to remember where we are. The hallway is crowded with players, parents, staff, and people waiting for whoever they came to see. Benson isn’t far away, and there’s nowhere private enough for either of us to pretend we’re alone.
Gianna looks around once and settles for grabbing the sleeve of my jacket. “I’m proud of you.”
The words hit harder than I expect. I know she means them because Gianna never really knows how to say anything halfway.
“Thanks.”
She nods. “Like, really proud.”
“I know.”
Her eyes narrow. “Don’t ruin it.”
I smile. “How was the rest of the clinic?”
That changes her immediately. She brightens all over again and starts talking faster. “It worked. No, I mean it really worked. Parents asked Lisa if we’re doing another one, and Ives stayed almost the whole time without criticizing anything while she was there, which I think counts as praise.”
I laugh. “Probably.”
“One kid threw up.”
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“Not on the ice.”
“Big win.”
“Yep.” Then she launches into the whole thing again: the group photo, the oversized jerseys, Bryce’s mother asking twice if he could have a different color, the figure skates, the parent questions, and the fact that she apparently spent half the morning being summoned from opposite ends of the building.
I already know some of it. She told me parts through text, and I was there for enough of the rest to understand how the day went.
I let her tell me anyway.
Gianna repeats herself when she’s excited. She circles back to details she already mentioned because she remembers something else about them halfway through. She gets louder when something was funny and quieter when something mattered more than she expected it to.
I like listening to her do it.