The Goalie's Secret

His stick tape peels at the heel and he smooths it down without thinking, the way he has a thousand times in a thousand rinks before a thousand games. This is not a game. This is a press conference, and his hands are shaking. The press room smells of stale coffee and somebody's cheap cologne, the kind that tries too hard, like a rookie fighting for ice time. Fluorescents buzz overhead and cast everything in the sickly yellow that makes tired faces look worse. Thirty-seven chairs face the podium and most of them are full. Reporters tapping laptops, checking phones, whispering about trade rumours and playoff projections. He is in his suit. Navy. Somebody bought it for him last Christmas and said navy brought out his eyes. The crest is pinned to his lapel. His hair is still wet from the shower. Emma is three rows back with a notebook she has not opened. What follows: a scar above his eye, a story he is hiding, a week spent shadowing somebody who did not ask for company, a ritual conducted in a tunnel, tunnel vision, secrets exchanged over a pancake supper, a first crack, and his mother's side of an argument nobody has heard in twenty years. *I was too scared to tell anyone. Too scared to get help. So I took the pills, and I lied, and I kept playing, and I kept hiding. And I'm done hiding.* His hand slides to the back of her neck, fingers threading through her hair, and he kisses her like there is all the time in the world. He thinks about her in the tunnel and on the bus and in the four seconds between the anthem finishing and the puck dropping. He thought getting it all said out loud would settle it. It did not settle it. He is not going to stop, and he has stopped pretending he wants to. Not this season. Not after the story runs. Not ever.