10. CHAPTER 10 #2
“No way,” she says. “I love it here but I’m severely lacking in girlfriends.”
“You’ll love her. She’s an ER nurse.”
“Let’s do it.” Her eyes light up. “And I’ll invite Crosby’s sister, Birdie. She’s staying with him in between jobs. She’s a saturation diver and an absolute force of nature.”
“A saturation diver?” I ask.
But before Juno can answer, the booth dips on my side and I look over.
Arch Hewitt drops into the seat beside me without asking and without any indication that it occurred to him he should do so. He reaches across the table and takes the last strawberry off my parfait.
Juno raises an eyebrow at him.
“What?” he says. “She wasn’t eating it.”
“It’s fine,” I say, because it is.
He grins and it amps up his hot factor. He has the kind of face that has probably gotten him out of situations his entire life because people end up charmed against their better judgment.
He settles back in the booth. “Okay, so I’ve been thinking.”
“Dangerous,” Juno says.
“I know, I know.” He waves a hand. “But hear me out.” He turns to face me more directly on the banquette seat. “What exactly can you do for someone like me?”
I study him because we’ve already had a session and he seemed bolstered by my advice. “What do you mean?”
Juno starts a quick slide out of the booth, reading the shift in conversation with the instinct of someone who has spent years knowing when she’s in a room and when she shouldn’t be. “And with that, I’ll let you two talk.”
“You don’t have to go,” Arch starts.
“I know.” She picks up her coffee. “But I’m going all the same.” Her gaze comes to me. “Text me for girls’ night.”
“You got it.”
She points at me on her way out like it’s already settled.
I turn back to Arch. “Okay… what do you mean ‘someone like you’?”
“Like—” He spreads his hands. “No major childhood trauma. Good parents. Not complicated. I didn’t have some big thing happen that screwed me up.
” He says it with a self-awareness that’s more sophisticated than the delivery suggests.
“But I’m third line. Every training camp I come in not knowing if today is the day they decide they don’t need me anymore.
I’ve been in this league for eight years and I still haven’t bought a place to live because it feels like the thing that jinxes it. ”
Arch doesn’t know exactly how many athletes just like him also need help.
He keeps going. “So what I’m asking is if there’s anything you can do for a guy who’s basically fine, or is this all just for those with the big, complicated situations?”
For a half second, I think of Locke. The way the word traitor hurt my ears to hear it in the Calgary arena. The very large and very complicated situation sitting on the other end of the spectrum from the man in front of me.
“There’s a lot I can do for you,” I say. “And I want to push back at you.”
“Okay.”
“You said you’re basically fine. But what you just described—the performance anxiety, the superstition about buying a home, the feeling with every training camp like your roster spot isn’t real yet—that’s not nothing, Arch.
That’s a very specific kind of chronic low-level stress that accumulates over time and it absolutely affects consistency on the ice. ”
Arch strokes his chin, nodding. “Yeah… okay… that makes sense. Go on.”
“You don’t need childhood trauma to benefit from mental performance work.”
He tilts his head. “What would we actually do?”
“We’d start with a mental performance assessment. Map out where your focus holds and where it breaks. Identify the specific triggers for the anxiety—what’s happening right before a performance dip. Build some tools, and at some point, we’re probably going to talk about your living situation.”
He laughs, straight white teeth flashing. “Yeah, okay. I’m digging it.”
We spend the next twenty minutes in real conversation—not the surface version he leads with, the easy charm and the jokes.
Underneath it he’s sharper than he lets on.
More aware of his own patterns than he pretends.
He asks good questions and he listens to the answers and I find myself genuinely interested in working with him and that has nothing to do with professional obligation.
He’s going to be good at this, I think. If he can stay out of his own way.
We’re walking out of the Blue Line together, already having scheduled an evaluation, when I see him.
Locke is coming through the entrance from the east corridor, fresh from a workout and shower. He’s a hockey god with that dark blond hair still damp at the ends, gray T-shirt, black track pants, and a posture that’s broadcasting the universal signal for Don’t approach me.
“I’ll see you next week, okay?” I tell Arch, which releases him.
He lifts a hand over his shoulder, already moving away. “Sounds good, Doc.”
I let the title pass, although I don’t like to be called by it. It’s true I have my PhD, but I find that players are more open to talking if I’m just Livia.
I step into Locke’s path and he stops short. Those chilly blue eyes come down to me with an expression that is impressively unwelcoming.
“Good morning,” I say brightly, then glance at my watch. “Well, almost on its way to afternoon. Good workout?”
“Fine.”
“Oh, come on now, Locke. You and I are old friends now. We shared cheese and wine, came to a mutual understanding. And you’re treating me like a bomb about to explode.”
“That’s an image,” he says dryly.
I suppress a laugh and glance past him into the Blue Line. It’s starting to fill for lunch—a cluster of players at a round table near the chef line, three of them deep in conversation, an open chair angled toward the group.
I look back at Locke and toss my thumb. “Look at that… a group of your teammates all sitting together.”
He follows my gaze. Looks back at me. “I can see that.”
“There’s an open seat.”
“I just want to eat.”
“I know.” I let that hang for half a second, even sounding sympathetic to his dilemma. “But you look like a multitasker. I bet you can eat and sit with them at the same time and not even trip over your own feet. Human beings have been doing it for centuries.”
His lips twitch and it seems like it’s almost amusement and then isn’t. “I don’t have anything to say to them.”
“You don’t have to say anything. You just have to sit there.” I resettle my bag on my shoulder. “That’s the arrangement, Locke. Remember?”
He looks at the table again. I can see him doing the internal calculation—weighing the discomfort of the table against whatever I’ll have to say if he walks to a solo seat in the corner.
“This is the worst part of being a grown-up,” I tell him.
His eyes come back to me.
“Having to do things you don’t want to do,” I say. “It never stops being annoying, but you do get better at it. Oh, and don’t forget the Thanksgiving party at Miller Parks’s house next week.”
Irritation flashes in his eyes. “I know.”
I pat his arm once, brief and businesslike, and maybe a little patronizing, and then I walk past him toward the exit.
I don’t check to see if he sits down with his teammates.
That’s intentional.
He needs to do it because he said he would, not because I’m watching.