POV Jason
Friction
Cold air bites hard enough to feel like penance.
I cut across the blue line and carve into a stop that screams against the boards, shavings feathering up around my skates like frost. The rink smells like rubber, sharpened steel, and the faint lemon of last night’s mop water.
My lungs open the way they only do out here—clean, burning, honest.
“Again,” Coach barks. The stopwatch bleeps—a tiny tyrant. I push off. Edges dig, legs fire, the world narrowing to ice math: stride length, knee angle, weight transfer. The taped wrist holds until it doesn’t—one slick flare under the tape, like a struck match.
Ignore it. Breathe through it. I’ve built a career on telling pain what to do.
Two cones. Pivot. Backhand receive. Forehand release. The puck jumps like it respects my hands out of fear, not trust. Crossovers bite. I feel the ache travel up the radius and roost under my elbow, a mean little bird pecking at form. I shift, compensate, hate that I feel myself compensating.
Bleep.
The fever hangover rides my shoulders like a bad idea I didn’t choose.
Not dizzy—just light too bright, sound too sharp.
I lean on discipline. Feet right. Hips right.
Don’t baby it. Don’t be stupid. Skate the plan Riley wrote on the whiteboard like a prayer I pretend I don’t believe in.
Her block letters are burned into my head anyway: Don’t compensate.
I hammer the next drill, jaw tight. The tape under my glove feels humid. I flex, testing. The twinge answers with a petty little spark. “Not today,” I growl into the cold.
Bleep. I carve a tight turn, blade chatter harmonizing with the echo-loud emptiness of the morning rink.
Up in the stands, a couple of rookies watch like they’re scouting a ghost story.
Someone laughs too hard at something not funny.
Let it slide off. One more rep, then I’ll unlace, retape, grab water. Maybe.
Stride. Catch. Release. The shot kisses post and rings—sweet, clean. Pain answers anyway, a hot string tugging from wrist to forearm. I ride out the sting and reset at center, hunched over my stick until the ache flattens to a hum.
Bleep.
“Move your feet, Maddox!” Coach’s voice ricochets off rafters and spine. I move. The next pivot sloppies at the heel; I correct late and feel the wobble all the way up my back. Don’t compensate, her voice says in my head, and I try to obey a woman I’m not supposed to listen to.
One more stop, spray hissing up against the dasher, snow crystals peppering my visor. My breath fogs in sharp bursts. The wrist throbs like it’s got its own heartbeat. I roll it once, twice inside the tape, testing the limits I promised to respect.
From the bench tunnel, a shape steps into the rink light—clipboard, braid, eyes like a green fire alarm. Even from here, I feel the exact moment Riley clocks the compensation I thought I hid.
The stopwatch bleeps again. I set my edges for another rep and pretend I don’t hear the warning building in my name on her tongue.
Riley’s palm smacks the dasher. The crack ricochets up the glass and through my ribs. She doesn’t wait for a whistle; she pushes off the boards in sneakers with guards on—trainer privileges—cutting a clean line across the crease like a bright red stop sign.
“Off,” she calls, voice flat enough to cut. Closer, eyes burning under the rink lights: “Now.”
The boys go quiet in that way locker rooms do when Mom just used your full name. A puck dies against a stick. The stopwatch hesitates in Coach’s hand. I tell myself I don’t love the way the whole building listens when she speaks.
“I’ve got one more,” I say, already lying to both of us. The wrist hums its ugly little song under tape. I flex like I can mute it.
Her jaw ticks. She doesn’t raise her voice; she sharpens it. “You’re compensating and making it worse.” She taps her own forearm exactly where the pain blooms in mine. Of course she knows. “Bench. Five minutes. Retape, reassess. Or we’re done for the day.”
A couple of rookies ooooh like they’ve stumbled into theater. Coach blows the whistle out of reflex—the sound slices my skull. He points for one more rep, old instinct asserting itself: finish the drill, then fix the problem.
I look from his hand to Riley. Her stare is a held line—tight, furious, and afraid in a way only I catch. Habit says go. Pride hisses don’t bend. But pride doesn’t tape wrists at 2 a.m. or sit beside couches while you shake your way through fever.
I coast to the boards.
Chirps follow me in, musical and mean. “Whipped,” someone sings. “Trainer says jump,” another adds. I let them bounce off because what’s waiting at the dasher matters more.
Up close, Riley looks like sleep was a rumor. Shadows under her eyes. Hair yanked back so hard it steals her headache’s excuse. She doesn’t meet me halfway; she meets me all the way and then drags me that last inch with a glare.
