Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

It takes Matty three months after retirement to admit he’s loitering.

Officially, he’s visiting family in the States. His sister insists on seeing him without a helmet on, his mother keeps feeding him casseroles like he’s still cutting weight for playoffs, and his dad asks careful, polite questions about knees and “what’s next.” It’s nice, in a way he didn’t let himself want when he was nineteen and terrified he’d never make the league.

It’s also… distant. They love him, but they don’t know what to do with him when he isn’t on TV. At dinner his aunt introduces him to a neighbour as “our hockey player,” then corrects herself to “well, our retired player now,” and the way everyone looks at him makes his skin itch.

So he does what he’s always done when the world feels off‑centre: he goes home. Not to the U.S. suburb with the casseroles. To Ottawa.

He tells everyone it’s convenient. He’s already in the region. Flights are cheaper. There’s a charity thing he promised Shane and Ilya he’d show up for. All of that is true, but it’s not the whole truth. The whole truth is that Westboro feels like someone left a porch light on for him and forgot to turn it off.

By the second visit, the staff at Boodram’s know his order. By the third, Hayes’s comic‑shop has a tab for “ex‑Centaur who leaves pocket money for kids” because Matty cannot stop buying disadvantaged teenagers his favourite comics. Every time he lands, there’s at least one text waiting in the poverty rookies chat.

POVERTY ROOKIES

Matty: you in yet?

Marcel: we saw your flight on the alumni account

Elio: stop stalking him, haas

Luca: never

He laughs, drops his bag in whatever guest room they’ve decided is his this time, and pretends this isn’t a habit.

On this particular trip, the excuse is a youth skills showcase at the community rink. It’s one of those Saturday events that run on volunteer energy and bad coffee: stations for skating and shooting, a scrimmage at the end, parents with folding chairs and thermoses lining the glass. Matty told himself he was just going to watch, maybe help tie a few skates. He lasted about ten minutes before his brain switched on.

He’s leaning on the railing, watching a U16 scrimmage, when he hears himself mutter, “Kid in blue twenty‑three has great feet, totally lost in the neutral zone though.”

He didn’t mean to say it out loud. The words just… slip.

Beside him, someone snorts. “You’re not wrong,” a voice says. “He’s been convinced he’s a winger since he was ten. Nobody’s told him the ice has a middle yet.”

Matty turns. The man next to him is in track pants and a team polo with a logo Matty doesn’t recognise – a stylised wolf’s head over the words KINGSTON RIVER WOLVES – clipboard tucked under one arm. He looks like every assistant coach Matty’s ever met: practical haircut, whistle on a lanyard, the particular tired sharpness of someone who watches teenagers for a living.

“Sorry,” Matty says automatically. “Didn’t mean to… coach from the railing.”

“Please, coach from the railing,” the guy says dryly. “We’ve only been trying to get him to see the middle for a year.” He squints at Matty. “You’re Young, right? Matty Young?”

Matty blink‑blinks. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s me.”

“Thought so,” the guy says. “I saw your last game in Ottawa. Whole bench crying, half the building chanting.” He nudges him with an elbow. “Nice goal, by the way.”

Matty flushes, the compliment landing in the same weird space as the aunt’s “our hockey player,” but gentler.

“Lucky bounce,” he says.

“Sure,” the guy says, in a tone that says he doesn’t believe that for a second. “I’m Dan Bell. Assistant coach with the River Wolves. We’ve got a couple of kids in this game.” He gestures toward the ice. “Who else were you yelling at?”

“I wasn’t yelling,” Matty protests, then nods at blue twelve. “Okay yeah him. Just - he’s got good edges. But he keeps skating himself out of options.”

“Because he thinks his job is to get wide and wait for a pass that may never come,” Dan nods. “You can see that in ten minutes. Some days I wonder why I get paid at all.”

Matty laughs. “Occupational hazard. I spent over a decade watching neutral zones. It’s hard to turn off.”

“Yeah?” Dan says. “What do you see on the kid in white fourteen?”

Matty glances down, mentally drops a puck. Fourteen’s smaller, late growth spurt maybe, but he’s reading play better than his size would suggest: drifting into soft spots, checking over his shoulder, curling back when the rush dies instead of banging the puck blindly into shin pads.

“Brain first,” Matty says. “Skating will catch up. If someone doesn’t scare him out of trusting what he sees.”

Dan hums, scribbling something on his clipboard. “You ever done this on purpose?” he asks. “Watching kids and making columns of ‘brain first’ and ‘skating first’?”

“Not officially,” Matty shrugs. “I mean, we got dragged to see prospects sometimes, but that was more ‘smile for the photo, tell them the league’s fun.’ The actual scouting was all upstairs.” He doesn’t say “upstairs at the Centaurs,” but it hangs there anyway.

Dan looks at him for a moment like he’s weighing something. “You seem… good at this - seeing who’s doing what out there. And you talk about them like human beings, not just stat lines.” He lifts his clipboard. “You looking for work?”

Matty blinks. “I only just retired,” he says. “I feel like I’m supposed to take some time off and have a crisis first.”

“Take your crisis on the road,” Dan says. “We’re looking to hire an amateur scout. Regional guy, someone to cover the U18s, high school, junior A in Eastern Ontario and bits of Quebec. Not glamorous, we’re not the Centaurs.” His mouth twitches around the name. “But we’re trying to get better at seeing the right kids before everyone else does.”

Matty’s heart does a weird little jump at “we’re not the Centaurs,” like that’s the point. Like it’s a warning and an invitation at once.

“I don’t know the first thing about writing reports,” he says, half protest, half test.

“You know how to watch a game and tell me which kid is lost and which one is quietly running it,” Dan says. “We can teach you how to put that into RinkNet and spreadsheets. Half our current guys learned scouting on the bus.” He hesitates. “Look, I’m not going to give you the hard sell in front of U16 parents. But if you’re even a little bit interested, I’ve got a card.” He digs in his pocket, produces a slightly bent business card with the River Wolves logo.

