Chapter Text
The last week of August always felt fresh, even if the residual summer heat felt otherwise.
The ice wasn’t baked with sweat, or months of victories and let downs from Mites all the way to the big leagues. This was August ice - hard, chemical and faintly metallic. Freshly laid and too slippery to field, baring the scars of not a single skate from the season.
And yet, Albina loved it.
She loved the first scrape of her blades against the surface after months of summer training. Loved the particular resistance of the ice when her unconditioned legs pushed through the first stride. Loved the sound of forty skates moving at once, a whole room full of dangerous ambition carving itself into the fresh surface.
The first days of camp were always brutal. Everyone came back different than they had been the year before. There were girls who had grown three inches over the summer and suddenly had reach they hadn’t possessed in June. There were girls who had gained 10 pounds of muscle and now had slapshots ten kilometres faster than last season. They had new sticks, new numbers, and the residual confidence from club wins or something to prove from the losses.
And this was a new team, Albina no longer the top dog of U16s, instead the fresh-meat in U18s. These girls around her were seventeen and eighteen. They were all ponytails and elbows, expensive sticks, bruised knees and taped wrists. This wasn’t the little leagues anymore. Her team was chock-full of girls who had already been identified by scouts; girls whose names appeared in prospect lists and girls who had parents who knew exactly which tournaments mattered and which coaches to kiss up to.
And then there were girls like the new girl… Charlotte.
Most of the new players were just girls like Albina, coming up from the younger leagues, or girls who had been to national training camps and so knew everyone by association. Rarely were there girls like Charlotte. She was a billet who had arrived that week from a smaller program where, according to someone who told someone… who told everyone, the hockey was nowhere near this level.
She was good. Not quite Junior Gaels good. Yet.
Albina has watched her struggle through the first two practices. She had missed a few passes, lost an edge during a drill and looked increasingly furious every time someone corrected her. By that morning though, she had stopped looking nervous and just looked fed up.
Albina was sitting on the bench after practice, unlacing her skates, when Charlotte dropped down beside her.
“Do you guys always train this much?” She huffed, landing heavy on the metal bench.
Albina gave it some thought. The training schedule in pre-season was particularly sadistic. But come October the intense training schedule was swapped for two to three games a week, plus travel.
She settled on, “pretty much.”
“So is this just, like… your whole life?”
Was it possible that this girl didn’t actually know that hockey was very much her whole life. Had she somehow missed the name and number on her jersey. Or was hockey truly non-existent where she came from? If so, how had she even made it this far?
“I guess,” Albina chuckled.
Charlotte snorted. “Could never be me.”
“You say that now, but…” Albina pulled off her first skate, foot throbbing with exhaustion.
Charlotte rolled her eyes. “I mean it. It’s just a game.”
Albina lacked the energy to argue with her. Even if she hadn’t, she became distracted by the chatter from the bench over.
“I can’t believe that she posted that.” It was the usual rink gossip. Who had dated and who and which families hated each other. Which girls would make first line and who were destined to be bench warmers. Who was secretly injured. Who had money and who had even more of it. Albina might have lived and breathed hockey, but she had never understood how people found the energy for all the politics and chatter that came with it. Maybe it was because she had grown up around hockey in a more intimate way than most of these girls. Sure, their parents had played - everyone in Canada’s parents had, practically. But they had all said goodbye to their hockey days in favour of marriage and kids… before it had really taken anything from them. Because the adults she loved had already lived through so much of it, Albina knew intimately what hockey was really all about.
The rink doors opened and Albina remembered she had another skate to untie. The quiet gaggle of voices swelled around the rink entrance and bounced off the cement walls.
“Looking forward to getting back into it?”
“Yeah, think it’ll be a good one”
“Heard the second line’s looking dangerous in scrimmages.”
