I drove home on autopilot.I don’t remember the drive or actually getting there, only Barrett’s voice and the sound of the building erupting behind me as the anthem started. By the time the puck dropped I was sitting in my car with my hands gripping the steering wheel while the crowd roared for the opening faceoff. I wasn’t in the family suite or rinkside. I was in a parking garage pressing my forehead against the steering wheel, shaking.
I go upstairs, close my door, and lie on my bed. I can’t fall apart yet. Not until I know the score, and not until I know if the thing I broke is fixable.
I don’t watch the game live, but I check the score on my phone every thirty seconds like a sickness. I can’t stop. First period ends 1-0, against. I stare at the ceiling and think about Zach in the crease with the crowd noise pushing against him and my dad on the ice refusing to look at him. My fault. All of it my fault. I pulled him into that doorway. I kissed him and said it was for luck like we were in a movie, like the universe owed us a stolen kiss before the biggest game of his life.
The universe doesn’t owe us anything. The universe has been very clear about that.
2-0 after the second. I’m lying on my bedroom floor because the bed and the chair both felt wrong, and the floor at least has the decency to be uncomfortable in a way that matches everything else. My phone lights up.
Kara
are you watching???
also why aren’t you answering my texts
Me
he knows
my dad found us
before the game
My phone rings immediately and I answer it and Kara screams “WHAT” so loud I have to pull the phone away from my ear.
I tell her all of it, ending with Barrett sending me home like I was a child who wandered into a place she didn’t belong.
“Oh my god,” Kara says when I’m done. “Mackie.”
“I know.”
“Before the GAME?”
“I KNOW.”
“Where’s Zach?”
“Playing. He’s playing right now.”
“Where’s your mom?”
“At the game. She doesn’t know yet.”
“Mackie. Listen to me. You need to?—”
“I need to wait. I need to wait until the game ends and my dad comes home. Then I need to face him, and I don’t know what to say. What do you SAY? What’s the opening line for the conversation where you explain to your father that you’ve been lying to him for eight months about the person you love?”
“You start with I’m sorry and go from there.”
“I’m not sorry for being with Zach.”
“Yeah but you’re sorry for lying.”
I don’t answer that. Kara stays on the line for the rest of the game while I obsessively check the score until the numbers stop changing.
“4-1,” I say. “Final. They lost 4-1.”
“Okay. Okay so?—”