Matty takes it. It feels harmless and heavy at the same time. “What’s the catch?” he asks.

Dan snorts. “The catch is you’ll spend your winters in cold rinks watching teenagers make bad choices with the puck,” he says. “You’ll drive too much, and you’ll drink terrible coffee. The pay is fine but you’re not going to buy a boat.” He looks back at the ice. “And if we do this right, in five years you’ll be watching some kid you clocked at sixteen play their first MLH game and you’ll want to cry about it.”

Matty thinks of the poverty rookies chant echoing through the building on his last night in a Centaurs jersey. He thinks of the text from his dad last week: proud of you, son, let me know what you decide next. He thinks of the way his hands keep twitching on the railing when he sees a kid’s route go sideways.

“Where would you need me to live?” he asks, carefully.

“Anywhere you can get to the rinks from,” Dan says. “We’ve got guys in Kingston, Toronto, out toward Montreal. If you base yourself in Ottawa, you’d cover the valley, the city, a lot of Eastern stuff. Long as you show up where you say you’ll be, we don’t care what address is on your tax form.”

Ottawa. Westboro.The alumni seats behind the glass. Hollanov and their foundation offices, just a bike ride away.

He rolls the card between his fingers. “I’m still in the ‘crisis’ phase,” Matty says, half joking, half honest. “But… can I think about it?”

“That’s literally all I want you to do,” Dan says. “Think about it. Call me if the idea of spending a Saturday like this, but with a notebook, doesn’t make you want to run screaming.” He nods toward the kids. “And if you see anything else today, feel free to keep muttering. I’ll steal it for free.”

Matty laughs, tension breaking. “Deal,” he says.

They turn back to the ice. Fourteen makes a smart little curl, reverses the puck into space for a teammate, and Matty feels his hand move before his brain catches up, jotting an invisible note in the air.

Brain first. Skating later. Don’t scare him out of trusting what he sees.

He slips Dan’s card into his wallet next to his Centaurs alumni pass.

He doesn’t know yet that it’s the first deliberate piece of his new life. For now, it’s just a rectangle of cardstock with a wolf on it and the quiet, nagging thought that maybe his crisis doesn’t have to happen off the ice entirely.

***

Matty puts the River Wolves card on the kitchen counter when he gets back to his sister’s place. He tells himself he’ll forget about it.

He doesn’t.

It migrates. First to the little dish by the front door where everyone drops keys and spare change. Then to the fridge under a magnet shaped like a smiling apple. Then, somehow, into his wallet, tucked behind his Centaurs alumni pass like it’s earned the right to live next to the old life he doesn’t quite know how to let go of yet.

His sister notices.

“What’s that?” she asks one afternoon, scooping up the mail and the card together. “You get a new credit card?”

“Assistant coach,” Matty says, then corrects himself. “Well. Assistant coach for a team. Asked if I ever wanted to be a scout.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Here? At home?”

He shakes his head. “Back in Ontario. Junior team. Not glamorous. His words.” He hesitates. “Said I could base myself in Ottawa.”

There’s a beat while she processes that. Behind her, the TV is on some morning show about meal prep and back-to-school routines. It’s all very normal, very domestic. Matty can feel the edges of it pressing in.

“You’d be closer to them,” she says finally. She doesn’t have to specify who 'them' is.

“And further from you,” he says.

She makes a face. “You already fly away every time you get itchy. At least this way you’d have a reason.”

He laughs, but there’s a sting in it. She’s not wrong. Since hanging up his last NHL contract, he’s done three trips north under the excuse of alumni events, charity things, “helping Hollanov with a sponsorship,” anything that sounds better than I miss my people and this house doesn’t feel like it fits me yet.

His parents are gentler. His mom pats his hand over dinner and says, “It’s nice having you home.” His dad asks practical questions about his knee and the pension plan. They tiptoe around the fact that he’s still half looking at flight prices on his phone at night.

He loves them, he does. They're supportive and proud, but also distant in the manner that happens because he no longer lives at home. He still loves the familiarity of their suburb, the way the neighbours still say “our hockey player” like he hasn’t retired at all.

He also loves that in Ottawa, nobody introduces him as “ours” first. In Ottawa, he’s just… Matty.

He ends up back there again less than two months after the River Wolves card incident. Officially, it’s for a combined charity trivia night at Boodram's & Hazy's. Unofficially, it’s because his skin starts to itch if he goes too many weeks without the smell of that rink on Bank Street.

Boodram's is busy, all comics and board games and university kids drinking coffee like it’s oxygen. Hayes himself is behind the main counter in a DC hoodie, arguing with a teenager about the correct reading order for some long-running manga series. When he sees Matty, he lights up.

“Look, it’s my favourite retired chaos gremlin,” Wyatt says. “You here to lose at trivia and buy all my Spider-Man back issues?”

“Maybe,” Matty says, sliding onto a stool. “I might have to save my money. Got offered a job.”

Wyatt whistles. “That was fast,” he says. “What, did Hollanov finally cave and give you a real desk?”

“Not them,” Matty says. “Junior team. Assistant coach I met at a youth game. Wants a regional scout. Eastern Ontario, Quebec. Says I can base myself in Ottawa as long as I’m willing to live in cold rinks and drink bad coffee.”

Wyatt leans on the counter. “That sounds like your natural habitat,” he says. “Why do you look like someone offered to adopt your dog?”

Matty huffs out a laugh. “Because I just did the whole retired player tours of duty. Family at home, casseroles, Here’s our retired NHL guy. I feel like if I take a job back here, I’m… choosing. Again.”

Wyatt considers that, tipping his head. “Okay,” he nods. “So what’s the actual question?”

Matty stares at his hands. They still have calluses where tape rubbed his fingers for fifteen years. “Am I allowed to choose the place that isn’t technically home, and call that my family instead?”

