"I scored." Mäkinen, holding his own face in both hands. "Did everyone see I scored? In a Game 7. Me, Mäkinen."
"We saw it, Maki."
"I'm going to talk about that goal until the day I die."
Tikh gets to me sideways through the noise. Puts his forehead against my shoulder for one second. The most Tikh has ever touched anyone on purpose.
"You good?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah. I know. I'm glad." He pulls back.
"Wait, is that a thing now?" Ash, eyes enormous. "Lundy and Soucy? Are we allowed to say it out loud?"
"It's been a thing since October, baby." Avi, towing him away. "Try to keep up."
"You knew the whole time, didn't you, Thompson. You knew before they did."
"I drove the car. That's all I'll say. Ask me no questions."
"The book club questions make so much sense now." Fontenot, having an entire revelation at once. "Oh my god. The romance novel. That was about a PERSON."
"Read the room faster next time, Fonty."
"Somebody get a camera. Where is the team photographer? This is going on my wall, full wall, floor to ceiling."
"Berger, why is your shirt off? Put your shirt back on."
"It's the Cup. The Cup means shirts off. It's in the bylaws."
"There are no bylaws, you lunatic, it's twelve degrees of air conditioning in here."
"Baz. Baz. We did it. We actually did it." Tikh, louder than I've ever heard him, both hands on Fontenot's face.
"I know. I know. I saw the whole thing." Baz, letting him.
"Everybody in. Group. Goalies in the middle, both goalies, get Lundy in here." Marchetti, herding the room with both arms. "He's on crutches, somebody carry him, I don't care, carry him."
"I'm not getting carried."
"You're getting carried. Maki, grab him. Other side."
"I'm getting carried," I say, because there is no version of this where I'm not. Mäkinen and Davis lock arms under me and lift, the braced leg swinging free. For the first time in my life I let the room hold me up instead of the other way around, and it turns out the room has been ready to do this whole time. I just never once asked.
The handshake line forms the way it always forms. Both teams filing through the wreckage of their own season and ours. Near the end of it's my father. The building is still shaking and he takes my hand and pulls me in by it the way he has since I was small enough to disappear in his coat.
"Hell of a goalie you've got there, Soren."
"I know."
"I threw everything I had at him. I couldn't crack him."
"Nobody can." I hold his eye here, in the loudest place in the world. The only privacy is that no one can hear us over the noise. "I'm in love with him, Dad."
He looks at me. Thirty years of reading rooms, the same way I read them. I watch him file it. I know what drawer it goes in. His son is with a man. He'll hear that and think the simple thing, because the simple thing is the closest shape and the simple thing isn't wrong, it just isn't all of it. There are women he’s known about over the years. And right now there's Jules. I don't owe this handshake line more taxonomy than that. I can give him the rest of it over dinner, when there are more than thirty seconds between the worst night of his career and the best of mine. Tonight the headline is the truth. The truth is enough.
"...yeah?"
