Page 100 of Exes That Puck
Zeke plays like he doesn’t know the scouts are there, but I can tell he does. There’s an extra precision to his passes, a calculated aggression that’s different from his usual style. When he scores in the second period—a beautiful wrist shot that finds the top corner—the entire arena erupts. Including the suits.
We win 4-1. As the team celebrates on the ice, I watch Zeke scan the stands until he finds me. He raises his stick in a small salute, and I wave back, my heart doing complicated things in my chest.
Twenty minutes later, he emerges from the locker room looking like he’s trying very hard to appear casual.
“Good game,” I say when he reaches me.
“Thanks.” He slings his gear bag over his shoulder. “You ready?”
“Are you going to tell me about the scouts, or are we pretending they weren’t there?”
He stops walking and looks at me. “What?”
“Kind of hard to miss. Payton told me about it.”
We get to his truck before he says anything else. He tosses his bag in the back and leans against the tailgate.
“Coach pulled me aside after the game,” he says. “Three teams are interested. They want to meet with me next week.”
“That’s amazing.”
“Is it?”
I study his face. “You don’t look like someone who just got scouted by the NHL.”
“Because I keep thinking about what it means…for us.”
There it is. The conversation we’ve been avoiding.
“What do you want it to mean?”
He runs his hands through his hair. “I want to play hockey. I’ve wanted that since I was six years old.”
“But?”
“But I also want you. And I know that’s not fair to ask you to follow me around the country while you’re trying to build your own career.”
I sit on the tailgate next to him. Above us, the parking lot lights buzz and flicker, and students stream past heading to bars or back to dorms while we sit here talking about potentially upending our entire lives.
“What if we didn’t have to choose?” I ask.
He looks at me.
“What if we figured it out as we go? Like everything else we’ve done since we’ve been back together.”
He looks at me skeptically. “Long distance won’t be our strong suit. Remember when you went home for three weeks, and we broke up twice?”
“We were different then. We didn’t know how to communicate without fighting.”
“And now we do?”
“Most of the time.”
He laughs, but it sounds stressed. “Most of the time isn’t going to cut it when I’m in Calgary and you’re here finishing school.”
“Who says I’d stay here?”
The question surprises both of us. I hadn’t planned to say it, but now that I have, I realize I mean it.
