All Chapters of Off The Ice Rink: Chapter 31 - Chapter 32

The team dinner happens at a restaurant three miles from campus that Coach books every year for the post-championship meal, and Rohan describes it as the finest establishment within driving distance willing to seat eighteen loud hockey players on short notice, which is accurate and not particularly a compliment to the restaurant.The table is enormous and loud and gloriously chaotic, gear bags shoved under chairs, everyone still in various states of post-game dishevelment, and the energy in the room is the specific energy of people who've done something hard together and are now sitting in the aftermath of it and finding it warm.Kai's mother is at the far end of the table, seated between Coach Reyes, who she is apparently charming comprehensively, and Matty's mother, who she has already exchanged phone numbers with. My father is midway down, beside Jamie, and they are talking quietly with the ease of two people who have remembered how to speak each other's language.I sit beside Kai.