Page 74 of Pucked Up

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Game night didn't smell like victory. It smelled like dust baked under cheap lights and nacho cheese from a pump. I stood in the back of the arena, shoulder against the concrete wall. Didn't sit. Couldn't.

The stands weren't full—this wasn't the NHL. It was a minor league barn with too many empty seats and too many dreams hanging from the rafters.

The fans who did show up made themselves loud. Local college kids with flasks tucked into their coat sleeves and parents with noise-makers. A guy two rows down was already yelling at the ref before the puck had even dropped.

Noah skated through warmups with his helmet low, chin tucked. No flash. No salute to the glass. Just loops and stops and flicked shots from weird angles.

He had a ritual—I didn't know all of it—but I recognized its shape: his skating rhythm and then muttering to himself before the faceoff.

He didn't rush out with the first line when the game started. He waited. Second rotation. He stepped onto the ice without ceremony, like he hadn't been out of the game long enough for his body to forget how it felt to fly.

Once the puck hit his stick, everything snapped into place. It was like he'd been cryogenically frozen, and this undersold rink in Marquette was where someone finally remembered to thaw him.

He hustled back on a two-on-one and dropped to his knees to break up a pass. He got up fast. On the next shift, he picked offa breakout and fed it to the high slot. There was no goal, but the crowd gasped in awe.

They saw it, too—that flicker of something more than competent.

Third period, tied 2–2. Four minutes on the clock. Noah's line rolled out. The fans leaned forward.

The play developed from deep—Marquette fighting off a line change, one winger dragging the puck through traffic. Noah trailed the play, held back, almost casual. Then the turnover came—a lazy pass to center ice.

Noah scooped it like it was meant for him. Two strides, and he was gone.

He didn't wind up. Just let it rip from the top of the circle—low glove side. The puck hit the net. The red light lit up behind the goalie. Half the bench stood. The crowd roared like they were starving for something, and someone had just thrown them raw meat.

Noah didn't raise his arms. He skated toward the bench, jaw locked, fist thumping twice against his chest.

I hadn't realized I was smiling until my jaw hurt from holding it for so long.

The night air outside the rink was full of exhaust and frozen sidewalk grit. Noah shoved his hands in his pockets and started walking without looking to see if I followed. I did.

We lived close enough to the arena, on the edge of town, to walk.

The streetlights buzzed above us, yellow and half-hearted, casting our shadows long and broken across patches of black ice. The sidewalks hadn't been salted yet.

Noah's breath fogged out in bursts. I watched how his shoulders rolled under his coat—tight from the effort and the hit he took in the second period that hadn't drawn a whistle. He hadn't said a word about it.

We passed a bar with flat screens glowing through the windows. A replay looped—his goal, the crowd's blurry arms lifting, and a slow zoom on Noah's face. He didn't look at it.

"You could smile about it," he said.

I didn't answer right away. The snow crunched under our boots, loud in the quiet between buildings.

"I am smiling. On the inside. Don't get greedy."

He laughed softly. "You're a menace."

"You're just now noticing?"

His elbow bumped mine. He didn't say anything else.

We walked past shuttered storefronts and turned left at the liquor store, then up a hill slick with half-melted snow.

At the top, Noah slowed down. Two blocks later, we were home.

The door clicked shut behind us, and the night outside dissolved all at once—crowd noise, cold air, rink stink, all wiped clean by four walls and quiet.

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