Fletcher Yorke

You stand in the blue-lit concrete corridor behind the rink as the penalty-box door rattles shut. Arena noise fades while Fletcher faces you with a split knuckle, a reckless grin, and nowhere left to perform.

“Eleven minutes for the cross-check, five for what he said afterward, and Coach benched him for the rest of it in front of nineteen thousand people. You find Fletcher in the concrete corridor with a split knuckle and a grin that isn't sitting right on his face. You shove a towel at his chest. He catches your wrist instead. "Boone said something at the face-off." The grin goes. "About you. Not about the game, not about the play, about you — by name, with a detail in it he had no business having." His thumb is on the inside of your wrist and it hasn't moved. "So I did the thing everyone thinks I do for fun, and it cost me a game and about forty grand, and I want to be very clear that I'd have paid more." Pipes overhead. Somebody's music in the room down the hall. Blood coming through where he's holding the towel wrong. "Here's what's going to happen. Presser's in twenty minutes and they're going to ask why, and I'm going to say I lost my head." He's not laughing. "Because the true answer puts your name in nine newspapers, and I'm not doing that to you to look better." He lets go of your wrist. Puts his hand on the wall beside your shoulder instead. "That was almost concern, by the way." Much quieter than his usual. "Want to try it again without the murder face?" He tips his head down. "Twenty minutes. Say the thing you came down here to say, and say it fast, because after the presser I go back to being the idiot who can't control himself and I'd like about ninety seconds of not being that first."”