It wasn't much. But coming from him, it was everything.
MIK
We lost in Miami 4-2 and it was my fault.
Not entirely. Hockey is a team sport and losses belong to everyone. But the third goal came off a turnover in my own zone, a lazy pass up the boards that I knew was wrong the instant it left my stick, and their winger intercepted it and buried it before our goalie could set his feet. Coach didn't say anything to me on the bench. He didn't have to. I could feel the disappointment radiating off him like heat from an engine.
The locker room after was subdued. Three wins and a loss on the road trip. A good result by any measure. But losses stick to you in a way that wins don't, and this one stuck to me like tar because I knew better. I was better. The mistake was not a lack of skill. It was a lack of focus, and I knew exactly where my focus had gone, and it was sitting four stalls away unlacing his skates.
I had been distracted. For two days, since Carolina, since the bed, since the word "perfect" that I had typed after deleting six other words that were all less true, I had been playing hockey with half a brain. The other half was occupied by Cole Briggs, and tonight it had cost us a goal.
This could not continue.
The team went out. Miami nightlife. Clubs and bars on Ocean Drive, the kind of loud, bright places where hockey players could disappear into the crowd and be young and rich and free for a few hours. I had no interest in any of it. I went back to the hotel, showered, and changed into jeans and a shirt that I had packed for no reason and certainly not because some unconscious part of me had anticipated an evening that required something other than sweatpants.
I went to the hotel's rooftop bar because I wanted air. That was the reason. Fresh air. The rooftop had a pool that was closed for the night and a bar that was still open and a view of the Miami skyline that looked like a postcard. I ordered a vodka, which the bartender poured from a bottle that cost four times what it should, and I sat on a lounge chair near the railing and looked at the ocean.
The Atlantic was black and enormous and completely indifferent to whatever was happening inside my chest. I found this comforting. The ocean did not care about hockey or turnover rates or the specific way a man's hair fell across his forehead when he was sleeping. The ocean just existed, vast and unconcerned, and I wanted to borrow some of that indifference for myself.
I was on my second vodka when I heard footsteps behind me.
I knew it was him before I turned around. I don't know how. Some shift in the air, some frequency that my nervous system had learned to detect without my permission. The way a compass needle swings north. Automatic. Involuntary.
"You left early," Cole said.
I did not turn around. "I was not aware I needed to file an itinerary."
"You don't." He came around the lounge chair and sat in the one next to mine. He was wearing a blue button-down with the sleeves rolled to his elbows and he had clearly been out with theteam because his cheeks were flushed and his hair was slightly disarranged and he smelled like beer and that cedar cologne. "I just noticed you weren't there."
"And you came to check on me."
"I came for the view."
"The view is downstairs in the lobby. The rooftop is closed."
"The bar's still open."
"The bar has one customer."
"Two now." He flagged the bartender and ordered a whiskey. We sat in silence while it was poured and delivered, and then we sat in more silence while the Miami skyline did its job of being beautiful and indifferent.
"The third goal wasn't your fault," Cole said.
"It was."
"It was a team breakdown. The forecheck was soft and the weak side wasn't covered."
"The pass was mine. The mistake was mine."
"Okay." He took a sip of his whiskey. "So it was your fault. You going to sit up here and punish yourself about it, or are you going to be human for five minutes?"
I looked at him. "I don't know what that means."
"It means you made a mistake. One mistake. In the same game where you blocked a shot with your shin and made a breakout pass that led to a goal and played twenty-four minutes of hockey that was, by any objective measure, elite. One mistake doesn't erase all that."
"In Russia, one mistake is all anyone remembers."
"You're not in Russia."