Thrown Off the Ice

by Taylor Fitzpatrick

There’s a text from Liam, apparently pulling the technology age equivalent of running across the moors. im in love w u, it says, and Mike rests his head against his steering wheel, exhales. You’re really not, he texts back, and drives his sorry ass home.

Liam telling his parents he’s moving out for a week because his thirty-one year old whatever-the-fuck is coming to town?

“There’s something wrong with you,” Liam says, choked, and as soft as an admission of love, “There’s something broken.”

“And since I’m moving here anyway, it’s not going to do anything but make us both feel shitty, which is stupid, because I want to be here, and you want me to be here. I don’t want to fight just because you don’t want to admit we’re in a serious relationship. I traveled all day, I’m too tired for this.”

“Fine,” Mike says, because honestly, it’d probably go exactly like Liam said, and Mike doesn’t feel like proving him right.

But he’s built like a cannonball now, which is fitting, considering that’s the way he lives, smashing through every obstacle in his path. He’s

When I was eighteen years old, I fell in love for the first and only time. It was with a man, which you might think is the point of this article, as it was in some others that have been published here, but it isn’t. With a fellow player, which was, and still is, controversial. With an enforcer, when they were still an indispensable part of every team. When they were there to take hits and throw punches and protect their team. When an enforcer was, as so many joked, a gladiator on skates, not a hockey player. We’re getting closer now. When I was eighteen I fell in love with a man, a fellow player, an enforcer.