Don’t smile. He’s being cute. You’re being professional.
Too late. A smile forms across my lips.
“You and that ego.” I chuckle.
“It’s not an ego if it’s facts, it’s just the truth,” he argues.
“Wow. Your self-confidence knows no bounds, does it?” I chuckle.
“You love it.” He grins, sending me a wink as he skates off.
I hate that he’s not wrong.
We’rein the tunnel post-morning skate and I’ve got the camera on him, asking the standard day in the life questions, routine stuff. “What does game day look like? Walk me through it,” I ask.
“Same meal, same seat, every time,” he says. “I don’t talk to Evan before puck drop.”
“Why not?”
“Have you met Evan before a game?”
Fair point, the Russian is scary. “But why do you not talk to him? How did you find out that it worked.”
Fish sighs. “I had lost my voice and couldn’t talk, and usually Evan and I talk just before we get on the ice, but I couldn’t and that night I scored a hat trick and ever since then I don’t talk to him.”
Fair enough, hockey players are superstitious.
“What else?”
He looks at the camera, and completely straight-faced, he confesses, “I kiss my stick before a game.”
I lower the camera slightly. “Sorry?”
“For luck. It’s not weird. Don’t read into it,” he says defensively.
I burst out laughing. I may have even snorted, too. It comes out loud and slightly undignified, echoing off the tunnel walls, and I genuinely cannot help it.
Fish goes quiet as I continue to laugh.
Don’t look at him.I look at him. He’s grinning. Not the one he gives the camera, the real one, the one that’s slightly crooked. He raises a brow at me as if he can’t believe I am mocking him, which makes me laugh harder, and that somehow makes everything worse.
“I’m sorry. Continue,” I tell him.
“I don’t know if I want to.” He pouts.
“Oh, come on, that was funny.”
“It was. You’re welcome,” he says, rolling his eyes at me.
I go to frame the next shot, and my lanyard gets caught in my hair. Not a little caught, fully, catastrophically caught. I’m trying to free it without dropping the camera, when Fish reaches over into my personal space and starts to untangle it from my hair without saying a word. I look up at those blue eyes as he does this, and he gives me a small smile. Gentle, quick, done.
He steps back. “There you go, all fixed.”
“Thanks,” I say, knowing full well my cheeks are probably bright red. “I think I’ve got everything.”
“Do you?” he asks.
“Was there more you wanted to do?”