I don’t say anything. I just hold on.
“Film sessions are going to be really hard now,” he says into my hair.
“Especially with Barrett at the clicker.”
He chokes back a laugh. “It’s too soon to joke about this.”
“What? He’ll be proud. His student, all grown up.”
He takes my hand, lacing our fingers together, and we walk through the facility like that. Barrett’s office is dark. The building is empty. Just us, the squeak of sneakers, and his thumb running over my knuckles all the way to the parking lot.
“Hey, Zach?”
“Yeah?”
“Tell Barrett I said thank you.”
“Absolutely not.”
I’m laughing as I drive away.
My phone lights up at a red light. A screenshot from Zach.
Coach
Bowline held up okay?
Zach
Yes Coach.
Coach
Good. Tell Mackinnon she owes me a bottle of bourbon for the knot lesson. Top shelf. None of that White Elephant garbage.
Flight at 8 tomorrow. Don’t be late.
I’m still laughing when I pull into my parents’ driveway. I sit there with the engine off, my wrists still tingling and Zach’s text on my screen, and I think: I’m going to marry him. I’m going to follow him to every city he plays in, and I’m going to find a way to get into every video room.
My phone buzzesone more time.
Zach
I’ll see you when I get back.
I press my phone against my chest, close my eyes, and sit in the dark. I let myself have this. All of it. The laces and the knot and his mouth on my wrists andyou’re the bravest person I knowand the way he held my hand through the parking lot like the secret didn’t exist.
Tomorrow he gets on a plane. Tomorrow the series keeps going and my dad still doesn’t know and nothing is fixed.
But tonight. Tonight was ours.
33
ZACH
We spliton the road with a Game 3 win and a Game 4 loss. I’m playing the best hockey of my life. I can’t explain it, except to say that something unlocked in the video room. Not the sex, or not just the sex, but whatever happened between the bowline and Barrett’s text and Mackie standing in the parking lot telling me to win. The gap is gone. She came to the facility and closed it with her bare hands and now when I’m in net I’m not thinking about Jack or the secret or the conversation we’re eventually going to have. I’m thinking about angles and release points and the feel of the puck hitting my glove.
I wake up the morning after we land to a text from Mackie that says GOOD MORNING FUTURE STANLEY CUP CHAMPION and I lie in bed and stare at it and think about truth or dare months ago and the question she asked me—what’s the thing you want most that you’ve never said out loud—and my answer, which came out before I could stop it: to win the Cup as the starting goalie. Not as a backup. Not watching from the bench. To be the guy.
