“You told me a thing in Buffalo,” he said. “In the dark. The night before everything. You called it the dumb one. Home game, late, you score, and you don’t go to the bench. You go to me.”
“You didn’t laugh about it. I remember.”
“No.” He ran his thumbs over my knuckles, like he was reading them. “You’ve wanted that for a long time. You’ve wanted it a lot longer than Buffalo.” He paused for a moment. “I want you to have it, so I want to give it to you. That’s it. That’s what I’m thinking about this morning.”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. That only happens about twice a decade.
“I can’t make you score,” he said. “That’s the part we can’t predict, but I can set the room up so nobody’s surprised if it happens.” He let go of one of my hands and turned the phone toward me. “So I set the room up. Read.”
I pulled his phone across the table with two fingers, as if it might be hot. My hand was shaking.
The thread was between Rook and Mark. The first message was sent at eleven the night before. I was asleep on Rook’s arm by then, dead to the world.
Rook:If Varga scores tomorrow night there might be a moment on the ice. Center ice. I don’t want the building caught flat.
The response had come back immediately because Mark sleeps with the phone on his pillow.
Mark:How big a chance?
Rook:I’m telling him tomorrow morning it’s his if he wants it.
Mark:I’ll tell the broadcast to hold the wide shot and not cut to break if Varga scores. Arena ops owes me.
There was an additional message sent two minutes later.
Mark:Rook, I didn’t finish a sentence in the tunnel the other day and it’s been sitting wrong with me. Congratulations. To both of you. Five years of being that good at a thing nobody knew you were doing is the most impressive work I’ve seen from the team, and I’ve watched Cross do a crossword in pen.
“We rank higher than Cross,” I said, and my voice broke. “Mark put us above Cross, Rook.”
“He did.”
“That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever—“ I lost it. I rubbed my eye with three fingers, and it didn’t help. Tears dripped straight down into my mug, and I sat there, crying like a man in a coffee commercial.
I watched Rook’s jaw go slack at one corner. “Don’t you start. Don’t you dare. One of us has to drive.”
“I’m not starting.”
“You’re right there. I can see it. Your eyes are red already.”
“They’re not.”
I got up, walked around the table, and sat right in his lap, pushing my face into the side of his neck. “That was hard for you to do, right? Be honest.”
“A little,” he said into my hair.
“More than that.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, and he wrapped an arm around my back while my shoulders shook.
I wiped one eye. “What if I don’t score?”
“Then we’ll go home, and I’ll cook you eggs.”
“We don’t have eggs.”
“I’ll buy them.”
“You? At the Jewel-Osco? At eleven at night? Actually, I can see that. One big hockey man, with a sad little basket—twelve eggs and a thing of cream—“ I lifted my head and looked at him. “God, I love you. Look at me, Rook. I have a game tonight, and I’m a disaster.”
