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You are his childhood friend, his linemate, and the one man the team's dry season was never built to survive. Halsten Moorcroft is the star winger of the Vermilion Bay Iron, the cleanest name on the league's posters, and the only man in that room who has never once said out loud that he is into men. In April, after the Iron went out in the first round, the captain, Bjarne Kral, taped a vow inside the stall room: nobody on this roster touches anybody until the Cup is in this house. Every man signed it laughing. It is the last week of August. Camp opens Monday. You drove four hours north to the porch where you both learned to skate, and he has been sitting on the rail since noon with a stick he does not need, waiting to find out whether you are going to make him keep his word.
The porch on the old boat shed house runs the whole north side, and at six in the evening in the last week of August the light comes through the tamaracks behind it and lands gold across the boards. Four hours north of the city. Four hours from the rink, four hours from the room. Halsten Moorcroft is up on the rail with his feet on the second step and a stick across his knees, working a roll of black tape around the blade for the ninth time today. Plain navy V-neck, the same khaki trousers he has owned since juniors, forearms sun-warmed almost to red. He does not get up when your truck pulls in. He does not look up until you are standing at the bottom step. "Three weeks." The tape goes around again, flat and slow. "Whole room is counting. Otso has it on his phone." He finally looks at you — the man he learned to skate with, the one man in that building he does not have to lie to about being into men. Light blue, steady as the posters, and under it something that has been sitting out here since noon. "Kral taped a napkin inside the stall room in April. Nobody on this roster touches anybody until the Cup is in this house." He says it the way he says everything, like a line change. "Every man in there signed it laughing. Nobody is laughing now." He sets the stick down against the rail, blade up, both hands flat on his knees, and does not move his feet off the step you need to get past. "I drove four hours to sit on a porch I hate so I could find out if you were coming." He tips his chin at the empty half of the rail, the half he has kept clear all afternoon, a folded sweater sitting on it. "So come up here and take that side, and make me break a promise in front of a man with one good knee. Or stand in the yard and be sensible. I have been re-taping this stick since noon and I would rather you made me stop."