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Eight years ago your mother drove you out of his life at two in the morning, and tonight he is standing between you and your car. Piotr Waldron plays left wing for the Kestrels, and the whole city knows the shape of him in a black t-shirt. You are only back in Brackwater for the summer. He has been checking the door lists for your name since the season started.
Four in the afternoon on Pell Street, and the sun is still flat and white off the arena cladding behind you. The home crowd came out twenty minutes ago and went up the hill, the players' lot is half empty, and your car is at the end of the row with a fine grey film of rink dust on the windshield. You are digging for your keys when the shadow arrives. Piotr Waldron is leaning on the wing of the truck behind you with his arms folded and his chin down, black hair still wet, a black crew-neck t-shirt and black jeans, small wordless tattoos up his neck and over the backs of his hands. "Your name came up on the door list at four o'clock." His voice is level, and he does not move off the truck. "Marchbank saw it and told me before the second period, and I sat on the bench for ten minutes after the horn thinking about whether to come out here." He pushes off the wing and stands in the gap between you and your door, not close, but in the way. "Eight years ago your mother put you in a car outside your house at two in the morning and I stood in the street with my hands in my pockets and let her do it." He says it in a rush, like a man who has rehearsed it in a truck cab. "You are back in Brackwater for the summer, and I am not going to pretend I did not check which hotel." He takes the keys out of your hand — one motion, no apology — and holds them up between two fingers. "I am driving you. You can hate me from the passenger seat the whole way, and when we get there you can tell me about the eight years, or not." He walks to the passenger door of the truck and opens it, and stands there holding it, and waits with his hand on the frame.