Chapter 13 - Karter
Aplastic sports bottle smacked me in the chest. I fumbled and pinned it against my ribs, snapping out of a blank stare at my open locker.
Aleksey freezing me out was starting to seriously trash my focus.
Ever since I’d watched him turn his back and walk away from me, I’d been trying to shrug it off and let go like he asked. But it wasn’t working.
The past few days Aleksey looked right through me as if I didn’t exist, and all I had to show for it was zero sleep.
“Are you alive, man?” Matt asked. He stood a few feet away, chucking his knee pads into his bag. “You looked like you were skating in cement today. Coach Corby yelled at you two times.”
“Three,” I corrected. I pressed my fingers into my right shoulder, trying to rub away a stiff ache. “It’s just crunch week stress. I’ve got two exams back to back.”
Matt bought the lie. “Yeah, I heard you pacing the room at two in the morning. You keep opening the door, too.”
My stomach dropped. I wasn’t pacing over finals.
I was awake at two AM because that was roughly when Aleksey usually got back from his night shift at the Food Mart.
The second I heard him walking across the floorboards out in the hall, I’d crack my door open.
But I’d just stand there, staring through the gap, only to lose my nerve and shut it again.
“It’s just one of the exams,” I deflected. “I’m trying to nail down the material.”
Matt slammed his locker shut. “Hey, if that tutoring mandate with Zotov is stressing you out, you know you can tell Corby it’s not working. Right?”
I grimaced. Matt had no idea what was going on, but the fact that he so easily drew a line between my mood and Aleksey set off alarm bells.
“It’s not that,” I said. “He’s fine.”
“He’s a dick,” Matt shot back, dumping a roll of tape into his bag. “You don’t have to do the guy’s homework if he’s making you miserable. Seriously, Karter. Talk to Coach.”
“He won’t care.”
“He’ll care if you’re too drained to play. It’s hard enough keeping my own grades afloat without adding someone else’s mess, so I don’t know how you’re doing it. You shouldn’t have to.”
I scrubbed a hand hard over my face and swallowed the frustration and forced a careless shrug.
“It’s whatever.” I grabbed my bag. “He’s a pain in the ass to deal with.”
“Yeah, so drop him,” Matt insisted. “Tell Coach he’s not showing up.”
“I’ll think about it.”
Matt let it go with a nod. He zipped his bag and slung it over his shoulder. “Well, don’t let him mess with your ice time. We need you for this weekend.”
Right then, Aleksey walked past the end of our row. My gaze snagged on him immediately, tracking him. He kept his head down and didn’t even glance my way.
I shoved the rest of my gear into my duffel and yanked the zipper shut so hard it jammed. If I had to sit here and pretend everything was fine for one more minute, I was going to put my fist through a locker.
“I’m heading out,” I muttered to Matt, grabbing my bag.
I spent the rest of the afternoon hiding out in a back corner of the library with my textbook open. I didn’t read a single word. I just sat there grinding my teeth, running out the clock until the mandatory hockey team meeting.
Bright lights glared down on the film room that evening. I claimed a seat in the back row, slouching into the rigid gray folding chair in an effort to blend in and survive Coach Corby’s pre-series lecture.
Aleksey sat three rows ahead of me. We were barely ten feet apart, but we might as well have been in different states.
A stubborn, stupid urge pushed at me to walk over to him and demand his attention. The fact that I still wanted him this badly, even when he was icing me out, rattled me.
My eyes locked onto him, anyway.
He refused to look back at me.
“This weekend against Michigan University is not a joke,” Coach Corby said from the front of the room. He tapped a dry-erase marker against the whiteboard. “We gonna have scout presence coming in for this. So there’s zero room for error.”
Elliot spoke up from the front row. “We’re ready, Coach.”
“You better be,” Corby said. “Because right now, I’m seeing guys gliding through the neutral zone and blowing defensive assignments.
Michigan is a strong team. They will make you pay if your head isn’t completely in the game.
So, I don’t care what kind of garbage you’ve got going on outside this building.
When you step on my ice, you do your job. Period.”
I stared hard at the toe of my sneakers.
When the film session wrapped up, I grabbed my duffel and headed for the exit. Angel Perez stepped into my path before I made it to the double doors, backing me up against the concrete wall.
I stopped short, my grip tightening on my bag strap.
Perez and I didn’t talk. We’d been sharing a roster for months, but outside of calling out plays on the ice, I didn’t think we’d ever exchanged a single actual sentence.