The voices became louder until Albina turned needlessly. Shane stood a few metres from her, Centaurs sweatsuit and red-and-yellow Reebok sneakers on, looking every inch the lucrative professional athlete, even when doing something as ordinary as picking up his daughter. Shane’s conversation ended with little ceremony as he glanced down at Albina and his face softened immediately.
“Ready to go, Al? I’ve got training at three.”
Charlotte just stared - they all did, really. Albina could never get used to it, the way everyone stared at Shane like he was some big celebrity and not the guy who texted her reminders to take the lunch he’d packed her.
“Why is Shane Hollander here?” Charlotte muttered under her breath, glancing at Albina with wide eyes. How this girl had made it this far when she had seemingly been dropped in the middle of this rink from another planet, was beyond Albina.
“He’s my dad…” Albina said. Charlotte’s face screwed up with confusion.
“What?” She queried. Albina just looked at her. “So, you’re adopted?”
Albina’s brows shot up. “Well, yes, actually. But…” She thought about her new team and whether this was the place for lore-dropping - not that many of her hockey obsessed teammates wouldn’t already know all about it. “It’s complicated,” she settled on, shoving her skates into her bag.
“Of course she’s adopted.”
Albina stopped and turned. One of the older girls was sitting on the other end of the bench, lazily scrolling through her phone. She hadn’t even looked up when she’d spoken.
“Her gay dads are hockey royalty, and yet she can’t hit a clean slapshot. Riddle me that.” A few girls laughed. Not loudly, of course. Too loud and it would create a moment where the coaches would have to step in.
Albina had heard worse. She barely flinched. She had spent her entire childhood hearing versions of it - about Ilya and Shane, about being adopted, about having two dads, about having things handed to her. About being the girl whose family everyone seemed to have an opinion about.
But it didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. She wasn’t made of steel. She was sixteen and trying very hard to make it seem like she didn’t care.
She glanced up at Shane, who was pretending to care about whatever the coach was saying to the group behind him. The jostling of her bag as she slung it over her shoulder caught his attention.
“Ready to go?”
She nodded and walked past him and out the door.
Shane was dubious as Albina pushed past him, but he was certain something was wrong when she was silent in the car. This was the kid with opinions about everything - music, traffic, other people’s driving, Shane’s driving, hockey, school, Ilya’s new haircut.
Today, she threw her hockey bag in the back, buckled herself in and stared out the window. Shane gave her a moment as he started the car. He glanced sideways at her as he pulled away. Glanced back as he reached the end of the parking lot. Gripped the steering wheel tight once they had made it 20 metres down the road without a word.
“So…” Shane finally whispered. He was normally a lover of silence - not one for the overwhelm of constant conversation, but Albina had him worried. “Coach said your backhand today was much better.”
She gave him nothing.
“And that your edge work–”
“Dad.”
He looked over with relieved anticipation.
“Can we have, like, five seconds without hockey talk?”
Shane shut his mouth immediately. Albina returned to the window. The city slid past them in flashes of late-summer green and grey. The evening sun sat low enough to catch the windscreen, turning everything gold for a few seconds at a time. They were only two blocks from home when Shane had decided enough was enough.
“Pchelka?” He muttered, eyes trained on the road
“I’m fine.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Albina sighed. Of course he didn’t. Shane may not have been the best at reading sarcasm, and boy did she and Ilya use it to tease him sometimes. But it seemed like he felt a lie in his soul; she couldn’t get anything past him.
She rested her forehead against the glass and let the vibrations seep through her sore body. “I don’t think I’m cut out for this.”
Shane’s hands tightened around the steering wheel.
“For hockey?”
Albina nodded.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” It was drawn out in a way that only teenagers really master, each elongated vowel spelling out: leave me alone, you’re annoying me, please don’t make me talk to yooooooooou.
Still, Shane was patient with her… like always.
“I just don’t want to be anywhere near a rink right now.” Her words were quiet, like she didn’t want to say them but couldn’t hold them in.
