Page 4 of Wrap Around
How did this happen? How the hell did he end up here? Did he make this happen somehow? I can't figure out how that would work out, but the whole thing is impossible.
Am I being punished with the one temptation I couldn't resist?
He's already taken everything from me. Hockey is the only thing I have left. It’s the only part of our shared past that I've let myself keep. Who I was, where I came from, what I wanted—all of it is gone.
I fled before dawn the morning after my world crashed down around me. Took a bus to Nashville, where an old teammate let me sleep on his couch. I got a job mopping floors at a shitty ice rink, sharpening skates for kids with more promise than I had left. I was drowning in my pain, but the ice kept me sane. While working on my GED online, I focused on that job like it was my last lifeline. I showed up early, stayed late, and hit the ice any chance I got. A local peewee coach took notice and told me about a showcase tournament that was coming up. I entered on a whim, no sponsor, no support. No name, no past. But I skated like the devil was behind me and showed no fear when defending my team’s zone with everything I had. And it paid off. A scouttook a chance on me, and I got the chance to go to training camp in Arizona. Exactly one thousand eight hundred and fifty-two miles from home, but it still didn't feel far enough.
Then came the call that a NHL farm team was interested in me. It was more than I could have hoped for. The Red Valley Blaze in Alberta, Canada. A new country, and another thousand miles between me and my pain.
I took the position. Not just because it was my shot at eventually getting to the NHL, but because it was about as far as I could get from the person I used to be. I could remake myself in a whole other country.
I've never once called home. I left a note on the kitchen counter for my mom, and my Bible in my father's study, an earmark left as an explanation for my absence:
“Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” (2 Timothy 2:22)
My dad, who’d overseen my years of struggle, work, and prayers to redeem myself, probably understood.
My sister sent me an email with a picture of my name on the bulletin board prayer list, but other than that, I'm a ghost to them. My father has never mentioned me publicly that I'm aware of. A sports reporter went to my hometown after I made some sports news headlines as an upstart future draft pick, looking to interview my family and friends for a piece on my rags to riches story. My father rebuked them in the name of the Lord and slammed the door in their face. The rest of the congregation, which is pretty much everyone in our small rural town, followed his example.
Meanwhile, I was in the thick of it. I pushed harder. Trained longer. Ran drills until I puked. Skated until I was ready to collapse, until I was walking away from every practice so tired my wobbly legs could barely hold me up. And I'd fall into bed each night too exhausted to think. Too sore to remember the boy with messy dark hair and freckles, who kissed me like I meant something to him, then tore the rug out from under me like it never happened. Like he hadn't just opened up an entire world of possibilities, only to slam the closet door and lock it shut again.
Now he's here. I can't get over how he could possibly be here.
Is this what I get for running?
Is this my punishment for falling?
Or is this just a reminder that no matter how hard I work, no matter how far from home I run, no matter who I pretend to be, it all comes back to bite you in the end.
The first official day of camp is all drills and discipline. Sprints until your lungs burn and your legs give out. Stick work until your fingers are numb. Puck control, passing, line rotations, and skating drills that make your thighs scream. It’s Hell on a good day.
This week, it's worse. Far worse.
Silas is on my line. Because of course he is.
Coach doesn't know what he's doing, putting us on the same line. Or maybe he does, considering we’ve been playing together since we got our first pair of skates. Maybe he sees the undeniable chemistry born from a lifetime of reading each other on the ice. It's still there. The rhythm, the instinct, the unspoken connection that once made us unstoppable.
Defending Silas and helping him make big plays is easy. I know where he's going to be before he gets there. I know exactly how fast he'll cut across the blue line and exactly when he'll dish the puck. It's in my blood and in my bones. We move like we were made to move together.
It makes me sick.
I hate that I can feel him before I see him. His presence brushes across the back of my neck every time he changes direction. It’s like the air bends around him and pulls me in the right position.
We run one of our old plays during a scrimmage without even meaning to. I swing wide, and he hits me with a pass just over the blue line. I dish it back while he trails in behind, fakes the drop to confuse the man covering him, then rips a clean shot directly into the goal. The moment the puck hits the net, we move in to bump fists like we're sixteen again. He smiles at me, celebrating the victory, relishing in the ease of playing with each other again.
Fucking smiles at me.
I hate it.
I hate it so much that I start botching the plays on purpose. I shoulder-check him every time I pass, and I hang back just enough to let the opposition slam into him whenever I get the chance. I hold on to the puck too long when he’s calling for it, and when I do pass, I shoot it too hard. He scrambles to keep up with my bullshit, and we end up losing the scrimmage. We earn extra drills thanks to my bullshit.
At the end of one of our line rush drills, while Silas is laughing with one of the other guys about Coach being a hard-ass, I cut across the zone and stop short, spraying him with ice as he skates towards the slot. Silas doesn’t even flinch. He just looks at me like he expected it. Like he sees me unraveling in real time and feels sorry for me.
And it pisses me off even more. It takes everything in me not to throw down my gloves and start a brawl.
I want to hurt him.
Coach Dempsey keeps our line back for extra passing drills, griping the whole time about the effortless plays he saw at the start of the scrimmage and where the hellthoseplayers went.
