33. Buzz
BUZZ
NOW
The thing about a season dying slowly was that nobody wanted to be the first person to call it dead.
Not while there were still games left on the schedule.
Not while the standings still technically allowed for the kind of math that required three other teams to lose, one team to implode, and possibly a minor weather event in western Canada.
Not while Coach could stand in front of us after an ugly loss and say we still had to play the right way, because the right way mattered even when the scoreboard had stopped offering mercy.
So no one said dead.
We said, tough one.
We said, need help.
We said, not eliminated yet.
We said every stupid phrase men said when hope had gotten too thin to hold but pride would not let anyone set it down.
The locker room at Talon Arena smelled like sweat, damp gear, old tape, wet towels, and the bitter edge of the coffee someone had abandoned on a side table sometime before warmups.
The showers hissed in the back. Skates clattered against rubber mats.
A roll of tape bounced once off the floor near Jonah’s stall and kept rolling until it hit a pile of gloves nobody had the energy to move.
The music was on, but not loud enough.
After wins, the room got stupid at full volume. After normal losses, it got mean for a while, then loud, then normal. After losses like this, late in the season, with the playoff picture turning into a prayer nobody wanted to admit they had stopped believing in, the room tried too hard.
Every laugh sounded a little forced.
Every chirp came with teeth behind it.
Every man in the room knew we had pissed away another game we needed. Every man in the room also knew that if we sat in the truth too long, someone might say something that could not be taken back.
So we made noise.
Marco was doing most of the work, because De Luca considered emotional discomfort a stage and himself the only performer with range.
“I’m only saying,” he announced from his stall, bare chest still damp from the shower, towel slung around his hips with the dramatic confidence of a man who knew exactly what he looked like, “if Harry stops letting in goals, we win more games.”
Harry, who had made forty-one saves and was currently sitting in front of his stall with ice bags strapped to both knees, lifted his head slowly. “I will throw this water bottle through your skull.”
“You would miss,” De Luca cackled.
Harry smiled without warmth. “You want to test that theory?”
Zee, who was lying flat on the floor with his legs propped up against the wall like he had been assembled incorrectly, raised one hand. “I support violence if it improves morale.”
“It will not,” Hale snapped, unwinding tape from his wrist with the slow patience of a man who had seen too many locker rooms eat themselves alive. “Historically, morale drops when people start bleeding indoors.”
“Depends who is bleeding,” Milo sneered.
“Thank you,” Marco replied. “Nuance.”
Across the room, Cam Dunne sat at his stall still half-dressed, elbows on his knees, staring down at the floor between his skates.
He had not said much since Coach left. That was usually worse than yelling.
Cam could bark with the best of them when the room needed it, but quiet Cam meant captain-level math was happening behind his eyes.
The kind with accountability and video review and who needed to get called into whose office before things rotted.
Alois sat two stalls down from him, fully dressed except for his tie, which hung loose around his neck. He was not looking at anyone in particular, which meant he was aware of everyone.
I shoved my damp hair back with both hands and reached for the clean shirt folded beside my stall.
My ribs ached where I had taken a cross-check in the second.
My left shoulder felt like someone had wedged a screwdriver under the joint and left it there as a souvenir.
My legs had the heavy, sour burn of a game that had gone badly enough to make every shift feel twice as long.
Three games left.
Barely alive.
Basically dead.
I pulled the shirt over my head and told myself those were not the same thing.
“Burns,” Marco called.
I did not look at him. “No.”
Marco pressed a hand to his chest. “I was only going to ask if you needed us to wrap this up quickly so you could get to your second job.”
I grabbed my socks. “I don’t have a second job.”
“Sure you do,” Harry hissed. “Professional pup-cup delivery boy.”
The room stirred.
There it was.
I bent over to tug one sock on and felt, against my will, the corner of my mouth move.
For weeks, I had managed to keep the routine small. Coffee at her threshold when I was in the building. A pup cup for Dottie, because Dottie had terrible loyalty and excellent taste in dairy products.
I had thought the team would miss it. That had been optimistic, considering the team noticed when a guy changed deodorant brands and treated it like a trade rumor.
Zee rolled onto one elbow from the floor. “I heard Dottie has a better postgame recovery routine than all of us.”