Wyatt doesn’t answer immediately. He watches the steady movement around them as his and Bood's staff set up for the actual to start. “You know, my parents still talk about you lot like you’re their kids,” he says eventually, “Luca, you, Marcel, Elio. Half the time my mom introduces me as knee-deep in gay hockey team chaos more than as a goalie.” He slides a mug across. “No one told me I had to pick between them and you. I just… got both.”

Matty wraps his hands around the mug. “Your parents are better at this than mine,” he says, half joking, half not.

Wyatt shrugs. “Maybe, but you know what your parents did do? They let you disappear across a border at eighteen because it was how you got the life you wanted. Sounds like they’re used to you turning up in other cities and calling that home.”

Matty thinks of his mother texting him photos of the snow in their yard, of his dad forwarding him articles about former pros going bankrupt with little comments like 'We’re proud of you for not doing this' underneath. They worry about him; they also, quietly, understand that he’s built something elsewhere that isn’t about them.

“What’s the job, exactly?” Wyatt asks. “Beyond bad coffee. What would you actually be doing?”

Matty fishes the card out and flips it over, reading the scribbled notes from Dan: U18, high school, junior A. Talk to billet parents, coaches. Write reports. Be honest. Don’t be impressed by hat tricks if the kid can’t find the middle of the ice. “Watching games. Talking to people. Writing down which kids have brains and which ones are just fast. Flagging who might be worth a proper look by the big scouts. Driving a lot. Living out of hotels.”

“So, the parts of being a player you actually liked, minus the part where your shoulder falls off,” Wyatt says. “And plus the part where you don’t have to get hit.”

Matty laughs. “That’s the sales pitch.”

Wyatt sips his coffee. “And you’d be based in Ottawa,” he guesses. “Which means Boods’s grill, Troy’s orchard, comic shop, retirement village. You’d see Hollanov more than you did when you were being rented out to half the league. You’d be the guy who turns up at GC camps with stories about kids you’ve seen in random rinks.”

Matty’s heart does that little jump again. “I still like the travel,” he admits. “I like… people. Talking to billet moms about how their kids are doing. Asking trainers if someone’s been playing hurt. Sitting in the stands and hearing dads misread forecheck systems.”

“You like being the guy who knows everybody,” Wyatt says. “Road-trip extrovert. That’s been your whole personality since you were nineteen.”

Matty shrugs, embarrassed. “I also like the idea that if this team picks a kid because I saw something in them… I’ll get to see him again,” he says slowly “In five years. When he’s in some pro camp and thinks he doesn’t belong, and I can say I saw you when you were sixteen and you absolutely belong.”

Wyatt watches him over the rim of his mug. “Sounds like you already know you want it. You’re just scared it’s not big enough.”

Matty flinches, because that’s too close to the bone. “I was on NHL ice,” he says. “Cup runs. National anthems. People yelling my name on pregame shows. Now someone’s offering me a job where my whole world is teenagers in cold rinks. I don’t know if that’s… allowed. Like I’m supposed to go be an analyst on TV or something.”

Wyatt snorts. “The league will be fine without you on TV,” he says. “We have enough talking heads. You know who we don’t have enough of? People in small rinks who can look at a kid and see more than ‘big shot, bad haircut.’ You’re allowed to choose a life that looks small from the outside and feels right on the inside.”

Matty thinks of the empty hotel rooms, the way the quiet used to press in after games, making him feel like he was floating without gravity. He thinks of Boodram’s grill full of noise, kids at the back table doing homework, Hayes’s shop buzzing, Troy texting pictures of apples with captions like 'cider soon???'.

He realises that when he pictured “family” for himself, it always looked like that. Not a house with a white picket fence, not a half-empty mansion. A city full of people who know the difference between his good jokes and his bad ones, who know which scars hurt more when it rains, who call him to come watch kids skate on Saturday mornings and tease him when he starts muttering scouting notes under his breath.

He takes out his phone before he can talk himself out of it.

Dan picks up on the third ring.

“Bell,” Matty says. “It’s Young.”

“Hey,” Dan says. “That was faster than I expected. Figured I’d have to stalk you at another Bantam game before you decided whether you like bad coffee enough to sign up for it.”

Matty laughs, nerves fizzing like soda. “I like the coffee,” he says. “And the kids. And yelling at the neutral zone. So… if the offer’s still there, I think I want to be an amateur scout.”

There’s a silence, then a smile you can hear. “Yeah?” You sure? I meant it, we’re not the Centaurs. No charter flights, no private chefs. Just a lot of rental cars and cold rinks.”

“That’s kind of the point,” Matty says. “I had the other thing. I loved it. I also kind of… got used to having my family spread out across cities and group chats. This way I can… choose where that family lives. On purpose.”

Dan doesn’t say anything for a second. When he does, his voice is softer. “Okay, then yeah. Offer’s still there. I need to speak to management, but I already told them about you. We tried not to get our hopes up, but this'll make their month. We’ll get you a contract. You can start part-time this season, ease into it, see if the bad coffee is truly terrible.”

Matty swallows. “Can I…” he starts, then clears his throat. “Can I base myself in Ottawa? I’ve got… people there. It’s where my… retirement village is.”

“Base yourself wherever you want,” Dan says. “Ottawa’s perfect. We’ll send you schedules. You hit the local leagues, feed us notes. We’ll pay you to go to games you were already lurking at for free.”

Matty laughs helplessly. “Sold.”

After he hangs up, he sits there for a moment, phone on the table, coffee growing cold, Wyatt watching him with the kind of quiet satisfaction that says this is exactly what he’d hoped Matty would say.

“How’s it feel?” Wyatt asks.

“Weird,” Matty says. Then, after a beat: “Good weird. Like… I’m not just hanging around being ‘retired NHL guy’ anymore. I’m… something. Again.”

Wyatt nods. “Scout Young,” he says. “Road-trip extrovert, family by choice. Sounds right.”

Later, when Matty texts the poverty rookies chat, he keeps it simple.

