Page 19 of Love Me, Goaltender

He shrugged, still engrossed in the machinery. “Yeah,I guess.”

“Did your parents want you to take over the rink after them?”

“God, no. Ever since I joined my first hockey team, they knew I was going to go pro. My dad told me to get onto the ice every chance I got, and itpaid off.”

I would fucking say. The man was an absolute beast on the ice, which made sense; he probably learned to skate before he could even walk. For most kids, going to the NHL was the goal, the absolute dream. And it seemed to come easy for Kingston. I couldn’t see him being anything other than what he was. It was like he was destined to be Sebastian “The King” Kingston, but I wondered if he ever wanted to be anything other than a professional hockey player.

“Can you read off the percentage on that screen?” Kingston suddenly asked me, pointing at a reader ofsome kind.

I walked over, and the percentage was, thankfully, easy to find. “Ninety-six percent,” Ireported.

“That’ll do,” he said, flipped a few switches, then turned around, a satisfied smirk on his face. Huh, he hadn’t even looked that proud when he got that awesome shot past meyesterday.

“You fixed it?” I asked. I had been slightly doubtful if he would be ableto do it.

“Let’s see.” He studied a panel for a moment, then reached out and flipped a switch. The room filled with a deafening roar as if an engine had suddenly come to life.

I slapped my hands over my ear and looked at Kingston, impressed. He did it. He gave me athumbs up.

We quickly left the room and went to hunt down Coach Leland. Finding him in an office on the other side of the rink, we told him the good news. He was surprised that Kingston had fixed it that fast. It had taken less than twenty minutes. Kingston told Leland the ice should be good by the time the kids started arriving, but Leland should have the owner check things over still.

Leland thanked him and handed Kingston a black leather binder. We left him in his office and went to sit on the stands.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the binder.

“It’s the Coach’s drills and notes about the team. We need to see what they’re working on and struggling with so we can build a good lesson for them this morning. We’ve only got a couple hours before the kidsshow up.”

I gawked down at him as his words registered. “A couplehours? We got here two and a half hours early?”

Kingston nodded while studying the binders. “I wanted to bring you early so we could go over the plan for practice. Good thing too, since we had to flip the rinkbreakers.”

Okay. But two hours early was still excessive just to go over a lesson plan for kids. At least, that’s what I thought. Apparently, Kingston took this quite seriously. Something he proved further when he whipped out a notebook from his bag and flipped it open to show a hand-drawnschedule.

“Okay, so we’re going to start with an introduction from the kids. I cycle around the city mostly, so I haven’t met this group of kids yet. Then I’ll let you lead the stretching.”

He was dedicated. Or maybe it was called being a control freak. I was just as dedicated to my charity back in Seattle, and I always made sure the kids had a fun and educational time, but this man was taking it to a whole other level.

He went on for a while, referring to Coach Leland’s notes and outlining every minute of the schedule. I paid as much attention as I could, although I admittedly zoned out a couple times. By the time he was done, we had about forty-five minutes left before practice and the zamboni was ready tocome out.

While it was doing its route around the ice, Kingston and I got geared up. Once we were dressed and the zamboni was done, we got onto the fresh ice, Kingston hauling the last bag with him. I took a few laps in full gear around the rink, warming up a little and enjoying the crisp air coming up off the surface of the ice.

As I was doing my lap, Coach Leland and the ice rink owner, who had shown up mid-way through outlining our lesson plan, brought the nets onto the ice and stuck them into their places. As Kingston had a quick chat with them, I went up to one of the goals and dropped my mask, stick, gloves, and water bottle on the top. By the time I joined Kingston at the other side of the ice, the coach and ownerwere gone.

I helped him take out some of the equipment and set up multiple lines of tiny cones.

According to Leland’s notes, the kids were working on improving their stickhandling. I doubted I could do much to help them improve on that, but Kingston had some of the best hands in the league. We set the cones up on half of the ice, leaving the other half clear.

With time to kill before the kiddos were supposed to show up, we skated around slowly, loosening upour legs.

“Want to race?” Kingston asked, pointing at the lines of tiny orange cones.

I perked up in interest. “Hell yeah! Give me your extra stick.” He went and grabbed it from the bench outside. My goalie stick would have been too clunky to do this well. Not that I expected to win. I wasn’t that crazy. But Iwasa professional athlete; I would never turn down achallenge.

Kingston dumped out a bucket of pucks and we both took one. Then I lined up at one of the lines, Kingston taking the neighboring one.

I counted us down—ready and go! We wove the pucks between the cones, going as fast as possible while also trying not to knock them over. Halfway through my line, I stopped hearing the cuts of Kingston’s blade against the ice, but I refused to look up and continued, focusing on my puck. And … done!

Kingston was leaning against his stick, smiling down at me. Cocky bastard. We looked at our lines. A half-dozen of my cones were knocked over, more than that moved out of their original places. Kingston’s line? Kingston’s line was fuckingflawless.

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