For a moment, Shane considered telling her the obvious thing: that she loved hockey, that she had spent her whole life skating, that one bad practice couldn’t erase a decade of training, that she had worked too hard to give up now.
And then he thought of himself at sixteen, when he believed that the only way to be the best was to love hockey unconditionally and never question its faults. When he believed that he had worked too hard to take his foot off the gas for even a moment. And where had that gotten him? Eventually to the MLH, but not without years of uncertainty. Not without pain that he would never let his baby girl go through - not for even a moment.
“You know,” Shane finally said. “I don’t think you’re supposed to love every second of it.”
Albina turned to him, her head still pressed against the window. “You’re telling me you don’t love every second of it?”
“God, no!” Shane said quickly, earning the smallest twitch of a smile from Albina. Shane didn’t look at her, for fear of making her retreat. He was learning that parenting a teenager was like moving through the cage of a sleeping tiger. Silent baby steps, always. “The smell of a locker room should not be something anyone enjoys.”
Albina lifted her head off the window. “Same with wet gloves.” Shane let out a noise that made it clear he agreed.
“Or when guys leave the offcuts of their tape stuck to the bench. Absolutely not.”
Albina let out a genuine laugh. “Or when the Zamboni is taking too long.”
“I thought you loved the Zamboni?” Shane raised a brow at her.
“I do. But I also hate when it takes too long.” Shane eyed her in a way that suggested she’d talked herself into her own solution and Albina just tightened her lips.
“There’s a difference,” Shane began, quieter, “between hating hockey, and hating what people are making you feel about hockey.”
Albina stopped for a moment, glancing out her window and then at the road in front of them.
“The girls are so nasty,” she whispered, a quiver in her voice.
Shane’s jaw tightened. He hated to hear it. Hated that he hadn’t been there to protect her. Even more so, he was grateful Ilya wasn’t there; no doubt he would have been taking names.
“They’re nasty because you’re good.” Shane settled on.
Albina sighed, head tipped back. “You have to say that. You’re my dad.”
Shane let out a soft chuckle, finally loosening his grip on the wheel. “I wouldn’t lie to you, and you know that.” And she did. “You don’t have to decide to play hockey for the rest of your life, Al.” Shane assured. “You just have to decide if you want to go tomorrow.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then don’t.”
Albina’s head snapped towards him. “Really?”
“Really.”
“But you think I should.”
“I think you should make the decision because you want to do it, not because some girl said something cruel.”
Albina nodded imperceptibly. “Are you disappointed?”
Shane frowned. “Why would I be?”
“I don’t know.” Albina picked at the cuff of her sweatshirt. “I thought maybe you’d think I was giving up… or just being stupid.”
“I don’t think you’re being stupid,” Shane assured. “I think you’re being sixteen.”
Despite herself, Albina smiled.
“And for the record,” Shane continued. “There is nothing you could do that would disappoint me.”
Albina glanced sideways at him. “Not even quitting hockey?”
“Not even quitting hockey.”
“Not even if I start telling people I hope the Voyageurs win the Cup this season?”
Shane snorted a laugh. “Okay, maybe that.” Albina exaggerated a gasp. “Sorry, Al. I have my limits,” he joked. “But seriously,” he continued, softer. “It’s up to you. Always will be. You don’t want to go, you don’t go.”
Albina nodded, mind made up before she’d even buckled her seatbelt. And Shane knew it too. You don’t spend your whole life in love with the chaos of hockey, watching MLH training up close and soaking up every second of it, to let it all fall apart because some girl was a bitch.
She wanted to go. Always would.
“Although,” Shane grinned, knowing the moment had passed. “If we’re going to the rink, I think your backhand–”
“Dad.”
“Sorry. Five seconds.” Shane smirked.
They both mentally counted to five.
“Your backhand really could use some work.” He spat out.
Albina stared straight at him for a second before bursting out laughing.
“Shane Hollander!”