Page 10 of The Beautiful Collision
If he recognizes the sarcasm, he doesn’t react to it, and I head down to the keg. My lower back screams as I move it—not the good burn from deadlifts, but the sharp pain of twentyhours without sleep—and every muscle threatens mutiny. Still, I wrestle the keg upstairs through pure spite.
“Took you long enough,” Derek mutters, when I re-emerge.
Eight-fifty an hour to audition for a herniated disc.
With Derek now tapping the keg—man, what a guy—I attack the next rack of glasses with violence usually reserved for opposing defensemen. But one glass splinters, spider-webbing in my grip, and blood spreads through soap suds, dark red mixing with gray foam.
“Coming out of your check!” Derek shouts over the music.
The one that’s already spent in three different dimensions?
I wrap a bar napkin around the gash—high-quality first aid right there—and dive back into dishwater that stings like personal betrayal. Girls stumble past toward the bathroom in a drunk chorus line, the middle one crying about someone named Brad, and the one on the left wears a PBU Hockey jersey.
My number, stretched across her back.
She doesn’t register my existence.
Why would she?
I’m furniture that moves.
Not the guy whose name she probably screamed when I went five-hole on Vermont’s starter, and whose name she’d probably scream in bed if I bought her a few drinks at amuchnicer bar than this. If I could afford drinks, anyway. So, instead, I’m scrubbing her lipstick off a glass.
Welcome to rock bottom. Population: me.
Cold doesn’t exist at dawn—only degrees of fucking miserable.
The rink air knifes through my gear, and each breath crystallizes into ice shards in my lungs. My throat burns copper,and the overheads drill into eyes that shut maybe four hours ago and then opened again twenty minutes before practice.
I look like death, and I’m skating worse.
As my legs pump on autopilot—brain checked out somewhere between mopping beer vomit at three and hauling ass to practice at eight-thirty—the ice hisses beneath my blades. Usually, it feels like home, but today it feels foreign, and every other player on the ice is skating rings around me.
Fake. Fraud. They all know.
Coach blows the whistle and orders a corner drill. For me, it should be automatic, but I catch an edge and tumble. My shoulder eats it first, and the impact plays through my bones. High notes from the shoulder, bass line from my ribs, and the urgent chorus ofget up before?—
“Hamilton! What gives?”
Coach Pearson’s bark cuts through everything. After letting my head rest on the ice for a second, the cool jolting my exhausted body like an espresso shot, I scramble upright, ice shavings clinging to my jersey. The grin I force probably looks more like rigor mortis setting in, but I’ve got a reputation to maintain.
“Quality control, Coach.” I mumble. “Gotta make sure it’s reg?—“
“Save it.” His voice tells me he’s low on patience. “Run the drill or get off my ice.”
Twenty pairs of eyes dissect me with surgical precision. Even Rook keeps his mouth shut, and the apocalypse is fucking nigh when James Fitzgerald stops chirping. The silence may as well be a shout: Maine Hamilton, team clown, dying on the ice.
Next drill, three-on-two rush. Baby stuff. Mike feeds me at center, and for half a heartbeat, everything crystallizes. Schmidt’s jersey glows in my peripheral. The d-man commits,the shooting lane opens wide. This is home. This is where Maine Hamiltoneats.
The setup is perfect, but the shot is off.
“HAMILTON!” The ice in Coach’s voice could end global warming. His blades spray my shins with ice shrapnel as he closes in. “Hungover or just mailing it in?”
The accusation burns worse than frostbite. Pearson doesn’t yell, but here is Sophie’s dad, Mr. Orange Slices, going drill sergeant on my ass while the boys watch my funeral. It just caps off what has been a shitty day, week, month…fewmonths.
“No, Coach, I?—“
“Save the excuses. Suicides. Now. The rest of you, back to work.”