POVERTY ROOKIES

Matty: so. i got a job

Elio: please tell me youre not doing tv

Marcel: he’d be great at tv

Matty: River wolves are hiring me as amateur scout

Luca: OF COURSE THEY ARE

Elio: you’re going to be the most annoying man in every rink in eastern ontario

Marcel: you’re gonna be great with the kids

Luca: do not forget to tell them we invented you

Matty: kingston, ottawa, random barns. gonna talk to every billet mom in a 500km radius

Luca: family tour 2.0 let’s go

He looks at the flurry of replies, at the mix of chirps and genuine warmth, and thinks: this is what I wanted. Not a banner. Not a desk job under a logo he doesn’t care about. A life where his calendar fills up with small rinks and long drives and people who know exactly which version of him they’re getting.

Later that night, he calls his parents. His mother cries, but in the good way. His father asks about benefits and whether the team is reputable. When Matty says, “They’re not the Centaurs, but they know what they want,” his dad laughs.

“Sounds like you,” he says. “Not glamorous. But good.”

Matty goes to sleep with the River Wolves card on his nightstand and a new contact in his phone. Scout Young. Ottawa.

For the first time since he signed his retirement papers, he feels less like a guest in his own life and more like someone who’s picked his next family deliberately.

***

The first winter as Scout Young looks a lot like his last few as Player Young, just… lower-budget.

There are still flights sometimes, but more often it’s rental cars and snow scrapers, gas station coffee and motel rooms with carpets that have seen better decades. His calendar is a patchwork of circled dates: U18 in Gatineau, high school playoff in Rockland, junior A in Nepean. Dan sends him schedules that look like someone lost a bet with Google Maps.

Matty loves it.

He loves walking into rinks where nobody expects a former NHL defenceman to be leaning on the glass, scribbling in a notebook. He loves the way billet moms light up when someone asks, genuinely, how their kid is handling the road trips and the chem homework. He loves the weird little ritual of buying a coffee from the same concession stand twice in a month and having the volunteer eventually say, “You’re back. Did you like our Bantams?”

“Loved them,” he says. “You’ve got a kid with absurd hands on the blue line, by the way. Don’t let him think he’s a forward yet.”

He gets a reputation fast. Not glamorous, but present. The River Wolves send him a team jacket; he wears it until the zipper stick-clicks, then keeps going. By late January, he has a stack of names in his notebook with notes like brain first, feet later and good kid, coachable, parents sane. He also has one star, circled three times.

The star shows up first on a cold Tuesday in Arnprior. Small rink, old wood. He’s there ostensibly to check on a big-name local forward everyone’s been buzzing about online, the kind of kid who has already done three skills camps and has a logoed hoodie for some private trainer. The forward is fine – good shot, decent routes, a little too in love with his own dekes.

It’s the defenceman behind him that catches Matty’s eye. Number 5. Smaller than the rest, maybe late to the growth spurt, but he moves like he knows where everyone else is going to be before they do. Half the game he’s just there – closing gaps, bumping kids off angles without crunch, flipping pucks into safe space, talking constantly to his partner.

Matty finds himself muttering again. “Kid in white five is running this,” he says under his breath. “Doesn’t know he’s doing it yet.”

A dad next to him glances over. “That’s Liam,” he says. “He’s… uh. Decent.”

Matty smiles. “Decent,” he says, watching white five angle a rush into the boards and then pivot to be first on a loose puck. “Yeah. Sure.”

After the game, he waits by the lobby. Kids file out, half in gear, half in hoodies, parents juggling bags. Liam appears with his stick over his shoulder, helmet dangling from the knob, cheeks still pink. He stops when he sees Matty’s River Wolves jacket.

“You from Kingston?” he asks, eyes wide and cautious. “Are we in trouble?”

Matty laughs. “No trouble. I’m just here to watch. You did good out there.”

Liam shrugs, embarrassed. “I messed up that breakout in the second,” he says, making a small face. “Coach said if I’m going to call for it, I have to… own it.”

“Coach is right,” Matty says, because he is incapable of not backing other coaches. “But you made the right read. You saw space. You just… didn’t quite put the puck where your brain wanted it to go.”

Liam blinks. “So my brain was right? Just.. just my hands were dumb?”

“Pretty much,” Matty grins, agreeing. “Hands will catch up. Don’t stop trusting the part where you saw it.”

Liam nods, absorbing that like it’s oxygen. “What do you, um. See?” he asks, then winces. “Sorry. That’s probably rude.”

“It’s my whole job,” Matty says. “I see a kid who’s reading the game like someone older than he is. Who’s running traffic for his pair without making it about himself.” He hesitates. “If you want, I can give your coach my card. I’m not promising… anything huge. I just… think there’s more in you than this rink if you want it.”

Liam goes still in that particular teenage way that says everything is happening at once in his head: hope, terror, imposter syndrome, all the good stuff. “I… want it,” he says, voice very small.

“Okay,” Matty says. “Then we’ll see what we can do.”

He leaves Arnprior with a name circled three times and a quiet, warm buzz in his chest. Not because he’s found “the next Haas” – the kid isn’t that, he’s something else entirely. But because for the first time since he retired, he can see a clear line from his job to some future game where a nervous nineteen-year-old steps onto a bigger ice and remembers, I was told my brain was right. I belong.

The River Wolves are happy. Dan calls him two weeks later. “Got your report, very poetic for a scouting note, by the way. ‘Brain first, don’t scare him out of trusting what he sees’? You want to come in and yell that at our whole D corps?”

“Anytime,” Matty says, laughing. “What’s the verdict?”

“We’re adding him to the list,” Dan confirms. “If the numbers and the other scouts agree, we’ll invite him to camp this summer. Good find, Young.”

Matty hums, pleased in a way that feels deeper than the old individual stat hits ever did. A blocked shot was a moment. This feels like planting something.

