YETI

Losing miserably brings back some memories for the group of us that's been around longer than Nico. The sharp bite at first, then the dull ache of knowing it's probably going to happen more often than once.

It's normally fine for us in the older crowd, you just go home, get something to eat and sleep it off, then get ready for the next game.

The one thing I never thought about, though, because I've only spent one year without Gage Paxton as my goalie, and that was my first year, when Paikky was doing better; is how big of a toll it takes on them. Gage is almost superhuman in my perception, he has full control over his emotions and can shut them off after a moment or two, getting right back in the mood for the next game. 

I'd never seen anything different. Paikky and Paxy are both so far out there into "all goalies are a little off" that they don't seem to process losses into emotions. Rocket's the first. It's weird to me. 

I've never been good with emotions myself, I'm pretty alright with other people, when they come to me with an emotional mess up or something they need to get off their chest I'm good enough to keep a level head and tell them what I think they should do. I'm alright at it, I do it with some people, it's okay. 

But I've never been good with feeling anything myself. Working with other people is like being a ghost standing in the middle of the locker room after winning a big game. I'm there but I don't get to be a part of it.

Which is why I'm so confused right now.

I'm soaked, having just gotten back from a hot shower in the team room. My legs and arms are shaky. After a loss normally everyone goes extra hard on the post-game work out to get ready to try a little harder the next game.

I stayed late. I wanted to get in extra reps and then run it off like I normally do, I thought I was the last person at the facility.

I'm not.

Rocket is sitting in the locker room, his head in his hands, fingers knotted up in his hair, tugging on it. He's staring at the floor, thinking.

And I'm awkwardly standing in the doorway.

As much time as I spend with other people's feelings, I've always thought I was broken enough to not feel empathy. I know what they're feeling, I have a decent guess at what it actually feels like, I have enough compassion not to make any harsh statements, but when people mention empathy, I don't believe in it.

Feeling what other people are feeling in a moment of hurt is not possible.

Or I thought it wasn't.

That is until I feel the ache of self hatred deep in my gut even though I already worked my way through that feeling tonight. I'm done with the feeling already. I didn't play badly, it was just an off night for all of us.

But here I am, watching Rocket tear himself apart over it and I'm feeling it too.

"Get up," my voice croaks out too harshly.

Rocket looks up at me, his eyes are swimming, he's hurt by my quick words.

"I'm sorry, that came out wrong," I splutter.

"Listen, Yets, I don't want a pep talk, I just need to go home," he stands up, pulling a baseball cap on over his head, then grabbing his coat. "You played great tonight."

"No, I'm not giving you a pep talk. We sucked. I know we sucked. Hyping ourselves up after something that bad isn't worth it. I just want someone to come with me to get a sandwich."

He frowns, picking up his backpack. "Why?"

"I normally do it alone, but," I stop talking. But you're hurting and even though I don't know what to do I want to make you feel better? But this is a strong emotion I'm feeling and even though it sucks, I want it to keep going? Because you're so confusing to me I almost ache to spend time picking you apart, figuring you out? "You look like you need it."

"Alright," he mumbles. "Grab your stuff, I'm always down for a sandwich." I keep my eyes on him in the corner of the room, waiting for me to get dressed the rest of the way. He's exhausted. It was a hard game for him, for most of the defense. Dallas spent most of the night in our zone, shot after shot after shot. Paxy was pulled after letting in two goals on five shots and Rocket played the rest of the night. He let in 4 more on over thirty shots. It was a mess. Six to one.

Rocket is phenomenal. He's not Paxton, Paxton is inhuman, but he's probably one of the most defined goaltenders I've ever worked with. While Paxton stops things based off pure reflex, Rocket's technique is flawless. He's already in the way before the player can even wind up. He's the most flexible goaltender I've ever met too, his ability to leap up from a full split to a ready position is close to the most impressive thing I've ever seen.

I was wrong about him. I keep being wrong about him. 