“Glove,” she says, already reaching. Her fingers are sure when they peel tape at the edge—angry and careful sisters. She tests range with a touch that maps pain like radar. I breathe through my teeth.
“Too much?” she asks.
“Not enough,” I say, because I’m an idiot and because it’s true. The ache is honest down here. Honest and dumb.
Her eyes flick up, and it hits like open ice—fear threaded clean through the anger. “You want to skate in June?” she says, softer. “Then you get off the ice in October when I tell you to.”
Coach lifts the whistle like he might argue with God; Riley doesn’t spare him a glance. “Five minutes,” she repeats—to me, to the stopwatch, to the part of herself that wants to let me get away with recklessness because she understands it too well. “Then we re-evaluate.”
I nod and swing a leg over the boards, landing heavier than I mean to. The bench wood stings my thighs through pads—the good sting that means I’m doing the smarter thing for once. Water bottle. Two pulls. Breathe until breath stops sounding like an apology.
Riley steps in close to retape, lemon soap and cold air filling my head. “Thank you,” she says under her breath, light enough I could pretend I imagined it. Then the trainer is back, all business. “Squeeze.” I do. “Pain?” I shrug. She glares. I give her a number she can write.
From the stands, a phone chirps its little camera shutter sound, obnoxiously proud of itself. Riley doesn’t flinch yet, but I feel the ice tilt—the trouble rolling toward us in waves we can’t outskate.
Coach’s whistle slices the air. “One more, Maddox!” He jabs two fingers toward the far cone, impatience telegraphed down the line.
Riley doesn’t move. She plants herself between my skates and the ice like a door I’d have to break to go through. The tape hangs from her fingers, white against the red marks on my wrist. Her chin lifts a millimeter. Not a challenge. A boundary.
I look past her to Coach. Around us the guys go statue-still, except for the smirk I can feel three seats down and the quiet, gleeful ooooh I pretend I don’t hear.
Two voices in my head line up on either side of the red line. One is the one that made me: skate through it, swallow it, bleed later. The other sounds like last night in a dark room: Don’t be a hero. Don’t be stupid with your body.
“Green light, Coach,” I call, but I keep my ass on the bench. The words taste like compromise; the act feels like choosing.
Coach lowers the whistle half an inch. A test. “Clock’s running,” he warns.
Riley doesn’t look at him. She looks at me. The fear is gone now; what’s left is steadiness and a sliver of dare. Choose right.
I roll my wrist once in her hands, the tendons popping like quiet gravel. Pain speaks up, not a scream, a warning. I stare at the ice I’ve loved longer than anything and nod at the bench like it’s a pulpit. “Five,” I say, matching her order. “Then we reassess.”
Coach hates it. But he also loves wins, and wins don’t come from a hero with a torn tendon. He jerks a nod that translates to make it worth it and pivots to terrorize a rookie for lazy lines.
The chirps start up again as soon as his back turns. “House rules, Maddox,” someone singsongs. “Mama said no.”
“Save it for scrimmage,” I toss back, bored on purpose. I take a long pull from my bottle and let the cold sit in my mouth before I swallow. The ache recedes half a step, the way a wave does when it’s reconsidering its options.
Riley works in silence, close enough that I can list the different shades in her eyes. She sets the new anchor strip, checks circulation with a quick press that reads like a question: still with me? I answer by flexing inside the tape the way she taught me—no heroics, just information.
“Better?” she asks, so low only the wood under us can eavesdrop.
“Ask me in five,” I say, and the corner of her mouth thinks about softening. Doesn’t.
On the ice, the drill rotates without me. The stopwatch bleeps. My body leans to go and I make it stay. Choosing her is a fight no one can see, which might be why it matters more.
She finishes the wrap, tears the tape with her teeth, and palms the end flat. Heat knifes up my forearm and dies as the support settles. I breathe easier than I want to admit and feel the day tilt a degree toward better.
“You’re right,” I say, truth costing more than lies. “About the compensation. About all of it.”
Her eyes spark, then settle into approval like a warm hand between my shoulder blades.
Up close the rink noise blurs to a hush.
A tiny curl of hair has escaped by her ear, damp from the cold and whatever sleep she didn’t get.
Before my brain files a protest, my knuckles skim that strand back where it belongs.
A small, stupid touch—nothing anyone could call anything—and it still feels like stepping onto thin ice at noon.