Page 71 of Rookie Recovery

Bowie grinned a big white smile I swore I’d never seen on him before.

Fuck, he was radiant.

This was a huge fucking mistake.

I knew it as I stuffed gear into my bag the next evening. It felt wrong. The smell was wrong: old and faded, not bitter and burning. Pads were too stiff and dry. Skates weren’t sharp—though I’d fix that before I got on the ice.

Bowie leaned in the doorway, watching me pull equipment out of the clear plastic storage bins shoved behind my washing machine, and honestly, he was the one thing that felt right.

Maybe that’s why I’d invited him over beforehand instead of simply picking him up from the Bobcats’ arena, where he’d spent all day watching training camp from the stands. Because I knew, somehow, having him here would feel like that. Like he belonged.

“Dark and light jersey,” he reminded me as I turned over a pair of gloves to see if the fingers had entirely worn through. “Just in case there’s enough people for teams.”

Nerves frothed my stomach, and I angled a glare over my shoulder at him. “Teams? I thought it was gonna be five old guys?”

“A man can hope.”

I shoved in a ratty black practice jersey—luckily it just said Bears, no identifying logos—and an even older, rattier jersey from Boston University. That one declared, in even less identifying terms, Terriers. Still, Bowie watched my every move with those laser eyeballs.

I hefted my bag onto my shoulder as I stood. Why the hell had I agreed to this? Brady shoved her nose into the massive duffle, and Bowie led the way through my condo. I was tempted to ask if we could take her for an evening stroll instead.

But I didn’t.

I knew Bowie needed this a whole lot more than either Brady or I needed a walkabout. So I followed him out the door, into the elevator. Threw my bag in the truck’s bed, and steered us to the rink.

He practically vibrated in the seat next to me. Hummed with the anticipation of getting back on the ice. Flipped through the radio stations without settling. Chattered about things my brain couldn’t latch onto because it was fixed on the bag in the bed. Weirdly, though, his excitement calmed me.

In a handful of minutes, we’d crossed to the north side of town, where the suburban sprawl bunched up around wide streets lined in towering old oaks and faded street lights. Blocky white commercial buildings mingled with elegant Victorians and charming Cape Cods in a mismatched patchwork of old and new. The big blue dome of the rink loomed up behind it all.

I steered the Tundra into the empty parking lot. Same as I did most days of the week, except this was different. It shouldn’t have felt weird to show up to a hockey rink in jeans and a T-shirt, but I was so used to coming here with my sleeves buttoned up and my pants pressed down.

“You ready?” Bowie buzzed as he hopped from the truck to meet me around at the bed.

“Sure. Sure. Yeah.” I shouldered my bag, collected my sticks. Another weird thing to add to the collection of things that shouldn’t have been so out of place.

“You’ll be fine.” Bowie beamed at me, then took the lead to the rink.

I glanced over the sign-up sheet as we paid at the front desk, but there were only a couple of other names on the roster, none I recognized. Good. None of them would recognize me, either.

Bowie led the way to the Bobcats’ locker room. I’d been in here before—countless times—but now, it felt wrong and unfamiliar. Not my place, not my team.

“Skate sharpener’s in the equipment closet.” Bowie waved a hand towards a door in the back corner, before heading to his cubby behind the bench—the top locker labeled Bowman in a neat little plaque with his number 11 underneath. His socks and pads hung on the hooks below.

I dropped my bag, dug out my skates, and headed into the musty equipment room to start up the machine. I sometimes sharpened skates for the team, when I was around, so I hadn’t lost my touch. But it’d been ten years since I’d last sharpened my skates.

I was picky about my edges.

I’d be picky now, too, because that was how the ritual started. The grind of metal on stone, the critical eye, testing scrape of fingernail over blade. Repeat. Swipe, swipe, swipe, until I got it right.

I shut down the machine to find Bowie leaning in the door again, a battered old hockey bag over his good shoulder. “You ready?”

“For what?” I studied that bag. “Are we going somewhere?”

“We’ll dress with the rest of the guys, right?” His brows furrowed with sudden uncertainty. “Feels weird to change here.”

I nodded, surprised at the gratitude that washed over me. He got it. “Yeah, it does.”

I carried my skates separately to protect those fresh edges, and Bowie led us into a locker room down the hall. Just a wide space, benches along the sides, couple of unmarked lockers behind, open showers in the back. But this felt right—maybe it was the smell: stale air and old rubber and the bitter, sour-sweat scent that had faded from my gear over the years.

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