But he gives himself hell over it because there's some players that technique just can't stop. Paxton is our go-to based off league clout, but the more I think about it, the more I think we should consider playing Rocket more. Paxton's best skill set shows up during shootouts. Nothing, and I mean nothing can get past him in one-on-one. In his whole career of 5 seasons, this being his fifth, he's let in three shootout goals. Fucking three.

"What do you normally do after games like this?" I ask, tying my boots up.

He sighs, "lay on the floor. Sounds stupid but hardwood does wonders for a thought-process."

"Nothing else?"

"Crave fried food. But, you know, health restrictions on us mean we can't have that. Like right now, there's nothing I want more in the world than a bucket of fries. How about you?"

I stand up, slinging my bag over my shoulders, "you'll see."

We walk quietly side by side out to my truck, I figure I'll drop Rocket back here so he can go home in his own car. He tosses his stuff in the back seat next to mine and then climbs up into my passenger seat.

"Is it just custom out here to have a truck?" He mumbles, buckling in. "Everyone but Steph has one."

"He'll figure out soon enough that a truck is the only way to survive the winter. That Camaro is going to be a tough bargain in the ice we get."

"He's under the impression snow tires will do the trick. Both of us are weirded out by the lack of a subway. We took the T everywhere back in Boston."

"Really? I thought that was... like... a fan disaster."

He shrugs. "Not for me. He got noticed once or twice but hats and hoodies did the trick. So we didn't ever need cars in the winter, now that we're here, I'm thankful for my truck more than ever." He glances over at my driver's side. "Ew, automatic."

That gets a little bit of a start out of me. "What?"

"Automatic."

"Yeah?" I gesture at the inside. "They don't make stick shifts over here and thank God for that."

He sticks out his tongue, slouching into his seat, "they don't make them unless you ask."

"You special ordered a stick shift? Jesus, Rocket, I knew you were weird with the whole goalie thing and the goat herding, but I didn't realize you were that bad."

"I didn't special order mine, it's just old, but I figure when I need a new one, yeah, I'll put in a call. At least you're in a General Motors truck, I don't think I'd be able to be friends with you if you drove a Ford."

I frown over at him, heading toward the sandwich shop I frequent after bad games. "And you're a car guy?"

"I'm not a car guy, I'm picky," he takes a deep breath. "So where are we going?"

"Drive through paninis," I shrug. "Right here."

Rocket's eyebrows go up, "drive through?"

"Yeah, here," I stop at the menu and we both think for a second.

Fifteen minutes later, Rocket is halfway through a ham and cheese, "eating my feelings has never tasted so good."

"I'm glad you like it." I take a bite of my turkey and cheese, pulling off the highway. He's been asking where we're going for a while now and I just keep telling him he'll find out.

When I stop, we're overlooking a large lake, the park is closed, but it's nice to sit in the truck and watch the stars from here.

"So you come out here after a hard loss? What do you do?"

I shrug, taking another bite, "think."

"What about?"

"Anything I want. It's freeing," I lean back in my seat, watching out the windshield. "C'mon, outside."

"Isn't it going to be cold?"

"Not really, we're kind of in a valley, the wind doesn't come down here, that's why the water is so flat."

I push open my door and crunch down the path to the stony beach, then sit down. He's right behind me, sitting a couple feet away, finishing off his sandwich.

"You're right, it's really nice down here," he mumbles, looking out at the lake. He sticks the sandwich wrapper in his pocket and stands back up again, walking a few strides forward to the edge of the water and picking up a rock.

His shoulder rolls back and cocks, then releases, flinging the rock into the distance. I hear the splash and watch the ripple cut open the flat surface, the starlight folding around the waves.

His presence is calming. When I'm out here normally, it's because I have so much on my mind I feel stuffy in my room. Now that he's out here with me, I'm calm.

I watch him toss rocks into the lake, his form is damn near perfect, just like his goaltending.

And I think.

