Page 13 of Gravity
Bryce:C’est tiguidou.There’s a burger place on the way. We can stop there for lunch?
Me:Cool. Can’t wait.
My message flashesDelivered, thenRead. I wait, in case he’s going to reply. My mini fridge hums. The digits on the clock radio flip to 5:01 a.m.
Three dots appear on the screen, then vanish. Appear again, and fade. My eyelids are drooping and my blinks are getting longer. When his message arrives, though, a bolt of electricity crackles against my nerve endings, and I am suddenly wide awake.
Bryce:You are the best player I have ever shared the ice with, Hunter. Tonight wasmerveilleux.
What do you say to that? It’s my turn to send three little dots in bursts as I type and delete, type and delete.
Bryce is also typing, and his text arrives before I can scrape a coherent sequence of words together.
Bryce:Bonne nuit.À bientôt.
I reread his texts for ten minutes before I power down my phone.
ChapterSix
Bryce
Hunter and I hike Red Rock Canyon for three hours, weaving our way through the layer-cake mountains carved in a dozen shades of ochre and rust. I thought his thigh would bother him on the hike and I tried to keep to the easier paths, but he said the workout was opening up knots and loosening sore muscles in a way he hadn’t felt in weeks.
The desolation of the desert always mesmerizes me. As we meander through ancient riverbeds and scramble over boulder fields, and then climb to the top of the low mountain overlooking the Las Vegas Valley, I tumble into the questions that are circling around my black holes. Am I drawn to this place because it has no end, like this wondering that’s seized me?
Hunter watches the sunlight drift over the desert and the lights of Las Vegas shimmer like a firestorm.
I watch him.
We have to hustle on our way back, and we make it to the arena and into the dressing room with only minutes to spare, arriving sweaty and disheveled like we’ve already played a game, not like we are about to suit up for one.Our teammates stare.
The arena isn’t even half full when we take to the ice, but the cheers nearly blow off the roof. I’d woken up to headlines from ESPN, Sportsnet, and the NHL, each one trying to one up the other to describe Hunter and my twenty-minute showing the night before.“The kind of play you only see on championship teams.” “Teamwork you’d expect out of Olympic level players, not two guys who just met.” “Has Bryce Michel finally found someone who can keep up with him?”
Now, the world is hungry for more. The crowd stamps their feet, screams out their lungs, shouts Hunter and my names.
I barely notice.
He and I glide around the ice, skating together and then apart, forward and backward, looping around each other, always with our gazes locked.
To me, there is no one here but him.
We warm up, and my flaring fears settle. I’d worried that last night was a fluke, a brush of happenstance and illusion, and that what I felt unfurling between us wasn’t destiny or the impossible made real, but only knife-edge adrenaline and the sharp cut of too-quick nerves.
But we move and pass and skate like we share one mind. I turn and he’s there. We weave, then dart toward each other. Our skates carve into the ice, our angles sharpening, our speed becoming daring. And still our passes connect. Still, we are together.It's like I can't escape him.Et non, I do not want to. He can trap me in his gravitypour toujours.
By the time the puck drops, everyone knows it’s over. Forget the game. The real event tonight is Hunter and me.
We have one other player on our three-on-three line, a veteran defenseman from New York. He stretches with his stick across his shoulders and says, “Yeah, you guys go do your thing. I’ll be back here, hanging out with Yvan.” Yvan is the goalie, and he had so little to do during last night’s game that he pushed his mask to the top of his head and leaned on his stick for ten minutes.
We fly. Passes, goals, and Hunter's eyes finding mine. We stay on for minutes, then go off for a line change and slump against each other’s shoulder. We’re breathing in time, sharing the same rhythm with each inhale and exhale. Maybe our hearts are beating the same, too. Anything is possible tonight.
We start the final minute of play with a face-off after a frustrated player from the Western Conference flips the puck over the glass and into the crowd. Hunter wins and shoots the puck to me. Our erstwhile linemate disrupts the other team’s rush while I push up the right wing. It’s me and the defender, one on one. I pull back as if I’m going to slap the puck, but instead send it zipping to the slot, to Hunter. He opens up, elbow high and strong like I showed him, rear skate back, power pushing into him—
The puck slams into the back of the net.
We collide at center ice, arms around each other, cheering as the crowd chants our names and hollers our shared number. The lights are dazzling. The music is pounding. We are untouchable. We are greatness squared.
And he is—