He has a game in Kingston the next night, but he drives back to Ottawa instead. It’s not strictly necessary. He could stay in a motel, cut down on mileage. But the idea of one night in Westboro outweighs his loyalty to his gas budget.

He ends up at Boodram's as he always does, corner booth, half-tired, half wired. The grill smells like smoke and spice; a couple of kids - one in particular he recognises well - are doing homework near the back, complaining loudly about math.

Zane appears with a burger before he can order. “You look like you’ve been living in a Tim Hortons. Eat.”

“I’ve been living in three Tim Hortons and an arena coffee maker,” Matty says. “Scout life.”

Zane snorts. “How’s the bad coffee empire?” he asks.

“Pretty good. Found a kid today. Defenceman. Reads play like he’s haunted. I wrote too much on his report.”

“That’s your brand - overly emotional about defence.”

Before Matty can answer, Harris slides into the booth with a keep-cup on one hand and phone in the other, while Troy drops onto the other side, orchard mud on his boots.

“You look smug,” Troy observes.

“I found a kid,” Matty says.

Harris raises his eyebrows. “A River Wolves kid?” he asks. “Or a Centaurs kid?”

Matty hesitates. It’s a good question. Officially, he works for Kingston. Unofficially, he’s incapable of not thinking in Centaurs colours.

“Right now? A Wolves kid,” he says. “But you know I’m going to gossip about him to Lindholm in five years if he ends up in some draft list.”

Troy laughs. “Of course you are,” he says. “You’re going to be the annoying guy texting us clips from random barns like ‘look at this child’s gap control.’” He orders something light for him and Harris. "Tell us about him.”

Matty does. He talks with his hands, sketching routes in the air, describing how Liam angled a rush, how he recovered from a blown breakout, how he kept talking to his pair even when he was mad at himself. He talks about the way the kid looked at him when he said your brain was right and how that felt like being trusted with something fragile.

“You’re disgusting,” Zane says, fond. “You love him already.”

“He reminds me of me,” Matty says, then winces. “When I was… less chaotic.”

Harris taps something into his phone. “Just logging this for future,” he says. “Scout Young’s first adopted child.”

Matty flips him off. Harris grins.

“Jen is going to eat this up,” Harris says. “She loves a ‘retired guy finds second-career meaning in small rinks’ storyline.”

“Please don’t,” Matty says, but he’s smiling.

They’re still teasing him when the door opens and in walks Luca, in a hoodie and jeans, hair damp from a shower, phone half in his hand like he was texting right up until he hit the door. He scans the room, sees them, and makes a beeline.

“Retirement village roll call,” Luca announces, squeezing into the booth next to Matty like he’s done it a thousand times. “We have orchard dad, comms terror, grill king, and our newest acquisition: Scout Young.”

“Don’t call me an acquisition,” Matty says. “I’m a free agent. I signed with Kingston. I have paperwork.”

Luca bumps their shoulders. “You’re ours,” he says. “Paperwork is just vibes.”

It lands differently now than it used to. When he was still playing, those words were about jerseys and contracts and last-day one-day deals. Now, sitting in a booth in civilian clothes, he hears them as something else entirely.

“You good?” Luca asks, quieter.

Matty nods. “Good,” he says. “Tired. Happy. Found a kid today who made me want to steal him.”

“Don’t steal kids,” Harris says automatically. “Bad optics.”

“Metaphorically,” Matty says. “Put him on a list. Maybe give him a chance to get out of Arnprior in a couple of years.”

Luca listens, eyes narrowed in that particular way he gets when he’s matching “scouting note” to “systems brain.” He lets Matty finish the story, then claps him on the back. “That’s the job,” he says. “You’re going to be disgusting about twenty more of them. I’m bracing.”

Matty half laughs, half exhales. “I like it. It’s… weird. Smaller. But… big in here.” He taps his chest, feeling ridiculous and not caring.

“Feels like family,” Troy hums. “Just with more teenagers and fewer charter flights.”

“Exactly,” Matty says. “I get to pick who we drag into the village now. On purpose.”

Troy raises his glass. “To bad-coffee family planning,” he says.

They clink bottles and mugs. The phrase makes Harris snort, Luca laugh, Zane groan. Matty sits in the middle of it, letting the noise wash over him, the same way it used to after wins, except now nobody’s making him ice his knees.

Later, when the booth has mostly emptied and the grill has gone quiet, Luca lingers.

“You know,” he says, stirring a straw idly in his empty glass, “when we did your one-day contract, I kept thinking that was it. The last big thing I could do for you. Let you finish in the right sweater.”

Matty remembers the lap, the chant in the cheap seats, the way the logo felt under his hand. It still makes his throat tight. “It was a big thing,” he says.

“Yeah, course it was. But this? You building a job that lets you keep muttering at teenagers and then bringing the good ones home? That’s… bigger. In the boring way.” He smiles. “Our product is people, remember? You’re… running one of the assembly lines now.”

Matty snorts. “That’s a gross metaphor.”

“You know what I mean,” Luca says. “You wanted family on your own terms. This is it. Kids in Arnprior. Billet moms. River Wolves. Us. It’s all one big… extremely disorganised family tree.”

Matty looks around the room, at Luca, in front of him, still the last of the poverty rookies in uniform, but somehow less alone now that Matty’s job is to send more people his way.

“Yeah,” Matty says. “Feels like that.”

On his way home to his small Ottawa apartment that night, he flips through his notebook again. Names, notes, arrows. Liam’s entry has a new line: family material. Will survive Westboro.

He laughs at himself, then writes another line underneath.

Scout Young. Family, but mine.

He sleeps with the book on his nightstand, River Wolves jacket over the back of a chair, Centaurs alumni pass still in his wallet. For the first time in a long time, none of it feels like pretending.

It feels like a life he chose, built around the people he loves, in the cities that feel most like home.

***

The library is the only quiet place in town that doesn’t smell like ice.