I flop backward in the rocks, eyes on the roll of his thin shoulders, the flick of his long fingers, the elastic reaction of his arm, the tense and then the release. I watch his hair fly in the gentle breeze, drying off after his shower. I watch his footing, his scuffed black converse digging into the soft gravel. I listen to the crunch of his feet and each sharp puff of air that escapes his throat with each throw. When he moves, the material of his old Bauer Firebirds jacket rubs against itself, making a faint nylon sound. That jacket is a comfort item for him. It's tattered beyond belief, but he wears it after a hard game or on the plane late at night or early in the morning. Steph has the same one, he uses it in the same way: a comfort blanket.

The air is crisp, smelling faintly of the nearby farms, but also giving off a late-fall bite. It's past harvesting season so all of the fields surrounding us are cut clean and left bare for the winter, spare a few here and there of farmers that still use winter-wheat methods to dry their wheat instead of the chemical methods used in bigger industry farming. The fields being empty means that from this little lake divot, I can look out for miles and miles on end, seeing the stars and the distant lights of Regina. The province environment board, where Steph's girlfriend works, has put dampening methods on all of the lights in the city, hoods on buildings, floodlights that go down and only down, containing the light pollution so we can see the sky unmarred.

The stars are so clear tonight that I feel faintly inclined to reach up and take a handful. Maybe I'd offer my handful of the cosmos to Rocket, rightfully named, and hope he accepts it, me as well. I'd offer him my handful of the stars and wedge myself between two or three glowing specks and maybe he'd see me like he sees them, beautifully untouched, somehow, though distant and confusing and difficult to capture in words, still interesting. 

Then, maybe, he'd let me into that big complex explosive brain of his and I could sit in one of the dusty corners and warm my hands on his thoughts, tuck my feet under a layer of his personality, then slip into the folds of him, hoping that I can be just as interesting as he is when he eventually taps me out one ear. 

"Rocket?" I say, catching his attention.

He turns, rolling rocks between his fingers. He's merely a silhouette against the brilliant sky, yet his shadow is far more captivating than the universe stretched out behind him. And captivating he is, every part of him is fascinating to me.

"When you show up to a new environment," I pause, a breeze knocking some of my hair into my eyes. "This is a weird question, never mind."

Although I can only see a faint shadow of each of his features, the flash of the whites of his eyes tells me he just rolled them at me. "Don't kneecap yourself like that. Finish the question."

"Ah, okay," I chew the inside of my lip. "When you show up somewhere new, with new people, do you notice that they all tend to open up faster and get happier when you're around?"

"What?"

I scramble to create a good continuation, "like at ping pong. It was quiet and boring and very normal and then you come in and suddenly everyone is laughing harder and you're cracking jokes and making people happy. Do you know you do that?"

He shrugs, skipping a rock this time, the splash of the stone against the smooth surface of the water causes the image of the stars in its mirror to ripple and bend. "No, I had no idea, but that's just me. That's who I am. I like to make other people happy."

"How do you do it?" It's almost a whisper, but my curiosity betrays my sense of self-preservation.

"I don't know, I've never thought too hard about it. I smile with them, figure out what types of jokes they like, I act as friendly as possible. I guess it's second nature. Why are you asking?"

I puff out my cheeks, I didn't want to get this specific, "what's it like?"

"What?" He skips a handful more. Though his throwing form is good, he can't skip a rock for his life. They last maybe one or two hops on the water, three if he's lucky. I have half the heart to stand up and set my feet just behind his, taking his wrists in my fingers and showing him. I want to teach him something because he feels like he's always teaching me things. 

"Making other people smile?"

He freezes up, his hands stop rolling the rocks, even his hair stops blowing in the breeze. "What part of it do you want to know? What I feel like? What I like about it?"

"What you feel like." I mumble, leaning back on my elbows, picking up a small piece of pink quartz and passing the cold milky stone between my fingers before slipping it into my pocket.

"Happy," he tucks his hands into his pockets, his silhouette closing in on itself. "I get a lot of my own happiness from making other people happy. It makes me feel light and energetic in a way, makes everything feel like it's good again." He's staring wistfully up at the stars, just the same as I was minutes ago, I watch his gaze follow the slow trajectory of a flicker on the dome, perhaps a satellite.

