Left Foot

You don't know what you expected the morning after you texted Tarquin Fairbrother back. A grin over the cereal box. A chirp. A clip of your reply posted to the team group chat with a crying-laughing caption.

What you get is him, already on the ice at 7:10 a.m., alone, with a bucket of pucks and two coffee cups sitting on the boards.

He holds one out without looking at you. "Oat milk. One sugar."

You stop on the bench door. "How do you know how I take my coffee?"

"You order it every single time we play in Denver. The arena guy makes it. He talks about you." Tarquin finally looks over. In the cold light of the empty rink, with no crowd and no cameras, his face is almost unbearable to look at: the cheekbones, the sleep still in his eyes, the scar through his eyebrow. "Drink it before it freezes, Seventeen. Then get on the dot."

"We're not doing this."

"We're doing this. You lost eleven of nineteen draws against Sweden's B-team in the November tournament, and you lost nine of them the same way." He drops a puck at center. "Left foot."

You drink the coffee. It's perfect. You hate that it's perfect.

You get on the dot.

He crouches across from you, no stick, just his gloves on his knees. "Stance. Go."

You take your stance. He looks at it for a long time. Then he skates around beside you, close, and taps your left skate with the toe of his.

"There. You open your left foot a half inch before the drop because you're already thinking about the backhand. Everybody who's watched enough tape knows it. I know it. I've beaten you on it six times this year." He taps it again, softer. "Close it. Make them guess."

You close it. It feels wrong.

"Again," he says, and drops a puck, and you win it.

"Again." You win it again.

He drops forty pucks. You win thirty-one. By the end you're both breathing hard and laughing, actually laughing, and he says "there he is, Ethan," like he's been waiting for you for a long time.

When you skate off, Kob is standing at the glass in his practice jersey, holding his own coffee, his mouth slightly open.

"What," you say.

"Nothing, Ethan." Kob sips. "Nothing at all. Just a man watching his captain get private lessons from Satan."

The Foothills University Stags play in an old barn of a rink on the north side of the city, with wooden bleachers and a scoreboard that's missing half its bulbs. The federation books them as a closed scrimmage: no cameras, no stream, no press. Just students and families and a few scouts in parkas, maybe four hundred people. It's a gift, Haverkamp says. A place to be bad without anyone seeing.

You're not bad.

That's the surprise.

First shift, you win the draw with your left foot shut, and the puck goes back to Tillotson, and Tillotson rims it around the boards. Tarquin is already there. Of course he's there. You've spent six years learning exactly where he'll be, and for the first time you skate toward the space instead of away from it.

He doesn't look at you. He doesn't need to. He feathers the puck backhand into the slot without turning his head, and you're there, and you don't even have to think.

The net bulges.

For a second the barn is very quiet, the way rinks get when people aren't sure what they just saw. Then four hundred people lose their minds, and Kob crashes into you, and Tarquin arrives a beat later and grabs your helmet with both gloves and shakes it.

"Seventeen," he shouts into your cage. His eyes are lit up blue-green and wild. "Did you see that? Did you see that?"

"I was there," you say, and you're grinning so hard your face hurts.

"You were there." He lets go of your helmet and taps it once, almost gently, then skates away backward, pointing at you with his stick. "Don't get used to it."

You score again in the second, off a rebound he puts exactly where you'll be. He scores in the third from your feed, a little saucer pass over a sprawling Stags defenseman, and celebrates by pointing at you across the ice like you're the one who scored. You win twelve of fifteen draws. Beau lets in one goal and spends the whole third period yelling encouragements at you in French.

In the room after, he flings his blocker into his stall. "You two," he announces to everyone, "are disgusting together. Disgusting. I want to throw up. Do it again Thursday."

Haverkamp walks through the room on her way to the office. She doesn't stop. She doesn't smile. But as she passes your stall she says, "Better," and as she passes Tarquin's she says, "Better," and the whole room hears it.

Tarquin is sitting with his elbows on his knees, his hair wet and pushed back, and he's looking at the floor and smiling at it like it's told him a secret.

The bus back is loud. You sit by the window. Tarquin sits two rows up with his headphones on and his head against the glass, and he doesn't turn around once, and you spend the whole ride looking at the back of his neck where his hair curls over his collar.

At the residence he goes straight to the shower. You hear the water start. You sit on the edge of your bed with your phone in your hand and your bag still on your shoulder and the whole night still fizzing under your skin.

You don't count, this time. You forgot. You're too happy to count.

Your phone buzzes anyway.

Sleep.

You almost laugh. They never text after wins. Not once, in three years.

That one I'll watch twice. The no-look in the first. You didn't hesitate. You trusted him to be there and he was. Sleep.

You read it, smiling. You read it again.

Then you stop smiling.

The scrimmage was closed. There were no cameras. There was no stream. The federation didn't post a single clip; you know because Kob checked on the bus, complaining. There were four hundred people in that barn and every one of them had to be standing in it to see that pass.

That one I'll watch twice.

Watch it on what?

The shower shuts off across the hall.