The Locker Next to Yours

The locker room goes quiet at 8:47 a.m.

You don't have to turn around. You know from the way Kenny Duchesne, your rookie right wing, freezes with one skate half laced. You know from the way Pasi Halonen stops humming his weird Finnish meditation song. You know from the way the air changes, like somebody opened a door onto January.

"Morning," Nikolai Volkov says.

Nobody answers.

He's in a plain black hoodie and jeans, a duffel over one shoulder, hair still damp from a shower somewhere else. The split in his lip has scabbed. There's a faint purple shadow along his jaw where your fist landed, and it should make him look worse. It doesn't. It makes him look like the cover of a magazine about bad decisions.

The equipment manager has already hung his new jersey. Wardens green, silver trim, VOLKOV across the shoulders. Number 71.

In the stall directly to the left of yours.

Of course.

He walks the length of the room through twenty-three men who would cheerfully throw him in the river, drops his bag, and sits down beside you. His knee is four inches from yours. He smells like cold air and some soap that probably costs more than your car payment.

"19," he says.

"Don't."

"Don't say your number? It's on your back."

"Don't talk to me."

He considers this, nods once, and starts taping his stick. In silence. Perfectly, infuriatingly obedient.

Across the room, Des catches your eye and shakes his head a quarter inch. Not here.

Coach Mayhew runs the whiteboard like a general. He doesn't explain. He just uncaps the marker and writes the lines, and the room reads them in the kind of silence that comes before weather.

First line: VOLKOV in the middle. DUCHESNE on the right.

And on the left, in thick black letters, your number.

"No," you say.

Mayhew doesn't look up. "Sorry?"

"Coach. Put him with anybody. Put him with Des, put him in goal, I don't care. Not me."

"Your opinion's noted, Ethan." He caps the marker. "You're the fastest winger I've got. He's the best passer I've ever coached against. Kenny's twenty-two and doesn't know enough to be scared of either of you. That's a line."

"He ended Beau's career."

The words land in the middle of the room and stay there. Nobody breathes. Beside you, Nikolai goes very still.

Mayhew finally looks at you. Then at him. "I know exactly what happened to Beau Tremblay. I was behind the bench." His voice doesn't rise. "And I'll tell you what I told Sandra when she asked me about this trade. I don't need you to like him. I need you to score with him. On the ice. Ten minutes."

The first drill is two-on-one rushes. You and Nikolai against Des.

It goes badly.

You go wide, he goes wide. You cut to the middle, he's already there. You call for the puck and he holds it a half second too long, and Des pokes it off his stick like taking candy from a toddler.

"Again," Mayhew barks from the bench.

Again. Worse. You crash into each other at the blue line and go down in a tangle of sticks and elbows, his weight landing across your chest, his visor clacking against your cage. For a second you're nose to nose through the bars, his breath fogging the plastic, those pale eyes right there.

"You're early," he says.

"You're slow."

"I'm on time. You're early. You always cut before the defense commits. I've watched you do it for three years."

"Get off me, Volkov."

He doesn't. Not right away. Just a beat too long, long enough that you feel your pulse in your throat for reasons that have nothing to do with hockey. Then he rolls off and offers you a glove up.

You shove it away and push yourself to your feet. He shrugs and skates back to the line.

Up above the far boards, in the glass-fronted broadcast booth, someone is watching. Golden hair, broad shoulders in a Wardens quarter-zip, a coffee in each hand because he always buys you one. Beau. He comes to practice twice a week to prep for the TV games.

He isn't smiling.

"Again," Mayhew says, and this time you're angry enough to try something.

You don't cut early. You wait. You count it out, one, two, the way you used to with Beau, and you feel more than see Des commit to Nikolai, shoulders turning, stick sliding.

Then you go.

The pass is already there.

You don't know how. You don't even see him look. One second the puck is on his stick on the far side of Des's body, and the next it's sliding through the gap between Des's skates, a gap that wasn't there half a second ago, flat and soft and perfect onto your blade in full stride. You don't even have to settle it. You just shoot.

Top corner. Pasi's water bottle jumps.

The rink is quiet for a second. Then Kenny, on the bench, says "Holy shit," in a voice that cracks with joy, and somebody laughs, and Des skates past you and smacks your shin pads with his stick.

"That," Des says, "was disgusting, Ethan."

You turn around. Nikolai is gliding backward toward center ice, stick across his knees, not celebrating. Just looking at you. There's something in his face you can't name. Not smug. Almost careful.

"On time," he says.

You don't answer. But you don't skate away, either.

After practice, Beau texts you before you're even out of your gear.

That pass was filthy. I hate it. You okay?

I'm fine.

You're not fine. I saw him lie on top of you for a full year.

It was two seconds.

It was a long two seconds, Ethan.

You stare at the screen. Across the room, Nikolai is pulling his hoodie over his head. A strip of bare skin shows above his waistband for one second, a slash of dark ink along his hip you can't make out, and you look away so fast you crick your own neck.

He's my center, you type. That's it.

The team bus leaves for the airport at two. Three-game road trip: Denver, Minneapolis, home.

You take your usual seat halfway back on the left. Kenny drops in beside you with his headphones and a bag of gummy worms. Nikolai sits alone near the front, behind the coaches, hood up, earbuds in. Nobody sits within two rows of him. The empty seats around him look like a quarantine.

Lou Tredwell, the head trainer, comes down the aisle handing out the rooming sheets. Single rooms this year; the players' association won that fight. Lou drops one on your lap and keeps walking.

You scan it out of habit. Hotel in Denver. Floor eleven.

Room 1114: your number.

Room 1116: VOLKOV.

And in small print at the bottom, the hotel's standard note, the one you've ignored on a hundred road trips.

Rooms 1114 and 1116 are adjoining. Connecting door locks from both sides.

You look up. At the front of the bus, Nikolai has turned in his seat. He's holding his own sheet. And for the first time since he walked into your locker room, he isn't looking at you like a rival.

He's looking at you like a man who knows exactly what's on the other side of that door.