The locker room after open ice was always empty at this hour- no audience but Miles and the unusual echo in a space designed for thirty now holding just one․ He sat down on the bench in front of his stall and still had not taken off his skates․ He’d been sitting here for six minutes․ He knew he had because he’d watched the needle of the clock on the wall across from him go from 9:47 to 9:53‚ and he knew he hadn’t picked up his phone‚ and he hadn’t done a single one of the things a person normally did after leaving the ice․ He’d just sat there with his stick across his knees and the cold still in his lungs and the image of a puck hitting the back of his net playing on a loop behind his eyes․ Not the puck․ Her․ The way she’d looked at him afterwards had been endlessly patient․ She was completely indifferent to how much she impressed him‚ while that was the thing he couldn’t stop coming back to no matter how many times he tried to think about something else․ Every girl Miles had ever been with had wanted something from him the proximity to something that felt like it mattered․ They’d wanted him to notice them․ He’d built an entire personality around being worth noticing‚ and it had never once failed to produce the intended effect․ Harper Jones had scored on him and then stood at the blue line and waited‚ like the point was never whether he was impressed․ Like his being impressed was simply not information she required.
He replayed the shot.
The shoulder level, the follow-through, the clean committed weight transfer he’d taught her forty minutes before she used it against him.
He replayed the way she’d looked at the rink entrance in borrowed skates with a borrowed stick and hadn’t said a word about knowing how to use either.
He replayed her hair — wild and completely escaped from its tie, nothing like the careful ponytail she wore to every library session, framing her flushed face while she stood there in the cold waiting to see what he was going to do.
He replayed the moment he hadn’t had a single thing to say.
That had never happened before.
Not once in twenty-one years of being the person in the room who always had the next line.
He finally bent down․ He began unlacing his skates․ Stopped․ Stared into the middle distance․ “You’re doing it again‚” said a voice from the doorway․ Miles turned around․ Jude leaned against the doorframe in street clothes‚ his gym bag caught over one shoulder‚ looking like the guy who’d been reading Miles Miller since freshman orientation and had stopped being subtle about it․ “Practice ran late‚” said Miles․ “You weren’t at practice․ You were at open ice․” Jude came in‚ dropped his bag on the bench across the aisle‚ sat down with his elbows on his knees․ “Alone․” “I needed reps․” “You needed reps at nine forty-five on a Tuesday.” “My shot’s been off.” “Your shot is not off.
Your shot has never been off.” Jude looked at him steadily.
“Who were you with?” “Nobody.” “Miles.” “I was getting reps, Jude.” “And the girl who signed out equipment from Patterson at eight-thirty?
The one Patterson described as ‘serious looking, dark hair, borrowed skates size seven’?” Jude tilted his head.
“She getting reps too?” Miles resumed unlacing his skates with more attention than the task required.
“Patterson talks too much.” “Patterson talks exactly as much as necessary.” Jude leaned back, a slow smile breaking across his face — not the teasing kind, something quieter than that.
More interested.
“She can skate.” It wasn’t a question, which meant Patterson had said more than Miles would have liked.
“She can skate,” Miles confirmed.
“How’d she do?” He peeled off the first skate.
Set it down carefully.
“She scored.” The locker room went very quiet.
Jude stared at him.
“She scored on you.” “One shot.” “On you.” “It was open ice, not a real game situation—” “Miles.” Jude’s voice was not unkind.
“She scored on you.” “Once.” “That’s still once more than most of the guys we play against.” Jude was quiet for a second, studying him with that particular patience that was one of his most useful and most irritating qualities.
“How long did you stay after?” Miles didn’t answer.
“You taught her something, didn’t you.” Still nothing.
“You taught her something and then she used it to score on you and now you’re sitting here alone at nine fifty in the evening not taking off your skates.” “I’m taking off my skates.” “You’ve been taking off one skate for four minutes.” Miles pulled off the second skate with more force than necessary and shoved both of them into his bag.
The zipper caught.
He yanked it.
Jude watched all of this without comment, with the specific, careful quiet of someone who had more to say and had decided to wait.
His phone was on the shelf above his stall.
He’d put it there when he came in — face down, which was not his habit — and hadn’t touched it since.
He reached for it now.
Three texts from Kendall.
He saw the previews without unlocking the screen.
Hey stranger You coming to Delancey’s thing Friday?
Miles?
He set the phone back down.
Face down again.
Three weeks ago he would have replied within ten minutes.
Not because he particularly wanted to — Kendall required management rather than actual engagement, which was a distinction he hadn’t examined closely enough until recently — but because it was easier to reply than not to, easier to keep the peace, easier to let her believe the door was open a crack rather than deal with the conversation that came from closing it.
To this end he put down the phone and did not feel anything․ He grabbed his jacket from the hook‚ his bag from the floor‚ and was halfway to the door when his phone rang again․ Not with a text this time‚ but with a longer distinct pattern of vibrations․ A call․ He knew before he looked․ He knew even then․ His father’s name glowed on the screen‚ with the same flat authority it had always carried‚ the name that came attached to an area code from the city Miles hadn’t voluntarily returned to in eight months‚ the name that could rearrange his entire internal atmosphere in the time it took to read it․ He watched it ring․ He let it ring out․ Thirty seconds later came the voicemail he wouldn’t listen to tonight preceded by the text․ Richard Miller had learned that Miles didn’t answer the phone․ Miles got a text first․ It was the closest his father had ever adjusted to anything about him‚ and Miles didn’t know how to feel․ He unlocked the screen and read it․ Family dinner Sunday․ 7pm․ We were expecting you․ Vivienne is cooking dinner․ It would mean a great deal to her if you came․ Miles read it twice․ Vivienne is cooking․ Not we’d like to see you or it’s been too long or any of the hundred things a different kind of father might have written․ Vivienne who had moved into the house on Hawthorne Lane fourteen months after his mother’s funeral‚ who had arranged flowers in vases of a kind that had once held a different kind of flower‚ who cooked in a kitchen that sometimes‚ if he was in a certain kind of mood and a certain kind of tired‚ smelled faintly of something that was not her perfume․ It would mean a great deal to her․ Not to him.
Miles stood in the empty locker room and felt the familiar thing move through his chest — the specific heat of it, the thing that started in his sternum and radiated outward if he let it, the thing that had put his fist through a wall when he was fourteen and his stick into a locker at seventeen and that he had learned, with significant effort, to keep below the surface most of the time.
He breathed through it.
Once, twice.
He didn’t reply․ He put the phone in his jacket pocket‚ walked out of the locker room‚ walked down the corridor‚ walked out of the athletics building and into the cold‚ night air; November was doing its best to make everything feel appropriately bleak․ He stood on the steps for a moment‚ with nowhere particular to be‚ carrying the weight of the text in his chest alongside everything else․ He pulled out his phone, and opened his contacts list‚ scrolling past Kendall’s three texts․ Past Jude․ Past his agent’s name and his coach’s name and his father’s name sitting there like a judgment․ Found one for Harper (tutor)‚ which was what he’d saved the contact in as‚ back when the label had seemed like a useful reminder of what this was‚ and he stared at the name for a long moment in the cold․ And then he finally typed two words․ Round two?