“What?”
“I don’t want to wait. Let’s tell him. Before the Cup starts. I’m done hiding.” I sit up in bed. The words are pouring out of me now and I can’t stop them. “You got your wish. And I was sitting on my parents’ couch watching it happen and I almost screamed ‘that’s my boyfriend’ in front of my mom and the only reason I didn’t is because I caught myself and I am so TIRED of catching myself, Zach. I’m tired of watching you on a screen. I’m tired of not being able to wear your jersey. I’m tired of sitting in the family suite pretending I’m just Jack Anderson’s daughter when you’re out there playing the best hockey of your life and I can’t even stand up and scream your name.”
“Mackie—”
“I want to be in the building. In YOUR jersey. I want my dad to know. I want everyone to know. I want to stop lying and sneaking and checking over my shoulder every time I text you. You’ve been asking me for months and I kept saying not yet and I’m saying YES. Now. Right now. Before Game 1.”
The silence stretches. I can hear my own heartbeat in the dark.
“We can’t,” he says.
I blink. “What?”
“We can’t tell him right now. Not before the Cup.”
“Zach, you’ve been BEGGING me to tell him. For months. You sat on the kitchen counter and said?—”
“I know what I said. And I meant it. But that was before we were in the Finals.” His voice has that careful quality again, the one that means he’s choosing every word. “Mackie, everything is working right now. The team, my game, the routine—I can’t change anything. I know that sounds insane but I’m a goalie and goalies don’t change things when they’re winning. You don’t move the tape, you don’t wash the gear, you don’t?—”
“You don’t tell your girlfriend’s father that you exist?”
“Not before the biggest series of my life. Not when telling him could blow up his focusandmineandthe entire team.”
I’m sitting in the dark in my childhood bedroom and the man who spent six months pushing me to have this conversation is telling me to wait.
“You’re serious.”
“Mackie, if we tell him right now and he loses it, that will be in the locker room for the entire series. I want to tell him. I’ve never wanted anything more. But I want to win the Cup first. And I need to be focused to do that.”
“So I’m supposed to keep hiding. Through the entire finals.”
“It’s two weeks, tops. If we go all the way to Game 7.”
“Six weeks ago you were telling me the guilt was eating you alive and now you’re asking me to do the thing you couldn’t do.”
He sighs. “You’re right,” he says quietly. “I’m asking you to do the thing I couldn’t do. And I’m sorry. But Mackie—this is the Cup. The thing I’ve wanted my whole life. And I’m scared that if we shake anything right now it all falls apart.”
Six months of him pushing and me stalling and now it’s flipped and neither of usis laughing about it.
“The Cup Finals. But Zach—the second it’s over. Win or lose. I’m done waiting.”
“The second it’s over,” he says. “I promise.”
I close my eyes. “That’s my line.”
“I know.” I can hear him almost smile. “I stole it.”
“Go celebrate,” I say. “You earned this.”
“I’d rather stay on the phone with you.”
“Be with your team. I’ll be here when you get home.”
“Promise?”
“Always.”
He hangs up, and I lie in the dark. The house is quiet. My dad is in another city celebrating with the team. My mom is asleep down the hall.
