Timestamps…
I looked at them again. The red notebook had shorthand lines of text added to each notable time entry. These were not the moments immediately after Patrick’s workout. His heart didn’t race once he was nearing the end of a session. It came after. It came in the locker room.
My own heartbeat quickened as I thought about it. Insecurities, maybe? Was he shy and worried in the locker room, afraid of changing in front of someone, doing it to prove to himself he had no reason to be scared? Or was it something else entirely? The thrill of being watched? Was he so excited to walk around naked that it could explain a spike in his heartbeat of this magnitude? And if so, what the hell was wrong with him? I’d have imagined exhibitionists in a park in the middle of the day keeping it together a little better than this.
Something wasn’t entirely right here. He simply didn’t have a reason for these waves that looked rather like panic attacks. His behavior had been cool and composed all that time, but what was going on inside his chest was a whole different matter.
And it begged to be investigated.
Maybe my approximate time entries and notes missed something. Maybe he’d jumped really fast and high for a few minutes in the locker room, and I’d simply forgotten that.
Or was he actually nervous when I watched him undress? Because he had been aware of it. He must have. He’d caught me looking too many times not to know by now. And maybe, if wishful thinking wasn’t impeding my ability to read my data, Patrick felt something other than sheer cockiness when he took his clothes off right before my eyes.
SIX
PATRICK
The first gameof the season took place on Tuesday evening when we hosted the Winter Hawks. As far as the season openers went, it could have been a disaster. The first period was, at least, slamming our morale into the ground and leaving us furious. Then again, if I looked into Shane’s notebook, I might discover that this fury was precisely what fueled the second period.
We bounced back, skating out there with a purpose. Losing the first game would suck. It was a terrible omen for the team and the year ahead. Despite the constant drills, all the blood and sweat, to lose was demoralizing in the worst way possible.
So when the third period began, Coach Webber made the mistake of keeping me back. The logic was to put some rookies into the thick of it, and the Hawks destroyed them.
“God damn,” I muttered to myself.
Every two or three minutes, the whistle blew, and the bodies scattered, rotating players in the rink so that everyone had their chance to play. My performance in the second period did little to convince Coach Webber to send me out and break the tie.
I glanced around and found him. The rink was hardly brimming with people, but I’d located Shane at the very start.My gaze went to him occasionally, and something strange passed through my chest whenever I found him looking.
Who was I playing for? I’d always imagined playing for myself, but Shane had put this worm of a thought into my head. And he was right. It mattered to me that people saw just how fast I was and how skilled.
Every time I looked, his gaze was on me. Even as I sat with a scowl on my face, Shane was scribbling into his notebook and looking at me. Scribbling about me.
I scratched my head and scoffed. Coach Webber strode in my direction and signaled to get ready. When the whistle blew again, I was in. We were deadlocked with the Hawks. Winning by a point or two wouldn’t do us any favors. We’d already spent a year not believing we could clear a real win, let alone a god streak.
The battle was the fiercest in the final minutes of the game. Every time we scored a point or two, the Hawks roared back with a vengeance. It wasn’t until I was out in the middle of it that our own fury reached its climax. Easton and Elio, Lennox and Connor, the best guys we had. We dispersed on the ice, looking like easy prey, giving the Hawks an extra reason to relax. They’d been kicking our asses for an hour. They had this in the bag.
Until we swept the ice with risky moves and sheer hope that we could pull it off. Elio used his size to attack, protect, and distract. Easton used his coolheadedness to assess and signal to the rest of us how to play it. And I? Well, I was just being myself.
It came by instinct. It was the thrill of the game, a pulse that sped up when my skates touched the ice. I thought this was what the soldiers felt when they had to climb over the trenches or scale the walls. It was a need like no other, a need to be there, to do this thing, consuming me until my mind was numb to everything else.
Sliding and skating, evading the oncoming attacks and passing through their defenses, I moved the puck between Easton and myself, losing it seemingly under the stick until their goalie’s attention snapped for the briefest of moments, and my hands jerked, sending the puck through.
The rink roared, or however much of it was filled for the opening game, and the Saints lost their minds, tossing their sticks away and skating around victoriously. It was a near miss, and I knew it better than anyone. I knew how close I’d come to losing that puck. Besides, leaving the rink with only a point of difference didn’t feel too victorious to me. I wanted us to be the best. I wanted us to be so far ahead of everyone else that there couldn’t be any debate about it.
Even so, it felt good to go to the locker room a little while later and have my shoulders slapped and shaken.
Shane followed me into the locker room with the entire team. He wore a pleased expression until he saw me looking at him, then wiped his face clean of emotions. He nodded curtly once, and that was the end of it.
Not even a “great job out there”?I sighed to myself before taking my jersey and protective gear off. Shane sat in the corner of the locker room while we all undressed and headed to the shower. He looked resolutely at his notebook and the words he had written there.
It was a far cry from the stolen glimpses of a near-naked body at the gym. I wasn’t sure if I should be relieved or disappointed. Yet as guys went into the shower, I lingered in the locker room, wearing only my boxer briefs. When the last of my teammates was in the other room, I stepped closer to Shane.
He looked up, his gaze skipping over me like rocks we used to throw into the lake.
“How did I do?” I asked.
Shane fixed his glasses and nodded. “As a spectator, I’d say great. Real flashy.”
