He sat there spellbound, mesmerised.
It wasn’t the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. It didn’t reach out, grab his attention, and never let it go. Nonetheless, he had never felt such a visceral, immediate, connection to an article of clothing before. True, it represented the culmination of all of his hard work, starting way back as a mini mite, up through college, and then all of the rehabilitation and slow, painstaking, mostly lonely, years rebuilding after his injury. However, he had known this moment was coming for months now. He had even seen and approved some of the fan gear being licensed in his name – knowing the back-end of the organisation did have its perks.
He thought he had done a good job preparing himself for this moment, resurrecting all of the rituals that steadied him before a game, his stretches and warm-ups, his cool-downs. He had been fine, a bit keyed-up maybe, each time he had a new first; but he thought he had been handling it well. Yes, he had saved this for last, but he hadn’t really taken his time as he dressed, hadn’t deviated much from the very carefully-timed routine leading up to heading out to the ice.
Now, however, his mind was racing, rushing, spinning off in a million different directions before coalescing back into one single, sharp as an ice shard, scintillating thought: Mine. He was in euphoria. Everything felt right, in a way it hadn’t in years, maybe hadn’t ever. He reveled in the rightness of the feeling, of the weight on his shoulders. Of his NHL jersey. OF HIS NHL JERSEY!OF HIS VERY OWN NHL JERSEY!!!
Oh no. He was thinking in bold. He was thinking in caps. There was more than one exclamation mark. He needed to pull himself together. He needed to… think of a quip to put the attention back on Cap.