Page 12 of Delay of Game

Nate shuffled his mental rolodex around as he watched them interacting, and particularly made a note to talk to Lee, or have Sakari Mäkelä, the Cons’ longtime goalie, reach out to him. He’d have to go and talk to them all eventually, but it always took him some time to work up to it. Nate knew it was dumb as hell to be so nervous about talking torookies, especially when they all looked up to him because he was the captain of the team they all hoped they’d be playing for this season or next. But that was Nate’s brain: he’d had to learn how to work around it.

A flash of red, white, and blue out of the corner of his eye.

Zach, on the ice, in his practice gear.

“You don’t usually come to the rookie camp,” Nate said, when Zach had skated over to him and bumped his shoulder against Nate’s.

“I’m not usually in Philly this early,” Zach said. His tone was light, joking. He was smiling his media smile, the one that didn’t really reach his eyes.

Nate looked back out at the rookies, who were gathering at center ice for the inevitable speeches. He would have to give one himself. “Why did you come back so early, by the way?”

Zach didn’t look at him either. His eyes were on Gagnon, jokingly shoving a hand at Korhonen’s shoulder, shaking out his fist with an exaggerated wince like the kid’s solid muscle had hurt him. “Oh, you know. Just had a few things I had to get done.”

Nate took a deep breath. His face felt hot, the same way it had felt that night on his roof deck when he’d made some extremely stupid decisions. “Look, Zach, about the—about the roof. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make things weird.”

Zach exploded, suddenly, with laughter. When he laughed, his whole face crinkled up, his warm brown eyes almost shut. You could see his dimples when he did it, his white teeth, his red tongue. He laughed with his whole body. It sounded too loud in the low hum of the rink. The rookies all turned to stare at them, but Zach ignored them. “You thoughtthatmade things weird instead of ignoring—oh, Nathaniel, you are a piece of fuckin’ work sometimes, you know?”

“Well, yeah. You know this about me, bud.”

Zach looked fond as hell, and that made it a little easier to bear. “Well, stop making it weird and get back to being normal. I miss hanging out with you, Cap.”

The tension in Nate’s shoulders let out, infinitesimally. It felt like he could start breathing again. “I gotta go talk to them now, you know.”

“Be right behind you.”

One day, Nate knew he wouldn’t have Zach to back him up, to make it easier. That day wasn’t now. He nodded and skated, without another word, for the center dot.

Zach had only ever been to one rookie camp before this one. In Montreal, he’d made the team right out of his first training camp, and he’d never looked back. He’d been with the Cons for two full seasons now, and he’d worn the A for one of them, but he was still usually in BC at this point in the year. So it just hadn’t been possible. They didn’t reallyneedhim there either, because rookie camps were about the rookies and the staff, not the veteran players. But Nate always went, and Nate had been avoiding him, so the logical way to get past that was to show up too.

It turned out to be a good idea, so he stuck around even after he’d managed to convince Nate to stop being weird. It was fun to be out on the ice again. He never stopped skating very long, even in the offseason, but it was good to get back early. It was also fun to watch the prospects interacting with each other and with Nate.

The thing about Nate was that he was really good at what he did, but he never seemed to realize it. Zach had been his best friend going on three seasons now and had watched him from the moment that Coach Cote announced that he’d be wearing the C. Zach had been there to see his evolution from throwing up after every game, to barely being able to give a speech, to understanding when players were having a rough time—like Mike Sato had been last year—to now, checking in with each of the guys to see how they felt their camp was going and what their expectations were for the next year.

“He’s really grown into it, huh?” Coach Ford asked. He was the assistant coach who worked with the forwards and on the power play; he was older than Cote and had survived from the last regime, but it was clear that there were no hard feelings about who’d ended up with the golden clipboard. Just like Zach would never have wanted to be captain, it was clear that Coach Ford was perfectly happy where he was.

“Yeah,” Zach agreed. “But, you know. He works really hard at it.”

They both watched Nate, who was demonstrating to Korhonen how to do one of the drills. It was deceptively difficult; a weight-shifting and stick-handling exercise with added crossovers that required precision and concentration to get right. The first time most of the rookies had skated it, they’d fallen out of formation easily. Nate did it as naturally as he breathed, but slowly, taking the time to explain.

“I had my doubts at first, but he’s proven me wrong.”

For a second Zach felt the prickly annoyance he always felt when someone insulted Nate, even though this wasn’t an insult. Instead of giving in to it, he just nodded and turned his attention back to the kids. He was particularly interested in Gagnon, a prospect who hadn’t been on the radar for the last few seasons but had a tenacity that Zach liked. There was promise there, even before he’d had his breakout season in the Quebec major junior league.

After the drills finished and the kids started to file off the ice for the locker rooms, Gagnon hesitated.

“Let me guess,” Zach said. “You like to be the last one off the ice?”

“How’d you know?” Gagnon asked. He had a smattering of freckles across his nose, a narrow, pointed face and big brown eyes, almost the same color as his dark red hair. The effect reminded Zach a little bit of a dappled hound dog, the kind that you saw in old paintings of hunting unicorns in the forest. One specific painting that he and Nate had seen, the one time they went to the art museum.

“I do the same thing. My suggestion is don’t let people know about it, if you can help it.”

“Why not?”

“Guys on the other teams’ll do their best to fuck with you, yeah? All kinds of mind games and waiting it out. And then it’s just extra stress you don’t need.”

Gagnon’s eyes widened again. “Thanks.”

“Any time. How’re you settling in?”

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