Page 33 of Ice Melts

“No, well sort of you are. And your boss wants you to be. You’re right in the middle of it all.”

“I don’t want to be here. I don’t love what my job requires me to do most of the time.” She leaned back in her chair. “But I do think someone needs to hold the players accountable. If their coaches won’t, then I will.” She closed her eyes. “At least I did. I don’t know what I’m going to do anymore.” She walked to Travis and put both hands on his hips, looking up into his face. “I don’t want to be at odds with you. I want to support you and the guys and your team. I want everything to be rosy and beautiful and easy. I’m still in a tough spot here. But I promise you, I’ll figure it out.”

He searched her eyes for several seconds and then nodded. “I know you want to do the right thing. I know this is tough. Every negative article you write about hockey hurts me, hurts my sport, hurts my team. I feel it. No one knows the good stuff, the top-notch guys I play with. They only hear the problems.”

She nodded. “I get that. I do. Travis, I promise I’ll figure this out. I’ll do it in a way that’s true to my personal mandate and to you.”

He looked out at the water over her head. “I have no idea how you are going to do that.”

“I don’t either, yet. But let me try? Can you do that?”

He ran a hand through his hair and then nodded. “I don’t really have a choice. But I do trust you. And I hope you can see both sides of this in a new way that helps you make your decisions.”

She nodded. “Absolutely. Travis. I never want to hurt you.”

“I’m going to believe you.” He nodded and then the corner of his mouth turned up. “And now, I think we both need a hard-core skate session!”

“Oh yeah we do. I need to skate this out. Now.”

They both ran to their rooms, pulled on all their warm clothes, long socks, hats and coats. With their gloves tucked under their arms, the ran to the end of the dock and laced up their skates, buttoned up their coats, and then pulled on their gloves.

Travis cranked up the music.Rain Came Downby The Magic Mushrooms. Which made Sarah’s smile grow. Then they dug out the shovels from the shed that sat at the edge of the water.

With both of them working, they cleared a decent sized rink in about thirty minutes. Sarah was warm enough to leave her coat on the dock and then skated out onto the smooth ice. Travis was right behind her. She tossed a puck down in front of them. But Travis shook his head. “First, let’s get you up in the air.”

She laughed. “What? Are you sure?”

“Do you think I can’t lift you?” He pretended to flex.

“Of course you can. I just thought you’d want to do some hockey drills.”

“Let’s do them both.” He started skating backwards in a circle around her, like any of the figure skaters.

She nodded. “Ok. Do you remember my old routine?”

“The one that took you to finals?”

“Yep, that one.”

“I think so.”

They started in the middle of their homemade rink, facing each other, their hands touching above their heads.

“I’ll count it down. Five, Six, Seven, Eight.”

They pushed off one another and began a wide circle, their feet weaving over and under until they came back to the center to begin their dance. Sarah relaxed into their old routine, theirold ways of relieving stress. They worked out old kinks and perfected the moves just for the sake of it until they were both out of breath. But Sarah wasn’t finished, she grabbed their old sticks and hit the puck out to the middle of the ice. “And now we work on your drills. I want to see you make your shootout. Every time.”

He smirked. “Did you see that last one?”

She skated up close to him. “I see every one.”

He tugged at her sweatshirt and pulled her close, their mouths almost touching. “Thank you.” He pressed his cold lips to hers, warming her in all the other ways.

She grinned beneath his mouth. “You’re welcome.”

Her stick hit the puck between his legs and she took off skating around him to go pick it up.

They raced and played one on one and went through all this drills for another hour or more until they had both lost most of their layers and they were sweating through their clothes. Out of breath, she came to sit beside him at the end of the dock. “That was incredible.”

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