By Thomas Shess
Original Fiction
The hallway smells faintly of laundry detergent and sharpening steel. Doors stay open in the Olympic Village because everyone keeps odd hours and nobody remembers which country borrowed the scissors. A skate blade ticks the tile every few steps as she walks in, still half wrapped in USA tape, equipment bag with #21 branded on its side and slung over one shoulder like she just came off a construction shift instead of a practice session for an international competition.
Inside the apartment, the television is muted but tuned to a replay of another sport, biathlon maybe, or curling, the universal background noise of the Games. Her spouse looks up from a small kitchen counter crowded with accreditation badges, charging cables, and a bowl of pasta gone from hot to waiting. “Good practice?”
She drops the bag. It lands with the unmistakable thud of pads, helmet, and the kind of gear designed to collide with a moving human at speed. “Good skate, but I took a shoulder in the corner. Coach wants faster breakouts.” She sits and begins pulling off her practice uniform, each tug a small act of layered archaeology after two hours of laces frozen into place. The socks are damp, the knee already coloring into tomorrow’s bruise, the USA crest still bright against sweat-creased fabric.
Outside the window a shuttle bus exhales air brakes and somewhere down the corridor a language she doesn’t speak erupts into laughter.
“Chicken or pasta?” comes the question, the most ordinary sentence inside the most extraordinary week of the year.
“Carbs,” she says, rubbing a red mark at the collarbone. “We play Canada.”
There’s a moment where the world narrows. Not to politics, not to television, not even to medals, just two people at a small Olympic table, one icing a shoulder, the other sliding over a plate. She put down the fork and winced.
“Same shoulder?”
She shook her head once. "The other one."
He looked into her eyes, not the shoulder. “Tell me again. When did they start calling you Bruiser?”
She smiled faintly. “My dad. Since as long as I can remember.” There was a silence. She played with her fork.
“What are you thinking?” he asled.
She tried to smile. “Just once I’d like to be the skater. The little frilly skinny-thighed fraud everybody throws roses at.”
“No one throws roses at enforcers,” he said. “You open the fast breaks for offense. Somebody's gotta do the grunt work.”
“Doesn’t mean I like it.”
“Would you rather be doing something else right now?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’d like to shoot a puck that goes right through the fucking back of the net.”
He bent down and kissed the top of her ponytail, “That’s my Bruiser,” he laughed.
She felt it coming back now. The heat. The noise. The want. “Bring it,” she said like a curse.
Outside, another shuttle bus hissed to a stop in the snow. She thought about her husband, who had knee replacement scars and a bouquet of memories. Now, he was a damn fine cook. She let out a big sigh. And told herself: "Soak it up, Bruiser."
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