The Feud, Live

"Go to sleep, Fairbrother," you say into the dark.

A long pause.

"Okay," he says. Just that. Then the creak of him turning over, and nothing else all night, and somehow that's the thing that keeps you awake.

Media day is in a hotel ballroom with a step-and-repeat banner and too many ring lights. The federation wants personality. The federation wants clips.

The federation, it turns out, wants the feud.

"Okay, next," says the media relations guy, a nervous man named Ingo with three phones. "Top Shelf podcast. Solvei Askew. She asked for you two together."

"Of course she did," Tarquin says, and sits down beside you on the little stage like he owns it.

Solvei Askew is thirty-something and razor-sharp, with a buzzed undercut, silver rings on every finger and a reputation for making grown defensemen cry on air. She sets her phone on the table between you, recording.

"Six seasons," she says. "Fourteen fights. Two broken noses. One of you famously wrote 'he's fine I guess' on a survey that asked for the league's most underrated player. And now you're linemates." She smiles like a knife. "How's that going?"

"Great," Tarquin says. "He's a dream. Can't skate, but he's a dream."

"He talks the whole time," you say. "On the ice. In the hall. In his sleep."

"How would you know what I do in my sleep, Seventeen?"

"The walls are thin."

"Ooh," says Solvei.

"His snoring is very loud," Tarquin tells her solemnly. "It's like rooming with a Zamboni."

"I don't snore."

"He does a thing."

It's easy. That's the scary part. It's the easiest thing in the world, trading lines with him with a camera pointed at you, because you've been doing it in hallways and penalty boxes and handshake lines for six years. The room laughs. Ingo stops looking nervous. Solvei's eyes go back and forth between you like she's watching a rally.

"Last one," she says. "Who's going to wear the C?"

"Him," Tarquin says immediately, and then, before anyone can react, "said nobody. Obviously me. Look at me."

The room laughs again. Solvei doesn't. She's looking at you.

"And you, Ethan?" she asks.

"Whoever Coach picks," you say. "I'll play for him."

"Even if it's Fairbrother, Ethan?"

You look at him. He's leaning back with his arm along the back of your chair, not touching you, the picture of a man enjoying himself. But his jaw is tight.

"Even if it's him," you say.

Solvei turns off the recording and taps the phone against her palm, still looking at you.

"Interesting," she says. "That's the first honest thing either of you has said."

Team dinner is at a steakhouse with a private room and a wall of elk heads that Beau refuses to sit facing. "They are judging me," he insists. "Look at the eyes."

You sit between Kob and a twenty-one-year-old phenom who keeps calling you sir. Tarquin is at the other end of the table, in a black sweater that fits like it's in love with him, holding court. The waitress has refilled his water four times. He's been polite every time and has not once looked at her the way she looks at him.

You notice that. You don't know why you notice that.

Dellan Tillotson is on his third beer. He's thirty-four, a big, solid, old-school defenseman with a beard like a hedge and a grudge he hasn't named yet. When the federation announced they'd pick a captain from the roster, everybody assumed it would be him. Then Haverkamp named the two of you as the candidates in the same press release, and Tillotson has been chewing on it ever since.

"Hey, Seventeen," he calls down the table, using Tarquin's word for you like he's trying it on. "Real question. You two gonna kill each other in Calgary, or just skip ahead and get married?"

A couple of guys laugh. The rookie beside you laughs, nervously, and then looks at you to see if he should have.

You've heard worse. You've heard it in every dressing room since juniors, the jokes that aren't really jokes, the ones you learned to smile at so nobody looked too closely. Your face does the thing it knows how to do. Your mouth starts to open.

"Dellan."

Tarquin doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't have to. Every head at the table turns.

He's sitting perfectly still, his fork set down, and his face has gone flat and cold in a way you've seen exactly once before, in a playoff game when a Seattle forward speared his goalie.

"That's not funny," Tarquin says. "It wasn't funny in 1995 either. Do better."

The silence lasts about four seconds. It feels like a full period.

Tillotson's beard moves. "It's a joke, Fairbrother."

"I know what it is." Tarquin picks his fork back up. "Pass the potatoes, Beau."

Beau passes the potatoes like they're a live grenade. Conversation comes back slowly, carefully, then all at once. Kob catches your eye and raises both eyebrows so high they almost leave his face.

Tarquin doesn't look at you once for the rest of dinner.

Back at the residence you're coming out of the bathroom with a toothbrush in your mouth when you hear his voice through his half-open door.

He's on FaceTime. You can see the edge of the phone propped on his knee, a girl's face on the screen, freckles and messy auburn hair and a vet clinic scrub top.

"Delphi, I'm not doing the voice."

"Do the voice."

"I'm a grown man. I'm an elite athlete."

"Do the goose voice or I'm telling Mom you cried at the dog food commercial."

"It was a very sad commercial," he says, and then he does a goose voice, a truly terrible honking goose voice, and the girl on the screen collapses laughing, and so does he.

You've never heard him laugh like that. Not on the ice, not on the bench, not at the elk-head dinner. It's soft and helpless and young. It changes his whole face.

He says, quieter, "I miss you, Delph."

"Is he there?" the girl asks. "Is he as—"

Tarquin's hand moves and the volume drops to nothing.

You step back into your room before he can see you, and you shut your door all the way for the first time, and you lie on your bed with your heart doing something stupid.

Is he as. As what.

12:40 a.m. You're still awake.

Your phone buzzes on your chest.

Not Sleep. A number you don't have saved, with a Denver area code, and you know whose it is before you open it, because there is only one person in Calgary with a Denver number who would text you at 12:40 a.m. from three steps away.

your faceoff stance is a war crime. left foot's open. you're cheating your backhand.

Then, a second later:

also. you okay?