Matty discovered that on day two of his scout trip, after three games in a row and one motel room where the air conditioner sounded like it was arguing with itself. The schedule had him stuck here for a full long weekend: U18 early, junior B late, a couple of high school games in between. The rink was great, if you liked recycled cold air and the smell of tape.

He did. Mostly.

Sometimes, he liked remembering what it felt like to be inside a building where the floor wasn’t concrete.

So he went exploring. The town had one main street, one decent coffee shop, two diners, and a cluster of civic buildings: town hall, a little arts centre, and a brick-front public library that looked like it had been quietly minding its own business since the 80s. He walked in half as a joke, half because his phone needed charging.

It turned out to be… nice.

Three days later, the staff recognise him well enough to nod when he comes in. He nods back, slightly embarrassed, and makes his way to the corner with the big windows and the tables near the outlets. His laptop is in his bag; his scouting notebook is battered but still serviceable. He plugs in, opens the spreadsheet with the weekend’s notes, and starts translating muttered impressions into something the River Wolves front office can actually read.

He writes:

D, left shot, 16: reads play early, talks to partner, sometimes panics with puck and throws it away. Good kid. Don’t scare him out of trusting what he sees.

He adds a little arrow next to that line, the way he always does when a kid makes him think about more than the game. His own handwriting is messier now than it was when he was twenty-two and trying to prove he was serious; his notes are better.

It feels good. Quiet, but good.

You get used to living loud as a pro. Planes, buses, fans banging on glass. Retirement turned out to be a lot of empty rooms and the choice to fill them with people on purpose. He has Westboro for that - Boods’s, Hazy’s, Luca’s ridiculous group chats. Out here, he has his notebook, his laptop, and the soft murmur of strangers turning pages.

He’s halfway through a paragraph on a goalie’s tracking - loves video, sometimes loses net on scrambles - when something collides with the table hard enough to rattle his coffee.

It’s not a hockey hit. It’s a tote bag hit.

A canvas tote swings into his elbow, a stack of hardback books thumps down on the table edge, and a paper cup wobbles ominously toward his laptop.

“Shit, sorry,” the person says, breathless and mortified. “I meant to turn, I swear, this corner is cursed, the display jumped out at me—”

Matty’s reflexes are still good enough to catch the cup before it tips. He grabs the tote strap with his other hand, steadying it.

“It’s fine,” he says, automatic. “I’ve been hit harder.”

The stranger laughs, a startled, half-hysterical sound. “That actually does make me feel better,” she says. “Still sorry, though.”

Something in his chest flips over.

He knows that voice. Not just the sound, but the way it rolls through an apology like it’s trying to make it gentler for everyone involved.

He looks up.

“Hi,” he says.

Melissa freezes, her hand still on the tote, eyes wide. For a second, they both just stand there, connected by a canvas bag and a shared history neither of them expected to trip over in a small-town library.

Then she laughs again, softer, disbelieving.

“Of course it’s you,” she says. “In a library. I knew retirement would get you eventually.”

He glances down at himself: faded jeans, worn hoodie, laptop, notebook, the shapeless anonymity of retired-guy clothes. No logo, no nameplate. He’s just… a guy at a table, a guy who used to be more.

“Don’t expose me like that,” he says. “I worked hard on my ‘mysterious scout’ image.”

She snorts, the sound so familiar it makes his stomach twist.

“Mysterious,” she repeats. “You’re the one who used to live on pasta and video clips. I’m impressed you’ve figured out how to sit still without a rink around you.”

“I had help,” he says. “Hotels and rental cars. Also, this town doesn’t have much else that’s quiet.”

Her eyes flick around the room - stacks, computers, the kids’ corner with its bright rug - and then back to him. “It’s not the worst place to kill time.”

He realises belatedly that he’s still gripping her tote strap like a lifeline. “Sorry,” he says, letting go. “Do you… want your bag back?”

“Yes, please,” she says, smile tugging wryly at the corners of her mouth. “The books are library property; I’m technically supposed to rescue them from clumsy scouts.”

He passes it over. The bag gapes enough for him to see the contents: a staff binder, a couple of new releases in plastic covers, what looks suspiciously like a stack of laminated cards and a smaller canvas pouch with pens.

“Are you working?” he asks. “Here?”

“Yeah.” She taps the badge clipped to her sweater - soft, practical, with that staff lanyard he hadn’t noticed at first. “Two days a week working with adults, teen programming the other three. I live here now.”

Here. In this town he’d barely heard of until the River Wolves schedule told him to come.

Something loosens and tightens at the same time. “You… moved here? From...”

“From the States, then back,” she nods. “Postgrad in library studies, after a few of years in a city that didn’t love my Canadian humour as much as I’d hoped. This job came up. Smaller system, more community. I applied, and they hired me. I get to boss people around about their overdue books instead of their nutrition.”

He laughs despite the pinch under his ribs. “That suits you; you always liked knowing where things were supposed to go.”

She makes a face. “Less ‘supposed to’ these days, and more ‘what works for actual human beings.’ But, yeah. It suits me.”

They stand there for a heartbeat longer, library noise soft around them, the table between them like a neutral zone.

“How are you?” she asks, then winces. “Sorry. That’s… a lot for a random Tuesday in a library.”

“We can scale it back,” he offers. “How are your knees? My knees are fine.”

Her mouth curves. “Okay, fine. How are your knees?”

“Grateful for not blocking shots anymore,” he says. “I’m… good, mostly. Scouting suits me. Being retired suits me. I live in Ottawa still, but my job is…” He gestures vaguely at his laptop, the room. “Everywhere.”

“Which is how you ended up here,” she guesses.

“Yeah,” he says. “River Wolves wanted eyes on this tournament. I’m the guy who can walk into any rink and find three people to gossip with by the end of warmups. It’s useful.”

She looks at his notebook, at the handwriting that used to live on whiteboards and iPads, then back at him. “You look… different,” she says. “Less like you’re braced for impact.”

He huffs a breath. “I sleep more. And when I walk into rooms now, it’s because I chose to, not because the schedule dragged me there.”

