Page 43 of Gravity
The tension in the room snaps. There are smiles, a few chuckles. MacKenzie grabs a balled-up wad of stick tape and hurls it toward my belly. I bat it back before sitting and grabbing my pads.
Etienne and Janne are talking again. Slava has been eyeing Hunter, but now he turns to him and says something in his ear, and Hunter nods. Valery remains silently watching everything—watchingme. I give him a nod, and he goes back to arranging his pads in the order he'll strap them on. Shoulders, ribs, neck gaiter, left leg, right leg.
I hold my sweater in my lap and run my fingers across my name and number.I wear your number. I wear your number, too.
This is going to be a good game.
* * *
We hitthe ice with a vivaciousness that has been missing for weeks. Maybe it's been missing since before the All-Star Weekend, even, because before I went to Vegas, I was already struggling with who I was and what it meant that I was wondering about a man in my arms and in my bed. But now the wonder is gone. Questions have been asked and answered.
Hunter and I lingered in the tunnel, and we stole a moment to tangle our fingers together in the shadows.
On the ice, it's skate drills, stretches, and more skate drills. Hunter and I end up across from each other as we stretch, which is a mistake on my part. I flush center-of-the-sun hot as he spreads his thighs and straddles the ice, moving the same way he did just hours ago when we were making love. His hips to mine, him rocking into me, grinding us together, cock to cock, my thighs wrapped tight around his waist—
I go belly down and sink my burning face to the ice.Tabernak.
“It's too early for that, Bunny!” Etienne, finished with his stretches, skates behind me and pokes his stick into my back. “Allons-y, let's go shoot on Easy V.”
We take shots on Valery to warm up. He moves so quickly he's a blur in the net. Blocking high, then low. Kicking away pucks, then deflecting with his stick. He smacks shots away with his blocker and snatches them out of the air with his glove. A litter of stopped pucks surrounds him like offerings to a god. Very, very few slip past.
The defense peels away for their warm up, and then MacKenzie calls special teams for their own huddle. I stay with Valery, and soon, it's just him and me, one on one. Shot after shot after shot, until now we're both blurs, and I'm firing toward him from every angle around the crease. I take the puck on wraparounds, steep-angle drives from the point, close-in wristers from the slot. I beat him on half of my shots, and he saves the other half. We are perfectly matched—the best sniper versus the best goalie. By the last minute of warmup, we are both nearly feral in our glee.
I take one last shot, a point-blank wrister coming off a toe drag with a quick angle change. I show Valery a shot to his low stick side, but fire a rocket that arcs high over his opposite shoulder. It's a move that beats almost every goalie I go against, and it's a reliable goal-scorer for me.
But Valery knows me, and he snatches my puck out of mid-air, catching it the same way a baseball catcher snags a pitch and pulls it in. I smile. He flips up his mask. He is smiling, too.
This has been a ritual of ours. Or, at least, it was before. The last shot of warmup is always mine, and Valery always stops it. The best against the best, challenging each other, elevating each other. I have been too out of my skin for challenges and rituals these past weeks, which only accelerated my collapse and the disintegration of our team. Without our touchstones, we have fallen apart, lost individually when we are supposed to be united. Me, lost and terrorized by a self-fulfilling cycle of mortal fears. My teammates, left wide open hijacking self-doubts, paralyzing uncertainties, and fracturing resentments.
A team united—a fraternity, a brotherhood—is stronger than a force of nature. The sum of the whole is infinitely greater than the sum of its parts. But when a team collapses, they collapse as twenty men sinking into the miasma of their individual haunts. We each carry our own ghost stories with us, and they are always there, ready to drag out our ankles.
So we need this. They have been watching me and Valery, everyone bunched along the boards and grinning at the return of the familiar. We need a good warmup and a reminder of who we were before all this poisonous doubt slipped in and strained our bonds.I am here, I pledge as I skate, looking into each of my teammates' faces.I am herepour toi.
I have work to do to prove to everyone that I will not collapse on them again.Calisse, I will not. Not now, now that Iknow.The song I sang for Hunter echoes inside me. Even if I hold Hunter's hand for only a day, or only a week, a month, or a year before he and I are over, the truth has been set free. I know who I am.
Hunter zips by me, his blades slicing into the ice as he circles hard on a backwards cut. He has a mischievous look in his eye and a puck dancing on the end of his stick.
I take off after him. He sprints for the goal, slips behind the empty net, and races for the boards. We are neck and neck. I sling my stick out for a sweep check when he slams on the brakes. A moment later, he reverses direction, taking himself and the puck across the width of the ice as he throws me a grin.
MacKenzie joins in and calls for a pass from Hunter. Etienne follows, and MacKenzie and Etienne and Hunter play keep-away from me until Hunter switches sides and it's two on two. We turn thirty seconds into an all-out scramble. Poke checks and steals, laughs and taunts. It's boyhood hockey, the kind of wild abandon you only find when you've let go of everything. Pure fun for the sake of fun. Along the boards, our teammates cheer. Even Valery is smiling.
We're still catching our breath when it's time for the starting line to form up for the national anthem. There's only one tonight—we're playing Toronto, so the only anthem we'll hear is “O Canada.” I fist bump everyone coming off the ice, then take my place on the blue line. Next to me is MacKenzie, then Slava, then Etienne, and finally, Hunter. Valery stands behind us, his head bowed, as the anthem starts.
After, we circle like we're huddling on the ice. Our arms wrap around each other's shoulders. MacKenzie and Valery are bracketing me. Hunter is across the huddle with Etienne and Slava bracketing him. I hold his stare. He holds mine, and I swear I see his lips purse as if he's blowing me a kiss.
“Allez Montréal, mes frères.Vive les Étoiles,” I say. Our heads bow in until our helmets touch, and we shout, “Allez Montréal!”
* * *
We don't just win.We dominate.
We play a game of hockey that is close to perfection for all of us, as if we woke up that morning and decided today will be the best day of our lives. It's classic Montréal excellence, but better. Better because Hunter is here now, a part of us, better because questions have been asked and answered, better because I have found my way back to my brothers. Better because of a hundred reasons we will never be able to pinpoint.
I score two goals on my own, and set MacKenzie up on three assists, one in each period, for his first hat trick. The roof of the arena nearly blows off when he slides the puck into Toronto's goal during the third period, and we have to take an eight minute pause during the game to clean up all the hats the fans throw on the ice. MacKenzie skates beneath thunderous applause, and when it doesn't stop, I send him back out for another lap, and then another. He drags me with him the third time, and we skate with our arms around each other's waists as we hold our sticks up to the crowd.
Slava and Etienne both earn assists. Valery gives us a shutout. He took over fifty shots during the game but not a single one got through him.
Hunter was outstanding. He and I connected on the ice like we did at the river and like we did in Vegas. Like we were born to play together. Like all our years of hockey were just one great warmup to the game we're playing now that we've found each other.