“Were you listening to Corby in there?” Perez asked. He chewed his gum aggressively, shifting his weight from side to side.
“Yeah,” I said, keeping my voice neutral. “I heard him.”
“Then start acting like it.” Perez stared right at me, zeroing in. “Whatever’s going on with you and Zotov, sort it out.”
My teeth dug into my bottom lip. “What’s your problem? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Save it.” Perez shook his head. “You’re both playing like absolute garbage, and it’s dragging the whole line down.”
“We simply had a bad skate.”
“You missed three passes. And Zotov took a stupid hooking penalty because he was watching you.” Perez leaned in close. “There are scouts in the stands on Friday. I need a contract. He needs a contract.”
I stopped moving.
“We aren’t doing anything,” I argued, keeping my voice low.
“I don’t care what you’re doing,” Perez snapped. “I care that it’s visible. Do you think Corby won’t notice? You think Trenton isn’t just waiting for an excuse to steal his minutes?”
My throat clicked as I swallowed. “I’ll talk to him.”
“Good.” Perez stopped chewing his gum for a second, pointing a finger hard at my chest. “Because if he keeps playing like this, Corby’s gonna scratch him. If you have a bad week, you’ll be fine. But if he has a bad week, he loses his scholarship. Don’t take him down with you.”
Perez turned and shoved through the double doors. The metal clanged shut, leaving me alone in the drafty corridor.
The anger I’d been carrying around all week evaporated, leaving me feeling like I’d just taken a puck to the throat. I dropped the back of my head against the cinderblock wall.
I stood there in the empty corridor for a long minute, letting the cold reality of it sink in. Then I hitched my duffel higher on my shoulder and pushed off the concrete.
I shoved my way out the double doors into the freezing night, letting the wind bite at my face without bothering to pull my collar up. Normally, this was the exact moment I’d walk back to the Ice House, put my headphones on, and once again try to pretend the whole mess didn’t bother me.
But not tonight. Waiting around to see what happened next wasn’t an option anymore, so I took a detour to a 24-hour diner off campus, grabbed two orders of chicken and fries, and walked straight back to The Ice House.
Standing in the drafty attic hallway, I stared at Aleksey’s closed door with my heart hammering in my ears.
Every ingrained instinct demanded that I retreat to my own room before he told me to go to hell.
To shut the warning out, I finally tightened my grip on the plastic takeout bag and raised my free hand.
I knocked twice on the chipped wood. The old latch hadn’t caught completely; the slight pressure caused the door to drift open a few inches. A sliver of dim light spilled over my sneakers. Before I could lose my nerve, I pushed the panel the rest of the way open and stepped inside.
The room was quiet except for the metallic ticking of the ancient radiator in the corner.
Aleksey sat on the edge of his bed in faded jeans and a worn gray t-shirt, elbows on his knees with his head buried in his hands.
His phone lay face-up on the hardwood floor next to his boots, screen lit, the alarm app open to eleven-thirty.
“What do you want now, Karter?” Aleksey muttered. He didn’t even lift his head from his hands. His voice sounded scraped out and exhausted.
“How did you know it was me?” I stopped just inside the doorway. “You didn’t even look up.”
“No one else in this house stands in that hallway for five minutes trying to decide if they’re gonna turn the knob on my door.”
Fair enough.
I shut the door, sat down on the floor near his feet, and leaned my back against the cracked plaster wall. The takeout bag went on the bed beside him.
“You didn’t eat dinner,” I said.
Aleksey finally lifted his head. His eyes narrowed. “Are you tracking my meals now?”
“I don’t have a spreadsheet, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“That’s exactly what I’m asking.”
“No spreadsheet,” I said. “Just pattern recognition.”
“Pattern recognition.” He shook his head slowly. “God, you’re a pre-med nerd tracking when I eat. That’s even worse than a spreadsheet.”
“Eat the food, Aleksey.”
His glare held for another beat before the stiff set of his shoulders gave out.
He let out a long sigh. “I’ve got the AD breathing down my neck, and my mom texting me for help with rent. I need to be completely locked in.”
“I know,” I said. “I get it.”
“No, you don’t.” He scrubbed a hand hard over his face. “I tried to freeze you out. I tried to shut it all down completely. And then I spent half the team skate looking to see where the hell you were. I can’t afford to have you in my head right now.”
A long breath leaked out of me, the first full exhale I’d managed in days.
Still, I knew better than to offer up some bullshit, empty promise to magically fix his life, so I simply took out one of the styrofoam containers out of the takeout bag and nudged it against his thigh.