You watched your breath curl out from your mouth in the frigid air. No amount of rubbing your mittens together could bring the feeling back to your fingertips, and if someone told you you no longer had toes, you would simply have to take their word for it.

There were very few people who could drag you out to an ice rink on what was already a freezing morning before the sun had even come up. But your little brother was one of those people. Any amount of frozen digits and groggy mornings was worth the smile on his face when he hit the ice.

Hockey is a strange sport. It’s completely unnatural, and that seems to only be proven by youth hockey practices. Kids constantly fall, whether it be slipping on the ice, or tripping over each other. Sticks are never held properly, discarded by some and relied on too heavily by others. Yet despite all of the clear frustrations with learning this particular sport, you’d never seen a group of kids more full of joy than your brother’s scrappy little hockey team in this run down rink in the middle of nowhere.

Maybe it was pride from all that they had accomplished. Or maybe it was the coach. A man who by all accounts looked like he would have found yelling at children to be a sport all on its own, was instead one of the sweetest men you’d ever met. Sasha, but all the kids called him coach, was middle aged with no kids of his own. He volunteered at the rink, teaching kids to skate, to shoot, to fall in love with hockey in the same way he had in his youth.

The clock struck eight and you let out a sigh of relief, watching as the children in their tiny uniforms filed off the ice with their sticks in one hand and their water bottles in the other. Only one kid was still on the ice. Of course it was your brother. Sasha knelt down in front of him, seemingly engrossed in a very serious conversation before he stood, and gave your brother a pat on the head before skating him over to the door where you were waiting for him.

Sasha made eye contact with you as he slung a bag of pucks over his shoulder, a weary smile tugging at his lips.

“That one yours?” He asked gruffly, the syllables steeped in a smooth Russian accent, one that had seemingly mellowed over time. Sasha gestured with his stick to your little brother as he waddled off to the locker room.

You nodded and his expression softened ever so slightly.

“He said some of the other kids have been picking on him. I’ll keep an eye out on the ice, I want him to be having fun here. He’s one of our best players, he reminds me of me when I was his age.”

Sasha tucked one hockey glove under his arm as he reached up to scratch his beard before taking his helmet off. For a moment you just stood there staring up at him, his skates making him tower over you even more than usual. His gaze flicked down to your mitten enclosed hands, how you were blowing warm breaths of air into them intermittently.

“Come to the office. I will make you coffee and you can warm up. We can talk more there.”