Page 18

Story: Pucked Up

Chapter eighteen

Noah

M y phone vibrated against the kitchen counter with a dry, cicada-style buzz—three times, short and clipped. I stared at it like it might bite.

Reception at the cabin was like breathing underwater: unreliable, strained, and sometimes not worth the effort.

The number was unknown. I hesitated, then answered anyway.

I heard a man's voice. Measured. Not cheerful. "Noah Langley?"

My throat clicked as I swallowed. "Yeah."

"This is Mark Brody. I'm with the Northern Tier Developmental League. Got your name from someone I trust—someone who says you work hard and might be ready to return."

I leaned my hip against the counter, pressing hard enough that the edge bit through the denim of my jeans. Micah tended the fire and pretended not to listen.

Brody kept talking.

"We've got a slot open in Marquette. Tryout roster. Five days from now."

Marquette. I let the word land. It wasn't the NHL. Not even close. But it was organized ice and close to home, relatively speaking. Real drills. Hockey.

"I thought a rookie taken out in the first season was done."

A dry chuckle from the other end. "Not to everyone. Not forever."

I didn't say yes or no. My hand pressed flat against the counter, needing the contact to stay vertical.

Brody paused. "You don't have to answer right now. We just wanted to give you a chance. Thought you might want to take advantage of it. You're young."

He gave me a callback number. I repeated it out loud, sharp and clear, before he hung up.

I stood there watching my phone's connection fade. Signal gone. It had only clawed its way through the pines long enough for me to receive that one call.

Micah stepped up behind me, resting his hand on my shoulder. He didn't ask what the call was about. He didn't need to.

"Tryout?"

I nodded once.

I didn't talk about it. Not right away. Not even when I sat cross-legged on the rug, pulled my shirt over my head, and laid it beside me.

The fire hung on—barely. Half a log still smoldered. I didn't feed it. It was easier to let it be.

Micah lowered himself to the couch, arms crossed, eyes sharp and unreadable. He didn't offer questions or comfort.

Without more thought, I began checking out my body's muscle memory. I started with neck rolls. Shoulders next. Then, the deeper ones—scapular isolations and core twisting.

Left arm up. Reach. Right arm across the chest, pull.

That's when an ache bared its teeth—low in the joint, a hot knot I'd learned to respect. I held it, breathed through it, let it crest and fade.

"I'll need to tape before drills," I muttered without turning to look at Micah.

He didn't answer.

I flattened onto my stomach and lifted into a modified plank. The rug scratched against my knees.

"I'm not scared of the ice anymore." The words sounded like a defensive proclamation.

I sat back and ran my fingers over the skin above my collarbone, then down the side of my shoulder. The scar was pale now, not angry.

It still puckered in the middle, like a seam barely holding. My fingertips hovered over it—not touching or tracing. Only remembering.

Micah's voice was low and coarse. "You say that like you negotiated a peace treaty with it."

"No, but I won't let it speak for me."

The fire gave out.

We didn't rekindle it. The air in the cabin took on a dry bite—barely tolerable but better than the noise of pretending everything was fine.

I sat on the floor with my knees up, arms braced on them. Micah hadn't moved.

He asked the crucial question. "You going?"

No curiosity in it. It was like the hinge of a door creaking open.

I didn't answer right away. My pulse pounded in my chest

"Yeah," I said finally. "But I don't want to do this without you."

Micah didn't blink. He absorbed the word.

Slowly, he stood and then paced from one edge of the room to the other. The space between us didn't shrink, but it changed shape.

"Then I'll come too."

My jaw dropped. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

He kept going. "We'll find a place. Near the big lake."

Lake Superior. He'd chosen to mention it deliberately. It was a body of water big enough to hold the noise inside his head.

"Okay," I said, my voice catching around the word.

Micah nodded once, like he'd just committed to something that might wreck him. Or save him. Maybe both.

***

We didn't make a list and didn't check the weather. We just started moving, like if we waited too long, the decision might dissolve under us.

Micah opened the closet first—his closet. I'd shoved my things into the bottom drawer weeks ago, too unsure to ask for more space.

I half-expected him to toss a bag in my direction and stay out of the process. Instead, he crouched beside me on the bedroom floor and started folding.

He held up one of his worn blue flannels I'd been living in. "You're taking this one." It still held the faintest trace of him. "You've stretched the shoulders out anyway."

I laughed softly but didn't argue. I folded it carefully like it might break.

Micah didn't pack fast. Every item had to be vetted before it crossed the cabin's threshold. A small tin of balm went in. He also tossed in a tattered paperback missing its cover. There was a backup roll of tape for my shoulder, even though I said I'd pick some up in Marquette.

"I don't want you to get there and realize you forgot the shit that matters." His tone was firm.

We packed the skates I'd borrowed on our excursion to the lake, but I knew I'd need to purchase new ones if my tryout was promising. "I probably don't remember what half of what matters even is."

Micah glanced at me. "That's why I'm coming."

There wasn't a trace of hesitation in his voice. His decision to go wasn't performative. Neither was it a promise made in the heat of the moment. It was a fact. His version of loyalty didn't come with poetry—only follow-through.

I opened my duffel and layered clothes, rolling them tight to save space. When I got to the hoodie I'd stolen off him the second week—the one with the torn cuff and the faded tournament logo—I hesitated. I held it up with both hands.

Micah looked over and nodded once. "That, too."