There’s an empty chair across from him. He nods at it, tentative. “Do you want to sit for a minute?” he asks. “You probably have actual work, but…”

“I have five minutes until my next program,” she says. “The teenagers are currently pretending they don’t need the library. I can spare one retired defenceman.”

She drops into the chair, tucking her tote under the table with a practised motion. Her coffee lands between them, a small truce offering.

“So. Matty Young, retired chaos. What’s your life like now?”

He smiles, because hearing his name in her voice feels like someone reopening a window. “Smaller, better. I scout, like I said. I spend too much time at Boods’s and Hazys talking to people who remember when my biggest personality trait was ‘eats pucks.’”

Her expression flickers. “That was… a lot of your life,” she says, almost reminiscent.

They could keep it light - talk about Westboro, about the retirement village, about how weird it is to be recognised in a town you’ve never played in. But the old threads are here now, woven into the present, and neither of them seem keen to pretend otherwise.

“I’ve thought about you,” he says, cautious but clear. “About us. About… the version where you were basically auditioning for a job that I didn’t know I’d posted.”

Her fingers tighten around her cup. She exhales slowly. “Me too, but mostly in the ‘what on earth was I doing’ category.”

He waits. He’s learned, over the last few years, how to sit in silence without filling it with jokes.

She looks at him, then out the window, then back. “You remember that night in the family lounge?” she asks. “When I came in with enough food to feed the entire D corps and Cassie called me head SAP material?”

He winces fondly. “Yeah, you with the Tupperware bag. Harris looking like he wanted to write a press release about you.”

“I was so proud,” she says, rolling her eyes at herself. “I’d studied. I’d watched games with you. I’d memorised everyone’s preferences. I thought… that’s what being good at this meant. Being good at you. At hockey. At… WAG-ing.”

He hears the capital letters in her voice.

“Harris told me you came to see him,” he says gently. “Later. About your friends’ handbook. About all the ‘supposed to’s.”

She nods, ashamed and not. “So you know the story, I guess. My friends had this… manual. Not official, just stories. Things like ‘if he’s on the road a lot, make home perfect so he doesn’t look elsewhere,’ and ‘don’t complain about travel; there are a million girls who would kill to be in your position.’ I absorbed all of it without ever asking whether it was true for me. And then I turned it into my job.”

She takes a sip of coffee. Her hands are steady. “I wasn’t really dating you,” she says slowly. “I was dating the idea of being the perfect hockey girlfriend. And I was exhausted.”

He lets out a breath he didn’t realise he’d been holding. “I liked it,” he admits. “The effort. The care. The way you seemed to know what I needed before I did. I didn’t… question whether it was killing you, because it made my life easier. That’s… not great.”

“It’s… human. You were drowning half the time. The team was intense, the schedule was brutal, you were blocking shots for a dynasty. Of course you felt grateful when someone tried to build a soft landing around you. It doesn’t mean it was sustainable.”

He nods, throat tight. “When you said you were leaving, I thought it was about… the job offer. The new city. I didn’t realise how much of it was about getting out of that role.”

“It was both. I cared about you. I cared about the team. I also… needed to know who I was without your name on my schedule. I was starting to resent hockey, and I didn’t want to hate something you loved. Or you.” She grimaces. “Leaving hurt. It was also the right decision.”

He looks at her - the way she’s sitting in a library chair, not perched at the edge of a SAP table, not scanning the room for approval. She seems more… centred. Less careful.

“I’m glad you left,” he says, surprising himself. “Back then. Given… everything. I don’t think we could have fixed it as the people we were.”

“Me neither,” she agrees. “I’d have kept trying to pass the exam, and you’d have kept letting me. We would have broken.”

There’s a strange relief in saying it out loud: we were wrong, and we were right to stop.

“How was school?” he asks, trying to change the topic. “The postgrad. Being… not my girlfriend.”

She laughs, a little helpless. “Hard. I sat in classrooms with people who wanted to argue about metadata. I worked in a tiny campus library and realised I liked being the person who helped people find things, not the thing they were supposed to find. I missed you sometimes,” she adds, truthful. “Missed the room, the way the Centaurs made everything feel like… family. But I didn’t miss feeling like everything I did was either ‘good WAG’ or ‘bad WAG.’”

He winces at the binary. “And now? Here. Librarian. Small town. No SAP table.”

“Now I’m mostly telling old ladies how to use the printer,” she smiles. “Running teen book clubs, ordering romance novels, and helping people apply for government benefits because we’re the only building in town with a decent internet connection.” She lifts one shoulder. “It feels… more honest. My life is mine. My job is mine. If I cook now, it’s because I want to, not because I’m trying to prove anything.”

He rests his forearms on the table. “You look happier,” he says. “Different, but in the good way.”

“Same goes for you,” she says. “You’re still… you. But you’re more… present. Less like your brain is three zones ahead of your body.”

He considers that.

“I spent a lot of years in survival mode,” he says. “First with Ottawa, then on other good teams, all with brutal expectations. Retirement… slowed me down. Scouting means I’m still around the game, but it’s… gentler. I get to help kids instead of yelling at myself.”

“And you talk to people more,” she points out. “Judging from the social media posts, Luca and Harris have bullied you into feelings.”

He groans. “They made a group chat; it’s relentless.”

“I’m happy they did,” Melissa laughs. “You always had feelings. You just hid them under your blocked‑shots stats.”

They sit there, two different versions of themselves, with the old story lying between them like a closed book.

“So,” she says, after a pause. “We did the responsible adult thing. We admitted it was right to break up. We acknowledged mutual mistakes. What now?”

He looks out the window, at the parking lot, at the strip of sky. He looks back. “I don’t… want this to be the only time we talk,” he says. “Not after all that. Not when we’ve both… changed this much.”

Her fingers tap the coffee lid, thoughtful. “Neither do I,” she says eventually. “I like this version of you. I’d like to know him better without having to be his nutritionist.”