He turns around to me, his converse crunching in the rocks, "why do you want to know?"

"I dunno," I shrug, trying to come up with a better answer than I want to know what it feels like to feel something. "Everyone experiences happiness differently and it's fun to learn about."

He doesn't believe me. I know that from his stiff but interested posture, the furrow in his brow I can still see despite the lack of a moon to light up the ground. But he nods like it's a good point and turns back to the water.

I lie on the rocks and watch the stars for a long few minutes while he rhythmically throws rocks. I listen to the splash and the soft rustling of wind in the winter wheat and I watch the stars, thinking of ways I could fly out of here and somehow find a place where I'm at peace with who I am and I'm allowed to act like I want to without worrying people will find me too much of something and not enough of the next.

Then I start to realize that maybe my place is here. With him. Maybe I don't need a rocket to get out, maybe I needed a Rocket to stay.

I'm stunned with another question that pops into the air around us, the timber of his voice surprising me. "When did you feel the happiest? Like, what moment has been the happiest you've ever felt?"

I puff out my cheeks, closing my eyes and remembering it, "draft day."

"Why?"

"I dunno, I achieved my dream. I made it."

"That's not all of it. You're lying. I don't know a lot about you, but that's a lie," he flings another rock, the splash startling me just a little.

I roll it around in my head, trying to phrase this correctly. "Draft day meant I got to get out. I wanted to leave. Draft day gave me a spot to go, a new group of people, another shot."

He nods, taking it in. He's not fidgeting, just standing there.

I ask him a question before he can read into that too deeply. "What about you? What was your happiest moment?"

He lets out a short laugh, remembering it. "Halfway through senior year I was friends with this girl, it was some unimportant day, some random night, some project. I don't care for the details of it. But we snuck out of my billet family's house, we were on the roof, just talking. After everything that happened with my dad when I was little, all of that, learning a new language by immersion in a new school, everything, it was the first time I felt like I was who I'm supposed to be. Like I finally fit with my body. I was finally all there. She talked me through what I was going through, talked me around all the corners, talked to me and something clicked and suddenly I wasn't afraid of everything anymore. I took it and ran with it."

My stomach starts aching, for a moment I think that it's the sickness I had at the end of summer.

Then I realize something: it's yearning.

I'm envious of one of his memories.

I scramble for a lead-off question before he can see what I'm feeling. "You learned English by immersion? I thought most... you know, Europeans kinda..."

He just shakes his head, laughing a slight bit. "No, not in eastern Europe, not many people speak it. It's taught in universities and that's about it. Plus, it doesn't help that I lived in really rural Czechia, far away from English-speaking areas. So yeah, I came to Whitby a day before school started and didn't understand a single thing anyone said until spring."

I practically gape at him, "did you pass?"

"They made an exception," he laughs. "The only thing they got out of me in the first half was that I played hockey. The team was super competitive, province champs and whatnot. They made it seem like I wasn't going to make it and then I blew them completely out of the water. Got immediately invited to an elite club team and things took off from there. Of course, I only knew a couple sentences in English. 'Cover me' and 'good game' were about it."

"God damn," I mumble. "If I was put in that position in another language, I don't think I'd survive."

"I about didn't. I had to get dragged out of bed most days." He chuckles, pulling his legs up and tossing his elbows over his knees, facing the water from next to me.

I let out a long breath, watching my used air puff and curl in the chilly atmosphere, creating a soft fog in front of my face. "Thanks for coming out here with me." I mumble, trying to hide the fact that I'm watching him out of the corner of my eyes, wondering how he's making the space feel so much warmer and more inviting just by sitting next to me.

"Thanks for trusting me with it." He mumbles, looking sideways at me, his cool green eyes glinting in the starlight. I look right back, only a breeze and a hundred thousand thoughts separating us. "Ever brought anyone else out here?"

I shake my head, looking forward again, the moment of eye contact was broken. "No,