Nobody Talks to My Line

Dutch Kjellberg starts in warmups.

He glides past the red line, close enough that your sticks almost touch, and blows you a kiss. Big, theatrical, both cheeks puffed like a cartoon. His teammates laugh. Up in the stands, a section of Northmen fans in horned plastic helmets laughs too.

You keep stretching. You've had two years of practice.

"Hey, 19," Kjellberg calls. "Heard they got you a new boyfriend. Does he know you like it rough?"

You stretch your other hamstring.

Beside you, Nikolai has stopped skating.

"Don't," you say, low.

"I didn't do anything."

"You're about to. I can feel it."

He looks at you sidelong through his visor. Then at Kjellberg, who is now doing a slow, mocking figure skater twirl at center ice. Nikolai's jaw does something complicated.

"Okay," he says. And skates away.

First period, Kjellberg follows you everywhere.

Every time you touch the puck, he's there. A slash on the wrist. A glove in the face after the whistle. A slew-foot in the neutral zone that puts you on your back and gets nothing called, because the ref was watching the other end. And under it all, the talking. Never loud enough for the officials. Always loud enough for you.

You don't answer. You keep your gloves on. You think of Mayhew's face and your mom in Spokane, who still calls the league office every time someone says something, and you breathe.

On the bench between shifts, Nikolai says nothing. But he's watching Kjellberg the way a cat watches a bird through a window.

"He's trying to get you thrown out," Des says to you. "Don't take the bait."

"I'm not taking the bait."

"I know. I'm saying it out loud so I remember to be proud of you later, Ethan."

Second period, you score. Kenny wins a puck battle along the half wall, chips it to Nikolai, and Nikolai does the thing again, the no-look thing, sliding it across the crease while the goalie is staring at him. You just have to tap it in. It's barely a goal. You'll take it.

You skate past the Northmen bench after the celebration. Kjellberg is leaning on the boards.

"Cute," he says. "Your boyfriend set that up for you?"

You keep skating.

Third period, under five minutes, 2–1 Wardens.

You go into the corner after a dump-in. Kjellberg's right behind you. You get there first, because you always get there first, and you pin the puck on the boards, and he slams into your back hard enough to rattle the glass.

He leans down so his mouth is right by the ear hole of your helmet.

And he says it.

The word. The one he's been saying for two years. Then a sentence after it, about what you are and what you do and what someone should do to you, so ugly that for a second the noise of the arena drops out entirely and all you can hear is your own heartbeat, slamming.

You start to turn.

You don't get there.

Something hits Kjellberg from the side so hard he comes off you like he's been yanked by a rope. You stumble, catch yourself on the boards, and turn around.

Nikolai's gloves are already on the ice. His helmet goes next, flung off and spinning away like a hubcap.

Kjellberg has three inches and twenty pounds on him. It doesn't matter.

It's not a hockey fight. Hockey fights have rules, unspoken ones: grab the jersey, trade a few, go down together, skate to the box. This is something else. Nikolai doesn't grab anything. He just hits. Fast, efficient, terrifying, one after another, and Kjellberg, who has been in a hundred and ninety minutes' worth of fights, gets his arms up and doesn't land a single punch.

The arena is on its feet. The horned helmets are screaming. Your bench is pounding the boards.

It lasts maybe twelve seconds. When the linesmen finally pile in, Kjellberg is on one knee, holding his nose, blood dripping onto the ice. Nikolai lets them pull him away without a fight. His chest is heaving. His knuckles are split. His hair is in his eyes.

He looks at you over the linesman's shoulder. Just once.

You've never had anyone look at you like that. Like they would do it again. Like they'd do it a hundred times.

The ref's arm is going up, up, pointing to the tunnel. Instigator. Fighting major. Game misconduct.

He's gone.

You win 3–1. Kenny scores into an empty net in the last minute, and you're so distracted you almost miss the celebration.

In the locker room, the mood is strange. Guys are buzzing, laughing, replaying the fight on their phones, and the replay keeps showing up on the TV in the corner too. The commentators keep saying Volkov's temper and the old Volkov and a familiar sight for Northmen fans.

But nobody in the room is saying any of that.

"Did you see his hands?" Kenny says. "Did you see how fast..."

"Kjellberg had it coming," says Big Gus, your third-line grinder, who hasn't said a nice thing about Volkov since the trade. "For years."

"Everybody hates Kjellberg," Des agrees. He glances at you, and you see the question in his eyes. What did he say?

You shake your head. Des nods once. He doesn't ask.

Nikolai's stall is empty. His gear is hung, his jersey on its hook, VOLKOV 71. He must have showered and dressed in the time it took to finish the third period.

"Where is he?" you ask Lou Tredwell, who's packing tape and gauze into a trauma kit.

"Ice room, last I saw, Ethan. Then he walked out." Lou shrugs. "Hand's banged up. He wouldn't let me look."

You find him in the tunnel that leads to the loading dock, where the team bus is idling outside in a cloud of exhaust. He's leaning against the cinderblock wall in his suit, tie loose, one hand shoved into an ice bag, the other holding his phone like it's personally offended him.

He hears your footsteps and looks up.

"Coach is going to kill you," you say.

"Probably."

"The league's going to fine you."

"Definitely."

You stop a few feet away. The tunnel is cold and smells like rubber and diesel. Somewhere behind you, the arena crew is already breaking down the boards.

"You didn't have to do that," you say.

He's quiet for a long moment. Then he pushes off the wall and steps closer, close enough that you can see the bruise blooming along his cheekbone where Kjellberg's elbow caught him in the scramble, the split in his knuckles, the gray-green eyes that look darker in this light. Close enough to smell the soap and the cold.

"Yes," he says. "I did."

"Why?"

"Because I heard what he said." His voice is low, steady, and something underneath it is shaking. "And nobody talks to my line like that, Ethan."

He's never said your name before. Not your real name. It goes through you like a skate blade.

Then he walks past you, out into the freezing dark toward the bus.

And you realize, standing alone in that tunnel with your heart pounding, that he didn't say my team.

He said my line.

And he was looking at you.