He smiles, the knot under his sternum loosening. “Would you maybe want to… get coffee sometime?” he asks, deliberately casual. “Not here - somewhere that isn’t your workplace. Or dinner. Or, I don’t know, a movie. Something where we’re just… us. No exams. No job descriptions.”

She tilts her head.

“You’re on the road,” she points out. “You don’t live here.”

“I’m back and forth,” he says. “River Wolves have this town on the rotation. And Ottawa isn’t… impossible. We’re adults. We have trains. I’m not asking for… a big capital‑R thing. Just… more time, if you want it.”

She studies him for a long second. “You still have my number?” she asks.

“Yeah, I never deleted it.”

“Good, text me. So I know you’re not just being polite in a library.”

His laugh comes out a little shaky. “I will,” he says. “Scout’s honour.”

Her phone buzzes on the table. She glances at it, grimaces. “That’s my teens,” she says. “I have to go convince them that reading is not a moral failing. But… I’m glad we bumped into each other.”

“Me too,” he smiles. “Try not to attack any more unsuspecting tables.”

“No promises,” she says, standing. She hesitates, then reaches out and squeezes his shoulder, quick. “Take care of your knees. And your kids.”

“You too,” he says. “With the knees. And the teenagers.”

She smiles, then walks away, weaving between stacks, her tote swinging. He watches her go until she rounds the corner near the YA section.

Then he pulls out his phone.

Matty: library collision report: 1 tote bag, no laptop casualties
it was really good to see you

He hesitates, then hits send.

He doesn’t have to wait long.

Melissa: Blame the corner, not the tote
Agreed. Good to see you too
When you’re back in civilisation, coffee? Ottawa has better cafes than this town

He grins at the screen.

Matty: i live in ottawa again, remember?
coffee sounds perfect
no tupperware required

Melissa: Bold of you to assume I’m not bringing snacks
But yeah. let’s try “no exams” this time

He reads that twice, then sets his phone down, heart doing something complicated and new.

The rest of the trip passes in a blur of games and notes. He watches the kid with the good brain and bad panic, talks to his coach, writes another line about “don’t punish him for seeing the right play.” He drives back to Ottawa with the radio low and his phone plugged in.

A few days later, he’s in a coffee shop near the canal when Melissa walks in, scarf wrapped around her neck, cheeks pink from the cold. They talk about work, about the teens in her book club, about a rookie in his notes who reminds him of himself. They don’t talk about the old handbook, or the SAP table, or the way she once worried that if she didn’t get everything right, he’d look for someone else.

They don’t need to. They closed that book in a library in a town neither of them had planned to meet in.

Weeks stretch into months. Texts accumulate: pictures of weird book displays, screenshots of blowhard commentators, clips of teenagers trying to run a practice drill without falling over. He calls her from a motel in Sudbury one night when the room feels too quiet, just to hear someone who remembers his voice before it got hoarse from yelling on the bench. She rings him on a Saturday afternoon to ask how to explain icing to a group of ten‑year‑olds without sending them to sleep.

Sometimes they meet up in Ottawa - coffee at a quiet place, dinner at Boodram’s when he wants to introduce her to the retirement village on terms that are nothing like the old audition. Cassie hugs her without grilling her. Harris teases her about library cards. No one asks if she’s bringing food for the whole D corps.

“Much better,” she says afterwards, on the walk back to the bus stop. “No interview. No scoreboard.”

“They like you,” Matty says. “As… you. Not as a role.”

“Wild concept,” she smiles. “I’m into it.”

Spring takes its time. The snow melts, the sidewalks stop trying to attack ankles. Matty’s scout schedule keeps him moving; Melissa’s programming switches from winter reading challenges to summer clubs. They text, they call, they keep showing up.

One evening, they end up at the same library in Ottawa - big central branch, glass atrium, the kind of place that feels like a more polished cousin of the little brick building where they collided months ago. He’s there to kill time before a junior game; she’s in town for a training session with other librarians.

They walk out together, books in her bag, notebook in his. The sky is low and soft; the streetlights haven’t come on yet.

“You know,” she says, as they pause at the corner where their routes diverge, “I like this version of us.”

“Me too,” he says.

“Lots less panic, less performance. More… actual conversation.”

“Still some panic,” he smiles. “I’m me.”

“True, but it’s the good kind now. The ‘do we like each other enough to keep making time’ kind, not the ‘if I burn the lasagne I fail as a human’ kind.”

He laughs, remembering the old Tupperware, the way she’d rattled off dish names in the lounge while Cassie and Harris watched her like she was solving a puzzle.

“No more exams,” he says.

“No more exams,” she agrees.

There’s a moment then - a small, quiet hover - where he could say more. He could ask, outright, if she wants to try again, this time without manuals and job descriptions. He could ask if she sees him as someone she might love again, in this smaller, steadier life.

He doesn’t. Not yet. Instead, he reaches out and squeezes her hand, brief and solid.

“Text me when you get home,” he says.

“So I know you haven’t tripped over your own couch?” she asks with a raised eyebrow.

“So I know you’re not being attacked by cursed library corners,” he counters.

She squeezes back, then lets go. “Fine,” she agrees good-naturedly. “Text me when you get to the rink. So I know you haven’t been kidnapped by teenagers demanding more neutral‑zone wisdom.”

“Deal,” he says.

He watches her walk away, turning back once to wave. He waves too, then heads toward the bus stop, fingers already reaching for his phone.

Later, as he leans against a cold metal pole outside the rink, his phone buzzes.

Melissa: Home. No cursed corners.
Still like this version of us

Matty smiles, slow and real.

Matty: same.
let’s see what happens if we keep showing up

There’s no headline in that. No grand declaration. Just two people, changed, choosing to keep stepping into each other’s orbit. For the first time in a long time, when he thinks the word future, it doesn’t come with a knot of dread. It’s just… a possibility. A maybe.

He can live with that.