Power Play

Chapter 6 - Home Ice

They returned home from the road trip with a record of 3-0, marking the most successful start to a season that Northbridge had achieved in six years. Cole should have experienced nothing but a sense of clean, uncomplicated satisfaction, accompanied by the particular exhilaration of a locker room that possessed confidence in its abilities. Instead, he spent the entire bus ride observing the reflection of Reese's face in the dark window three rows ahead, convincing himself that he was merely monitoring a teammate.

He was aware, distantly, that this was a lie. He was getting worse at telling himself lies. That used to be one of his best skills.

The team threw a bonfire the following Friday at Marchetti's family cabin on the lake, a tradition older than any of the current roster. Cole watched Reese hover at the edge of it for the first hour — present, technically included, and still somehow standing six inches outside the circle of firelight, like she hadn't yet decided whether the invitation had really been meant for her.

He crossed the yard before he had consciously decided to.

"You are permitted to stand within the circle," he stated, offering her a soda from the cooler, having observed, three weeks into the team activities, that she abstained from consuming beverages at such events, a choice he respected more than he had articulated. "No one bites. Marsh may bark sometimes."

"Marsh doesn't scare me." She took the can, and something in her shoulders eased half an inch, which he counted as a small victory. "I find it unappealing to discover, in real time, which conversations cease upon my arrival."

"They'll stop being weird eventually." He wasn't sure about it but he said it anyway, because he wanted to be true, which was new — he had spent a season managing his roster like a spreadsheet, minimizing variables, and here he was making promises about his teammates' behavior he couldn't actually guarantee.

"You sound very confident for a guy who has spent the entire August hoping I'd transfer."

"I never hoped you'd transfer." It came out sharper than he meant it and more honest than he meant it. "I anticipated that the process would be straightforward. However, it was not the same experience, even at that time. I simply lacked an understanding of the distinction."

She looked at him for a long moment across the firelight, and he had the distinct, uncomfortable sense of being read the way she read a defensive zone — quickly, accurately, no wasted motion.

"What's the difference now?" she asked.

He didn't have an answer, so he didn't give her one. "Come on. Marchetti's about to attempt something with a marshmallow that's going to end in a burn unit visit. You don't want to miss that."

She allowed him to divert the conversation. He felt a sense of gratitude, yet, in a somewhat contradictory manner, he experienced disappointment that she had done so.

----

They walked back to the apartment together. The rest of the team also moved toward their own places. It was just the two of them on the last stretch of sidewalk under the sodium streetlights, breath fogging in the October cold.

"Can I ask you something," Reese said, "and you don't have to answer if it's — I don't know. Too much."

"Go ahead."

"Marchetti said you asked Coach specifically not to room me with a stranger on the road trip. Why?"

He'd known this question was coming since the day Marchetti opened his mouth, and he still hadn't rehearsed an answer, which told him something about the state of his own head that he wasn't ready to examine directly.

"Because I understand the experience of entering a space where one is uncertain of their welcome," he stated after a moment. "It is not comparable to the challenges you face. Not at all. However, I am familiar with that particular sensation — arriving at a location and being unsure of which facets of individuals will be presented. I did not want your first road trip to commence with that additional burden alongside everything else."

Reese stopped walking. He stopped too, a half-step ahead, and turned back to find her looking at him with an expression he hadn't seen from her before — not wary, not guarded, just open, unshielded, the mask both of them wore like armor finally set down for a second.

"That's the nicest thing you've said to me since August," she said.

"Low bar."

"Still counts."

They were positioned sufficiently close, beneath a streetlight that provided minimal illumination, such that he could see her gaze shifted to his mouth and then back up, swiftly, as if she had not intended for him to notice. He felt his own pulse react impulsively in his throat. He sensed the distinct weight of the half-foot distance separating them and understood with total clarity that if he took one step forward right now, she wouldn't step back.

He did not take the step. Not because he lacked the desire, but rather due to a significant apprehension regarding the season, the draft, and every variable he had spent four months attempting to control. Even standing here with a desire for this opportunity felt akin to a puck he was not prepared to retrieve from his skates.

"We should get inside," he said, low. "The cold is affecting me."

"Certainly," she stated, and if she experienced any disappointment, she concealed it adeptly, exhibiting the same careful, practiced control that he was becoming increasingly proficient at recognizing in her, as it mirrored his own.

They walked the rest of the way in silence that wasn't uncomfortable. Both of them carried the same unspoken thing back to the apartment with two doors and one wall between them that was getting thinner by the week.

That night, lying in the dark, Cole listened to her moving around on the other side of the drywall — the creak of her bed, the click of her lamp — and contemplated, with the specific, sinking clarity of an individual observing a performance unfold that he already understands he cannot alter, that he was in a significant amount of trouble.