Page 27 of Gravity
And I’m withering.
I’m awful in every game. I’m too tight, too wound up, too nervous. Too worried about Bryce. Too focused on trying to set him up for the big plays, the good passes, the great clears, that I miss everything. I end up settling for mediocre garbage dumps and scrambles. I’m not helping Bryce at all, and I’m not helping the team.
Being the quietest guy in the locker room has its disadvantages. When you’re quiet, no one notices when you go quieter. The slip from part of the group to not is subtle when you’re often on your own. No one can tell when you shift from enjoying the energy around you to removing yourself from it.
The difference, right now? It’s not me that's chosen to withdraw. I’m being shoved out, and I keep expecting to show up at the arena and find my gear and my sweater dumped on the side of the road and the team long gone.We moved the departure time up an hour and didn’t tell you. Here’s bus fare back to Carolina. Au revoir.It would serve me right.
I don’t know what to do.
I’m twenty-two. Half of my life has been spent playing this game, and I thought I’d spend at least a few more years playing beyond this. The sudden end of my career is coming at me way too fast, and my thoughts collide and fall to pieces when I think, like Bryce, aboutwhat happens next.
I barely know myself. I’m still trying out cereals to find my favorite. I haven't gone through any kind of soulful introspection, or done a deep examination of my life that others my age—who had to wrestle with college majors, career choices, and establishing themselves—have done.
I play hockey. My internal depth can be measured in millimeters.
How do I handlethis? A team in revolt and the best player in the league collapsing, and all of it happening… because ofme? How do I merge the Bryce I met in Vegas—the man I’ve worshipped for years, who lived in posters on the walls of my bedroom—with the living, breathing, agonizinglyaliveBryce Michel who I am playing with now?
How does hero worship shift into recognizing that your hero is a human being? And that he's more realbecausehe is a flesh and blood man?
How do I deal with the hurt I’ve caused? Everything happened so fast—
How do I know what I want, when I can’t even close my fingers around the current moment? Never mind what happened a moment ago, or what’s about to happen a moment from now.
I’m stuck in a breakaway, consequence and me facing off as we go eye to eye, and—
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
* * *
In the morning,I roll out of bed after a sleepless night and tug on my layers. Winter in Montréal is unlike anything I have experienced. There’s fun snow, and vacation-in-New Mexico snow, and weekend-ski-trip snow, but then there’s Montréal-in-the-depth-of-winter snow. It's March, and the drifts are still taller than a man. Sheets of ice thicker than what we skate on coat the ground. This cold isn’t bracing or invigorating, it’s soul-sucking.
I’m only outside for a few minutes, but I feel like an Arctic explorer from the turn of the last century in my parka and snow pants. Winter gear was the first thing I bought after I landed, and I got this outfit right there in the airport. My trade to Montréal happened in a matter of hours, and I was put on a plane with a duffel bag and told to deal with the details later. For now, I’m living in a hotel room near the arena incentre-ville. Everything I own fits into a suitcase, and I measure time by games, practices, and how often I need to request refills of the complimentary shampoo at the front desk. Another two days until I’ll need to ask again.
Montréal experienced a grueling stretch of punishing cold while we were on the road. This is Canada, though, so people have taken to the frozen streets with jubilation to play hockey.
Centre-villeis a rattlesnake den of alleys and one way streets, and even though the hotel I've been put in is as close to the arena as I can be, I still get turned around in the blurry ice-and-snow-covered maze. I slide across the hotel parking lot on glare ice, wander down an alley past a McDonalds, turn the wrong way at a Starbucks, and then finally slip my way to the player’s entrance.
There’s almost no one here. It’s too early and too frigid, and the rest of the team is sleeping off our road trip. We have a rare two days to rest before our next game.
The arena is cavernous, and as empty as a crypt. Encased in ice and shrouded by the weak light of a leaden dawn, it feels haunted, like a ship lost at sea. I follow the sounds of skates cutting into the ice and the slam of pucks against boards and glass into the bowl. Thousands of empty red seats form waves that seem to rise around the rink, as if they're a tsunami about to crash down on the lone figure circling in ever-tightening spirals.
There are only a few spotlights turned on over center ice, and Bryce glides in and out of their milky puddles. Pucks litter the surface like a Rorschach inkblot around him. His gaze is distant, and he has his stick braced over his thighs, knuckles white where he’s clenching the carbon fiber. He’s in compression leggings and a hoodie, and he’s been here long enough that sweat has soaked through on his chest and his back. His sleeves are pushed up to his elbows.
He’s gorgeous.
I knew he'd be here. My boots crunch when I take my first step out onto the rink.
Bryce whirls, cutting a hard edge as he twists toward me. “Calisse,” he breathes. “What areyoudoing here?”
“We've got to talk.”
He turns and tips his head back, staring into the lights. “Non.”
“We have to. Bryce, we can’t go on like this—”
“Je sais que!” he roars. He throws his stick, and it spins like a boomerang until it slams against the boards. “Je suis détruit!Mon Dieu, I've lost everything!”
“That’s not true.”
