“It’s a COLLECTOR’S ITEM. There are only two in existence. I have the other one.”
Elliot takes it from Brody and examines it at arm’s length, “The resemblance is actually spot on.”
Then Zach opens a skincare set and he’s turning one of the bottles over in his hands, reading the back with his eyebrows drawn down in a frown. “What’s a serum?” he asks, and I have to bite my tongue because his cluelessness is adorable.
“Oh, dude. Z.” Rodriguez emerges from his blanket cocoon. “Your wife in Vancouver is going to LOVE that.”
My entire body goes hot. I can feel my face turning the approximate color of my hair and there’s nothing I can do about it because redheads don’t blush, we COMBUST. Brody is laughing. Rodriguez is laughing. My dad is chuckling and shaking his head because the whole team has been running this joke for weeks and he thinks it’s hilarious because he has NO IDEA that it’s about his daughter, who is currently sitting on his living room floor turning almost purple and pretending to be fascinated by a gift tag.
Zach’s ears are pink. “I don’t have a wife in Vancouver.”
“Sure you don’t. That’s why you brought a nice bottle of bourbon to a gift exchange. Very bachelor behavior.”
“How do you know that was mine?”
“Because it was boring and responsible and screamed ‘I have a mortgage and a family,’” Brody says, and I make a mental note to destroy Brody at the next opportunity.
Barrett hasn’t moved. He’s sitting in the armchair with hiswine, watching this whole exchange because he’s the only one who knows the punchline to a joke everyone else is still setting up.
I steal the skincare set from Zach on my turn because I want it and because I can and because the look on his face when I take it from him, a half a smile he’s trying to kill, is worth every molecule of risk. Rodriguez points at us immediately. “See? He didn’t even fight you for it. He WANTED you to have it. That’s husband behavior.”
“That’s not—” Zach starts.
“Husband behavior,” Brody confirms.
“I just didn’t want face cream.”
“NOBODY doesn’t want skincare, Z. That’s a two hundred dollar set. You gave it up willingly to a teenage girl. You’re either married or you’re in love with someone in this room and I don’t see your wife from Vancouver so?—”
“Brody,” Barrett says. Just his name and Brody’s mouth snaps shut like someone hit a switch. The room goes quiet for a beat and I am suddenly VERY interested in the ingredients list on my night serum because if I look up right now I’m done. Barrett just did that. Barrett, who was standing in the basement doorway twenty minutes ago watching Zach tie my dress back together with shaking hands, just shut this entire conversation down with one word and I’m sitting here trying to be grateful while also hating him for the interruption.
Zach picks again. He reaches into the pile and pulls out a gift bag, digs through tissue paper, and pulls out a set of massage oils in little glass bottles. Rodriguez leans out of his blanket cocoon and grabs one. “Warming.” He grabs another. “Sensual.” He holds up a third for the entire room. “INTIMATE RELAXATION.” And then Zach reaches back into the bag and pulls out a champagne colored silk bathrobe and even I start to giggle at the absurdity of the gifts he’s choosing because the poor guy cannot catch a break.
“FOR YOUR WIFE!” Rodriguez yells from inside his blanket.
And then Barrett starts laughing. Coach Barrett, who has barely made a sound all night, who shut Brody down with a word two minutes ago, is wheezing in the armchair and shaking his head and he goes, “You’re on your own this time, Almardon.”
Everyone else is talking over each other trying to land the funniest joke about Zach’s secret Vancouver wife but for just a second our eyes meet across the room and he gives me this little barely there smirk, and the only thing my brain serves up is an image of his massive goalie hands, working those oils into my skin while I’m wearing nothing but that stupid silk robe. I have to look at the floor before my face gives us both up.
People leave in waves.Rodriguez stands up still wrapped in the blanket and doesn’t take it off while he hugs me. Brody shoves the bobblehead in Elliot’s purse.
Barrett is last. He hugs me at the door, holds on a second longer than normal, and says quietly against my hair, “Do not break that kid, Mackinnon.”
“Uncle Dean?—”
“I said what I said.” He pats me once on the back and walks outside and I stand in the doorway watching his taillights disappear.
Zach shakes my dad’s hand and thanks my mom for dinner. She hugs him and his arms come up around her slowly, uncertain, like nobody ever taught him how to do this, and I have to look away because I can’t watch Zach receive tenderness from my mother without wanting to cry.
He catches my eye on the way out. Just for a second. Just long enough.
I waituntil he’s probably home before I text him.
Me
hey
Zach
