The Enforcer's Comeback

Two assists, seventeen minutes of ice time, four hits delivered and one taken hard into the boards that is still ringing through his ribs. A good game. A win. And none of it matters because of what he heard on the bench in the second period. Jake Harlow rips his jersey over his head before he reaches the tunnel. The fabric snags on his elbow pads and he yanks free, the number catching yellow light off the cinderblock. *Hey, Harlow.* He keeps walking. The tunnel smells of sweat-saturated concrete and the chemical sting of tape ripped off in strips. His skates click against the floor in a rhythm that does not match his pulse. *Harlow, man—* *Not now, Leo.* A hand lands on his shoulder, broad and immovable. *You're gonna tell me what's eating you, or you're gonna walk into that locker room and punch a hole in the drywall, and I'd rather you didn't.* He punches the drywall. Months later a phone rings with an unfamiliar area code and a woman's voice, low and professional, with an edge suggesting she is not used to repeating herself. *My name is Elena Vasquez. I'm the Director of Communications. I'm told you're looking for a tryout.* What follows: an image he did not ask for, a rookie's shadow, a lift that stops between floors, a line he cannot cross, a father he never shows anybody, a slap he does not return, and the particular risk of being seen. *Once the story breaks that he lied to the team about his hand, that he signed knowing he couldn't play, she'll be finished.* *Every day. Even when it's hard.* *It's always hard.* *Then we'll always choose.* He thinks about her between periods and in hotel corridors and in the nine seconds before the puck drops. He thought it would pass. It did not pass. It is not going to, and he has stopped waiting for it to. Not this season. Not after the story runs. Not ever.