The Centerman's Comeback

Gavin is a veteran centreman with a knee that files a daily complaint and a roster spot that a twenty-two-year-old is lifting two hundred and seventy-five pounds to take off him. Claire is the one person in the building whose job is to tell him the truth about his own body. The kid lifts like he has something to prove. Gavin watches from the squat rack with a towel over his shoulder as the barbell comes off the platform like it insulted somebody's mother. Clean reps. Fast. The kind of lift that makes the young forwards cluster and hoot, and makes the veterans look away and study their wrist wraps with sudden, intense interest. His left knee gives a dull thud of complaint as he shifts his weight. He ignores it. *Kid's hungry*, Lars says beside him, not looking up from an ankle mobility drill, grey-threaded beard still damp from the ice session, a nick on his chin from his own skate blade that he has not bothered to wipe. *He's twenty-two. They're all hungry at twenty-two. They haven't learned what happens when you eat too fast.* Fifteen years in the league together means you do not need full sentences. A grunt can mean *you're right*, or *shut up*, or *I'll buy you a beer later*, depending on pitch and the angle of the chin. This one means *I know, but*. What follows: a method that brings somebody back from further than anybody expects, a morning coffee he does not want and drinks anyway, a brother who never left, the things he keeps under his gear, the specific lie a well-trained athlete can tell with a straight face, a grave he does not discuss, and the discovery that being known is his actual kryptonite. *I'd have been a great nurse. I just wouldn't have lied to you.* *Because I'm not done with you yet.* What it costs Gavin is the version of himself he has been selling to the room for fifteen years: reliable, uncomplaining, replaceable on schedule. What it costs Claire is the professional distance that has kept her employable, and the arrangement she made with herself after the last athlete she believed.