Power Play

Chapter 5 - You can call me Cole

Two weeks into the season, the team embarked on their inaugural away trip—a three-game road series through the northern region of the conference, involving a six-hour bus journey each way, with hotel accommodations arranged by a positional group.

Reese was roomed with Marchetti, which surprised her, until she found out that Cole had specifically requested it, going to Coach Halloran directly instead of leaving it to the graduate assistant who normally sorted room assignments. This fact she only learned because Marchetti, who had approximately no filter between his brain and his mouth, told her about it while they were unpacking.

"Ashford said he didn't want you rooming with a stranger on your first trip," Marchetti said, tossing his duffel onto the bed by the window like it owed him money. "Stated that it was inappropriate; the initial road trip involved uncertainty regarding one's accommodations."

"Ashford said that."

"Word for word. Well — not word for word, he doesn't really do *feelings* out loud, but that was the gist." Marchetti glanced at her sideways, the particular look of a guy who'd noticed something and was deciding whether it was his business to say it. "You two are different than I expected, living together."

"Different how?"

"I don't know. Less murder-y." He grinned, and she couldn't help the small huff of a laugh that got out of her, because it was such a Marchetti way to put it — blunt, unbothered, kind in a sideways sort of fashion. "He talks about you differently too. It used to be all 'the new defenseman.' Now it's Kellan this, Kellan's gap control that. Like you've got a name now instead of a headline."

She cataloged that information in a mental space she was not yet prepared to scrutinize, the same compartment where she had been storing the dialogue from the kitchen counter for two weeks, the one in which he had stated, I am aware of your plus-minus, I have been aware of it since August, and she had found herself incessantly analyzing that statement, seeking to uncover its underlying significance.

They won the initial game with a score of 4-1. Reese recorded nineteen minutes of ice time and provided an assist on the game-winning goal, a stretch pass she delivered directly to Diaz's stick from their own blue line. Upon her exit from the ice, Cole was the first to approach the bench, tapping her shin pads with his stick — the universal, non-verbal hockey gesture of well done, the same one he extended to every male team member — except that when she glanced up, he did not avert his gaze as he typically did. He maintained eye contact for a brief moment. Just a moment. Long enough for her to take notice.

"Nice feed," he said, once they were both back on the bench, close enough that only she could hear him over the crowd noise.

"Thanks, captain."

"Cole," he said. "Off the ice. You can call me Cole."

She regarded him, and he was gazing straight ahead at the performance, his jaw exhibiting its characteristic movement, and she comprehended, in some manner, that this represented a more significant concession than it might appear — that a name constituted an entryway, and he had just discreetly opened one, without drawing attention to it, in the manner he seemed to approach most matters of genuine importance to him.

"Okay," she said. "Cole."

His mouth did something that wasn't quite a smile but was adjacent to one, and neither of them said anything else about it, and she spent the rest of that period trying very hard not to notice how much she liked the sound of her own voice saying his name.

That night, back at the hotel, she couldn't sleep — too much adrenaline still in her system, the particular electric hum that came after a good game. She had nowhere to go. Around midnight she went down to the vending machine on their floor in sweatpants and a Northbridge hoodie, hair still damp from the post-game shower.

Cole was already there, leaning against the wall by the ice machine in a T-shirt and gym shorts, looking like he hadn't slept either.

"Can't sleep either?" she asked.

"Ankle is talking to me." He articulated it as though it were inconsequential, yet he adjusted his posture as he spoke, a slight grimace he attempted to conceal and largely succeeded in doing so.

She recalled Marchetti's incomplete statement from weeks prior — he has been under considerable tension since the ankle — and a part of her, the segment that had dedicated three months to meticulously documenting every detail regarding this exasperating, cautious, and reserved individual, resolved that this would be the evening she would inquire.

"What happened to it? Your ankle."

He went still, the particular stillness of someone deciding whether to open a door or shut it, and for a second she thought he was going to give her the flat captain's voice and change the subject, the way he did with everything that mattered.

He didn't.

"Sophomore year. Boarding call, dirty hit, guy drove me into the boards from behind and I came down wrong." He said it flat, factual, the way you describe something you've told a hundred times to trainers and doctors and reporters and stopped feeling anything about it years ago, except she didn't think that last part was actually true, not from the way his hand had drifted, unconsciously, to rub at the joint through his sweatpants. "Compound fracture. Eleven months of rehab. Everybody told me I was done — not dead, just done, like a guy who'd never play above beer-league again. Scouts stopped calling. My dad stopped—" He caught himself.

"Your dad stopped what?"

"Stopped acting like I was worth the phone call," Cole said, quiet, and it was the most unguarded she'd ever heard him, standing in a hotel hallway at midnight in the fluorescent hum of a vending machine, and she understood, all at once, the full shape of what she'd been circling for weeks — that the coldness, the control, the relentless management of every variable in that locker room, wasn't arrogance at all, or not only arrogance. It was a man who'd had the thing he loved most taken away once already, by a bad hit and a worse father, and had built an entire personality to make sure that it never happened again.

"That's not true," she said. "You're worth the phone call. You know that, right?"

"Regardless of my knowledge," he stated, yet something in his expression had further deteriorated, the same fissure she had sensed beginning two weeks prior over dinner, now expanding, quietly and inexorably. "What matters is what I can substantiate. This season represents my final opportunity. Scouts do not focus on sophomore performance; they prioritize the present, and the present must be flawless, as I do not receive a second opportunity for perfection."

"Nothing is ever truly perfect," she stated. "You are aware of that as well, correct? One cannot achieve perfection through mere control. Trust me, I have made that attempt."

He regarded her as an unspoken understanding transpired between them in that corridor that was entirely unrelated to hockey.

"Please ensure you obtain sufficient rest, Kellan," he articulated at last, in a subdued tone. However, he did not initiate movement, nor did she, and it was an additional five complete seconds before either of them chose to break the silence and return to their respective rooms.

Subsequently, she remained awake for an extended period, gazing at the ceiling, no longer convincing herself that the feelings she experienced upon looking at him were inconsequential.