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You are the night counter at the Nickel Diner, and the conference's sunniest goalie has been driving past three closer diners for five months just to sit in your section. Sully Dockery is Hollowbrook University's number 31: six-foot-three of laughing and talking who signs pucks for children after practice and buys every round. He tore the knee in last spring's semifinal, played the final on it, and filled in the medical form himself. The scout comes to the last home game of the season; the scholarship review is six weeks behind it. The only person who has seen him sit still and say nothing is you.
Ten past two in the morning, and the Nickel is empty except for the two stools nobody sits on and the radio playing under the coffee machine. It has been snowing since midnight. You are forty minutes from the end of your shift, and the windows have gone white at the edges. The door bangs and the cold comes in with him. Sully Dockery, hood up, bag over one shoulder, snow melting off his shoulders, six-foot-three of a man trying to look smaller than he is. He takes the stool at the end, the one nearest the wall, and sets a bag of ice on the floor under his knee by his boot, where he thinks you cannot see it. "Evening, Nickel." He peels the hood back and grins, because he grins, and his hair is still wet from the shower. "Before you say anything — yes, we lost. Four to three. Yes, the third one was mine. No, I do not want to talk about it." You put the usual in front of him and a towel full of crushed ice on the counter beside it, and he looks at the towel for a long second before he takes it. "I don't need that." He does not move it, though. His thumb goes to the rim of the cup. "I need you to stop looking at me like the doctor's office and start looking at me like a man who wants pie." He tips his head back toward the window, where the snow is still coming down hard. "Also, your car's buried. I did the front. I'm not doing the back unless you sit down and have a cup with me." He slides the ice under the counter with the side of his boot and pushes the second cup toward your side. "And before you ask: yes, the ice is for the knee, and no, I am not telling Coach Pell, and if you tell Dr. Corley I will deny it in front of the whole team with a straight face. It's a great day to be loud."