Page 21 of Save the Game

“Mm.” He pats me on the shoulder. “You can tell me, if you’d like. I am very good at all the advice. Carter will tell you.”

I laugh, again, and he smiles at me. I open my mouth to reply, but close it again as Coach Mackenzie walks into the room. He looks carefully around at us all, probably doing a mental roll call, before sending everyone out to the ice. I stand, gratefully. Coach watches me as I pass him, and my neck prickles uncomfortably. I don’t think Vas is the only perceptive one here.

We’re playing Harvard this weekend, and so Coach puts us through a rigorous set of drills meant to prepare us for their style of play. When I skate to a stop next to the bench and reach for a water bottle, my chest is heaving. It’s the second time in twenty-four hours that I feel like I can’t breathe. The whistle blows again and I abandon the water and skate over to center ice. I feel great—perfectly in my element, sweaty and exhausted from working hard. I would stay here all fucking night if Coach would let me.

More drills. These center mostly on footwork and I could cry of happiness. I’m fast, and I’ve got good feet; a hundred times I’ve been given that praise, and I remind myself of it now. If only life was as easy as hockey. It’s another hour before Coach calls an end to practice, and I stay behind to help him gather up the cones and move the nets. Now that practice is over, the sick feeling of dread has settled in my stomach once more. When I leave here, I’ll have to deal with what happened. I’ll have to talk to Luke.

“You played well today, Kuemper.”

“Thanks, Coach,” I say, smiling. He slides to a stop next to me, green eyes searching mine. I have to fight the urge to look away, fearing what he might see.

“I’ll finish up here. Go get some food and rest,” he tells me, and I nod.

The locker room is mostly empty. The end of practice means the guys can go out to eat or see their girlfriends, so everybody is in a hurry to leave. I take my time in the shower, cranking the heat and standing under the spray with my eyes closed. Marcos’ suggestion from earlier is bothering me; you need somebody you can talk to, he’d said. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I need somebody removed from the situation who can help me—give me advice. I don’t even know how I would go about finding somebody like that.

Trailing wet footprints behind me, I walk over to my stall and quickly get dressed. In trepidation, I check my phone; my stomach drops all the way to the floor when I see a text message from Luke. Dropping the phone back onto my locker shelf like it’s on fire, I sit down to pull on socks and shoes. After waiting all day, hoping he would reach out, now I find myself wishing he hadn’t. I really don’t know if I can read that message.

The last of my teammates is long gone by the time I stand up and grab my bag. Resolutely—and before I can change my mind—I unlock my phone and open the messaging app. There isn’t any way he could make me feel worse about myself than I already do.

Hey, Maxy. I hope you’re feeling okay today. I stopped by your apartment earlier, but I think you guys were already gone. I feel bad about last night, and I’d have preferred to apologize in person but I couldn’t find you. I’m sorry if I scared you.

“Oh my god,” I breathe, and rest my forehead down against the side of my stall. He wants to apologize in person, as if there is anything he needs to apologize for. What a fucking mess.

Feeling like I’m in danger of throwing up again, I grab my things and head out through the quiet rink. There is a light on in Coach Mackenzie’s office and the door is standing wide open. I stop, well down the hall and out of view, and stare at that patch of gold light. There he is—right there in front of me this entire time—the person I can talk to.

Striding forward, I step into the doorway and tap my knuckles against the frame. Coach Mackenzie, who’d been bent over and putting his things in a bag, sits up and looks toward the door. As quickly as it came, my courage fails. Am I really about to tell him about this? Say the words out loud, and sully the one place on this campus that I love?

“Kuemper,” he says, abandoning his bag and leaning forward, elbows on his desk. “Come in.”

“Hi, sir, I was just…you’re going home, though, so actually…” I hook a thumb back toward the hall and take a step backward. Nope. I’m not going to do this.

“Come in,” he repeats. “What can I do for you?”

“Oh, nothing, I just…well I just wanted to talk to you about something, but it’s not important. You should go home, it can wait.”

He stares at me, face giving away nothing.

“Home will still be there once we’re finished,” he says simply. I sit down in the chair in front of his desk, unsure whether my knees can be trusted to keep me standing.

“Okay, well…if I tell you something, you won’t…like, can you promise not to tell anyone else?” I flush, embarrassed to be implying that he’s a gossip. He doesn’t seem offended though, only contemplative.

“Anything you want to tell me will stay between us, unless you are about to confess to a crime, in which case we might need to reevaluate.”

I laugh, a harsh, gasping sound that sounds more like a sob. “No, it’s not that.”

He nods, standing up. I watch him, scared for a second that he’s leaving. But he only walks carefully around me and quietly shuts the door. Instead of taking a seat behind his desk again, he brings a chair closer to mine and sits down facing me. We could be two guys just having a friendly chat. He waits, letting the silence stretch until I’m comfortable enough to break it.

“So, you know last year when I missed a few days? I think my friend, Marcos, had called you…?”

“Yes. Because you were ill,” he fills in, nodding.

“Right. That’s not really…” I look down at my feet, because it’s easier to tell my shoelaces the story than it is to tell Coach Mackenzie.

I talk. It’s not smooth, or well explained, or even chronological. It’s a messy stream of consciousness that I toss at his feet, hoping he’ll be able to untangle it. He doesn’t interrupt a single time—no noise or movements made, as though he’s just a cardboard cutout of himself. I glance up from my shoes every now and then, and find his expression unchanged. I’m able to get everything out and then sit there, panting like I’ve just run a race. My throat is scratchy and I feel a little woozy, like expelling the words has excised a physical weight from my body.

“Uhm, so,” I wipe my sweaty palms on the thighs of my joggers, “I’m doing fine, obviously, and everything is okay. But, I want to…I want to do normal things again, like go on dates and…you know…and there is somebody that I really fucking—sorry—that I really like, but I completely screwed things up last night, and now I don’t know what to do. So, if you could maybe, uhm, if you could help me with…that.”

I finish, lamely, and slump back in my chair, exhausted. It feels good, having said it out loud. It also feels like I could go to bed and sleep for a week; maybe I should.

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