He walked to the windowsill. There, he picked up the wolf carving. Without saying a word, he brought it over and knelt beside me again. I froze.

He placed it gently into the zippered side pocket of my duffel. His hand lingered on it for half a breath.

"That's not for luck. It's a reminder."

"Of what?"

"That you came back."

My heart fluttered in my chest while he zipped the pocket and stood.

***

That night, Micah fell asleep fast. Maybe he always did after big decisions. Perhaps he could shut it all down once he'd landed on something. Unplug.

I wasn't built that way.

I lay on my side, curled toward him, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest. His arm had draped over my waist without ceremony, heavy and warm.

It was familiar now. That was the strangest part—how used to him I'd become. The weight of his body against mine no longer registered as foreign. I expected it.

Still, I couldn't sleep.

Every time I closed my eyes, my thoughts cracked open. Images, half-formed—crowds, locker rooms, questions I wasn't ready to answer. Whispers, too. The kind that always come when someone wants your redemption story but doesn't care how you survived.

I'd made the choice. I was going, but that didn't mean I'd kicked all the fear to the curb.

Proving myself still able to perform on the ice didn't bother me. I was scared of being seen.

Out there, there'd be eyes. Coaches. Teammates. Media. Strangers on forums who'd know my name again, only this time as a curiosity.

I'd be the kid who got wrecked and crawled out of the woods with a limp, an older man, and a massive scar. What would they call us? What would they callme?

Micah shifted in his sleep. His fingers twitched against my hip.

I stared at the ceiling. We hadn't named our relationship. Not really. Sex, yes. Connection, sometimes. Coexistence, for sure.

We shared pain buried so deep that we both learned to recognize it without speaking. Would it be real away from the cabin?

Here, we were ghosts clinging to a house that didn't ask questions: no fans or expectations. The second we crossed into the world again—into grocery stores and away games and handshake greetings—what would we be?

I'd watched Micah face down a man in a bar and hold the fire in his fists without lighting it, but that didn't mean he'd never burn. And I didn't know how to carry that weight if it cracked open in public.

I rolled onto my back, careful not to wake him. The blanket shifted, and the cold nipped at the edge of my collar.

Maybe I was selfish. Perhaps I wanted him to want the future how I did—terrified, yes, but still choosing it.

I whispered, more to the dark than to him: "You gonna make it out there with me?"

His hand tightened around my side slightly. I didn't cry, but I didn't sleep either.

I lay there, eyes wide, and watched morning try to claw its way through the cracks in the cabin.

The following morning, we didn't speak much. There wasn't anything left to say that hadn't already passed between us.

Micah poured coffee into two mismatched mugs—mine chipped, his with a burn mark on the handle. We drank it standing by the window, watching the wind comb through the trees like it was searching for something we forgot to pack.

My bag sat by the door, already zipped. His was next to it, the side pocket still bulging slightly where the wolf carving rested.

He watched me lace my boots. His eyes tracked the tremble in my fingers when I stood, but he didn't point it out.

When I opened the cabin door, the cold hit fast. It was less biting than during storms but sharp enough to sting my eyes.

Micah shut the door behind us, then stood there for a long moment, hand resting flat against the wood. The key turned with a dull scrape.

When he slid it from the lock, he stared at it for a few beats. Then, without words, he reached up and unhooked something from the old nail above the doorframe.

It was a black knit cap—mine. I'd left it there the first week, soaking wet and too cold to wear. I never picked it back up.

He turned and handed it to me, but there was no ceremony.

"I figured you'd want this."

The wool was stiff in places, stretched out, still smelling faintly like smoke and cedar and the salt of old sweat.

I took it from him, fingers curling into the fabric. My throat closed. For a second, I couldn't breathe past it.

It was stupid—a cap. Not even mine initially—I think I'd pulled it from a bin near the fire when my ears went numb that first night. It was the first thing in the cabin that kept me warm.

I hadn't even noticed it was missing until it came back.

"Thanks."

Micah touched my shoulder once, light and sure. "You ready?"

I glanced back at the cabin—at the roof sagging under snow. It had been a hiding place, allowing for rebirth.

It had been us.

I couldn't lie.

"No," I said. "But let's go anyway."

As I turned to climb into the truck, Micah paused, then ducked back inside the cabin. Not for anything practical—we'd already loaded his bag.

He returned a moment later holding a beat-up composition notebook. The cover was scorched at the corner, water-warped and curling.

He held it out to me.

"I started writing in it after the first time I put a hole in the wall. I didn't want to talk to anyone. Figured I'd write shit down instead."

I took it, surprised by the weight of it. Inside, the first few pages were a mess—scrawled phrases, a grocery list, a record of how long it took the fire to heat the place in December.

But further in, the tone changed. Short entries. Like:

Didn't speak today. Just split wood. Left arm still sore. Saw a fox out by the ridge. Didn't shoot. Dreamed of the hit again. Woke up shaking. Didn't break anything.

One entry made my fingers tremble:

Woke up thinking I heard laughter. It was mine. Don't know why that scared me.

Then, later:

He's still here. I think he might stay.

I closed the book gently and held it firmly.

Micah turned the key, and the truck roared to life. "You don't have to read it. Just figured... if you wanted to know the version of me I didn't say out loud."

The cap in my hand felt heavier now.

"I do."

I held the notebook in my lap the whole way down the ridge.

The cabin didn't vanish in the rearview mirror. Its ghost stayed with us for miles.