Page 14 of The Rest of the Story
Bryce, somehow, got a hold of my cell phone number after Coates’ attack. He’d texted a heartfelt and very French apology and his best wishes for our team. We’d kept up a light back and forth, mostly about the games Montreal was playing and the teams they were beating.
I texted Bryce before the finals.
Bonne chance et bon courage!
Merci, mon ami. I wish you were here, playing us.
Me too. Win for us, eh?
Oui, mon ami!
* * *
We were all getting into the start of our summers, but staying close and keeping to the same routines we’d had through the season. Mornings together, skating, lunch, and then afternoons hanging out. Shea spent the mornings with Steve in rehab. Now he could limp one-way across the dressing room mostly pain-free before he needed his crutches.
In the afternoons, we spent time with Hailey, in both individual and group sessions. The vets were exorcizing what had happened to them, and now, Logan and Shea and Brody and Connor and the rest of the rookies understood what Gavin and Lawson and Gabe and Josh and Ridley and the others had gone through, and what they’d done to rescue them. If possible, we were drawing closer than ever before, resolidifying into something even stronger than what we’d been.
Kathy showed up at the end of one of our afternoon sessions. “I’d like you guys to come down to the arena at 1:00 p.m. tomorrow,” she said. “I don’t want the last time we wore skates to be our loss. Shea, come in your wheelchair.” Shea had a chair for when he was too exhausted, or when the pain got too high, or for situations where using crutches with a broken femur was far too dangerous.
We agreed, and then we all headed back to my place, where I was making dinner for everyone, players, wives, and kids. Shea was posted up at the island, sitting on his barstool, and he helped slice vegetables as he flirted and shot me bedroom eyes and blew me kisses when he thought no one was looking. Of course, half the team was, and they wolf whistled him and called him a minx as he pursed his lips around a cherry tomato.
The next afternoon, we marched into the players’ entrance at the arena downtown. We were quiet, the weight of the season and all our dashed dreams bearing down on us as we headed for the visitor’s dressing room and laced up our skates. Kathy had shut down the team dressing room. She was gutting it and renovating it, taking it down to oxygen molecules and then vacuuming those up. Getting Coates out of the fucking air.
The halls were dim, like someone didn’t know we were coming. Some of the guys were mumbling as they laced up their skates. Kathy wasn’t the type to forget details or leave us hanging, so this was fucking strange. When we trooped down the tunnel, we ran right into a dark arena and a solitary spotlight turned on at center ice.
The guys backed up like a snake coming to a sudden stop, looking left and right and to me, asking with wide eyes what was up. I was at the back, pushing Shea in his wheelchair, and he had his hand on top of mine on his shoulder.
That’s when the music started: “Hooked on a Feeling,” the ice-quaking chant that had fired us up for months. No, that was more than just the music. That was singing. Those stands werefull.
Oh, Kathy.“Go, guys,” I forced out. “Get out there.”
The spotlights hit them as they skated. “Hooked on a Feeling” roared, shouted at top volume by a full-house, stuffed-to-the-rafters crowd. When we were all on the ice, after I pushed Shea out in his wheelchair, the arena lights blazed, and we finally saweverything.
Packed stands, our fans on their feet, screaming our names, waving signs and banners and chanting. On the benches, our families, all of them, sitting where we sat during games and wearing our jerseys. Logan’s parents, Brody’s parents, Julia and her daughters, Lawson’s dad, Amelia and John, and, fuck me, even my mother. My mother, arm in arm with Amelia, looking cold and swallowed up by her brand-newElsherjersey, but beaming as she whooped and screamed my name.
There was Kathy, on skates and in between the benches, applauding along with the entire arena.
Then we saw the ice. The ice, the goddamn ice. The ice beneath our skates wascovered, every inch of it, in Outlaws-colored paint, hand-painted with messages written by the fans who were packed in around us and cheering at the top of their lungs. They had to have been there for hours, each and every one of them given a little section to write something to us. There were our names and numbers painted inside hearts, along with
We love you, Outlaws.
You made us believe in dreams again.
You changed this city forever.
Brody Zeagler, you’re my hero.
Future Stanley Cup Champions.
Outlaws Forever.
Thank you for a magical season.
Thank you for the memories.
Thank you for being you.
In between, everywhere we looked, were the lyrics to our anthem and our own special phrase,
