Page 49 of Gravity
After lunch,the team packs back onto the bus to head to the arena. Janne brings a hacky-sack, and we all spend the twenty-minute ride trying to keep the thing in the air despite the jerky stops and starts and rolling city turns.
At the arena, it's barely-organized chaos. Half the team needs wrapping or taping. MacKenzie and Etienne need their groins taped, and Valery needs both knees wrapped and braced. Bryce took a hit against the boards two games ago and has been wrapping his ribs since, even though he insists he's fine. I'm taping my left shoulder and right wrist.
We heckle each other in the trainer's room, making slingshots out of underwrap and dirty socks, and when we're finally wrapped, taped, and made playable, the trainers throw us all out.
Everyone who needed taping has to dress in a rush because we're told we're late and the rest of the team is already on the ice. Of course, that's a lie, and our teammates greet us with jeers and laughs and squirts from their water bottles as they lounge in the stadium seats over the tunnel entrance. The Zamboni is still clearing the rink after Vancouver's morning practice.
Bryce and I drift to the far side of the stands to stretch alone while the Zamboni hums. No one can see what we're doing, and we get away with hand-holds and blown kisses and teasing each other. “Tu me fais tourner la tête,” I tell him.
“Je brûle de désir pour toi,” he breathes.
When the ice is clear, the team storms onto the glassy surface, chasing each other to stretch their legs. Janne and Etienne try to skate the blue line with the ends of their sticks balanced on their noses.
Coach Richelieu blows the whistle to start practice before we descend into all-out shambles, and he divides us all into our lines—first line, second line, third line, fourth line—for sprints.
He starts with the fourth and tells them to sprint the length of the ice until he says stop. Sixty seconds later, about the length of a shift on-ice during a game, he blows them to a halt and sends the third line out on the same sprint. They skate for forty seconds before he blows them dead, then sends out the second line, and then our line. We sprint for ninety seconds, and he shouts, “Bunny and Honey, keep skating. The rest of you, bring it in.”
MacKenzie, Etienne, and Slava laugh at the two of us. Coach sends the fourth line out again—and then blows them to a halt—and then sends the third, the second, and our first line out on another round-robin of short sprints. It's been four minutes, and Bryce and I are still tearing up and down the ice. Our teammates have rotated out—
And I understand. I laugh as I make the turn at the goal line and start rushing up the rink again. Bryce is laughing. He gets it, too.
Finally, after five minutes, Coach blows the drill dead. Bryce and I skate back to center ice with sweat pouring down our faces. Our sweaters are soaked, and we're breathing hard like we do in games. Like we were last night, when Bryce and I stayed on and ignored our shift change. We ignored it a few times, actually. We didn't want to get off the ice.
“You two seem to like being out there for five minutes at a time. Thought I'd give you guys what you want.” Coach eyes us, but his lips are curling upward. The rest of the team slaps their sticks on the ice as they howl.
“Mais oui, Coach.” Bryce straightens. He's got a devil-may-care grin on, and both his hands are propped on the end of his stick. “I'll skate all day. Give me more. Someone has to set the rest of thesescélératsup for their hat tricks and goals.”
More shouts, this time of faux outrage, and Coach barks out a laugh. “Allez, allez. Scrimmage time.”
We move through scrimmage to the end of practice, then into stretches, and then back to the dressing room, where we eat tacos and burritos that Coach brings in for dinner. After, we crumple the foil wrappers into one giant ball and play soccer with it, right there in the dressing room. Twenty grown men, half dressed in socks and compression leggings and no shirts, kicking around a lumpy ball of aluminum foil. MacKenzie wraps Bryce up in a pretend tackle and lifts him off his feet to carry him away while Valery and Etienne plow their way across the dressing room and sink the aluminum ball into the back of the garbage can we've tilted on its side for our pretend goal.
Forty minutes before the game, Coach reappears. We're in disarray, and he shouts us back on track while we hurriedly finish slapping on our pads and gear and sweaters.
Skates are sharpened. Sticks are taped. We psych each other up with friendly taunts about errant pucks in practice or slipped skates or whiffs from the game last night, the night before, or the night before. High energy, high octane. Brothers in arms. A team ascendent. We come together in the hallway that leads to the ice and throw our arms around each other's shoulders.“Allez Montréal!”
Twenty-four hours after we took to the ice in Edmonton, we take the ice again in Vancouver. From city to city, hotel to bus to plane to bus to hotel, from team meals to practice to warmups to the dressing room. This team has come together again and again and again. We are unstoppable when we are united, and we're proving it.
Tonight, we'll prove it yet again.
* * *
After the win.After the celebration in the locker room. After the high-fives and the cheers. After the bus ride, the return to the hotel, and the rendezvous for the post-game team dinner. After the toasts. After everything, Bryce and I escape to our room.
We're alone in the elevator, for once, and I pull Bryce to me for a kiss. I suck his lip in between my teeth and nibble, then bury my face at the juncture of his jaw and his throat. I taste game sweat and the chill of the ice. His hands flutter at my waist, and he gasps my name on a shaking exhale.
We make it to our room unseen, which is good, because we don't let go of each other's hands. We're taking so many risks, but we can't stop. I can't stop touching him. Can't stop gazing into his eyes or dragging my thumb across the back of his hand. I can't not pull him in for another kiss, too, and I wrap him in my arms as I work the keycard into the lock.
Then we're inside, and we kiss across the room, kiss across the bed, kiss as we strip each other gently.
He has fresh bruises from tonight's game—a high stick to the cheek and a slash to the back of his knee. He took another crunch against the boards, and the bruises on his ribs are vivid, every shade of royal purple and bile yellow. I lay my palm over the largest like I can take away the hurt.
He rolls me on top of him, and then he traces my own bruises with his fingertips. There are deep swirls of midnight-black on my thighs and hips, red welts from cross-checks along my shoulders. This game is violent, and by now, even the strongest of our bodies are breaking down. Other teams are waning, falling into fatigue, but we're drawing strength from each other. We keep rising higher.
It still hurts at the end of the day.
We're gentle tonight, rocking slowly against each other. We kiss in time with our thrusts, long and smooth and lingering. Every part of us is touching. Fingers tangled, lips locked, tongues gliding. Thighs on thighs, hips pressed, chest to chest. I exhale, and he breathes in. He exhales, and I take him inside of me. Forget the hotel, the arena, the game. Forget legacy and consequence. We do not exist outside of this room.
If my life has led me to one destination, it's here. Not to hockey, but to him. I'll make love to him until the stars fall from the sky.