“She does,” Jonah said. “Whipped cream, nap, emotional manipulation.”
“That’s just Marco’s routine,” Harry said.
Marco pointed at him. “I do not nap.”
“You should. It might fix whatever this is.”
I leaned back against my stall and crossed my arms. “Are we done?”
“Oh, absolutely not,” Zee said. “I have questions.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do. Does the dog tip? Because if the dog tips, I respect the hustle.”
“Dottie tips in drool and affection,” I said.
Milo snorted. “Then she is rich.”
Marco sat forward, eyes bright with the kind of delight that had ruined countless team dinners. “What I want to know is whether the whipped cream is for Dottie or whether Burns has simply been domesticated and this is how Ms. Thomas rewards good behavior.”
There were whistles. Groans. Someone slapped a towel against a stall door.
It was stupid. It was annoying. It was not cruel.
For once in my life, I could take stupid without making it a federal case. That felt like growth, though I was fairly sure no therapist would recommend measuring emotional maturity by whether I could survive being called housebroken by a man wearing only a towel.
I lifted both hands. “If any of you had ever experienced approval from a woman with standards, you would understand.”
Harry pointed at me. “You’re admitting you’re whipped.”
“I’m admitting Dottie likes whipped cream.”
“Convenient dodge.”
The laughter came easier now, rolling through the room, bouncing off tile and wood and the metal hooks above our stalls. For a second, the loss loosened its grip. Not gone. Never gone. But shifted, like a bruise pressed by accident and then left alone.
I let myself breathe.
That was the trick lately.
A joke could be a joke.
A chirp could be a chirp.
Lucy’s name could be in the conversation without my body trying to prove something.
Across the room, Victor Petrov laughed under his breath. It was a small sound. Meaner than the rest because it had no warmth in it.
He sat near the end of the row in team sweats, one ankle propped over the opposite knee, phone loose in his hand, jaw shadowed and tight.
Scratched again. Third game in a row. He had watched us lose from the press box and come down afterward with that flat, restless bitterness men got when they wanted to blame the room for the fact that the room had started moving on without them.
Victor was a depth guy. Everyone knew it. He knew it too, which made him dangerous in the way desperate men could be dangerous. Sharp in places he should have been careful.
He had been quiet through Coach’s postgame talk. Quiet while Cam said his piece. Quiet while the first wave of guys showered and the equipment staff moved out and the room became player-only. Now his eyes lifted toward me.
“Standards,” he said.
I kept my arms crossed. “You need help with the definition?”
Victor’s mouth curved. “Just trying to understand the system. Some guys get scratched. Some guys get rewarded.”
Cam’s head came up.
There were a lot of ways a sentence like that could go bad.
Talent resentment was normal. Ice time resentment was normal.
Late-season pressure turned every roster decision into a bruise.
If Victor wanted to take a shot at me, fine.
He could get in line behind my own brain, which had spent the last three hours replaying the missed clear in the second period like it was being paid by the loop.
Marco leaned back slowly. “Careful.”
Victor ignored him. His gaze stayed on me. “Must be nice, Burns. Lose a game, still got the owner’s daughter upstairs training you with pup cups.”
The laugh that followed was wrong. Not everyone. Not even most. A couple of reflexive barks from guys who heard tone before meaning. Someone made a low, uncertain sound near the showers. Zee sat up fully. Harry went still. Oliver stopped unwinding the tape around his wrist.
I felt the old instinct wake in me. It was the clean, violent fantasy of crossing the room so fast Victor’s smirk disappeared before he knew he was in danger.
It was the memory of boards shaking under hits.
Of gloves dropping. Of my body solving what my mouth might make worse.
It was a bright white flare behind my ribs that wanted movement, impact, the satisfaction of making one stupid man understand that some lines had teeth.
I stayed still.
Victor saw he had the room and mistook attention for permission.
That was the thing about bitter men. “What?” he said, spreading one hand.
“We’re all thinking it. All this good-boy routine for Ms. Thomas.
” His eyes flicked down my body, then back up with a grin that made something cold and filthy slide through the room.
“Tell her if she’s that into housebreaking players, I can kneel too. ”
For one second, the world narrowed to nothing.
No showers.
No music.
No damp gear.
No aching shoulder.
No season dying slowly around us.