Page 77 of Gave Proof Through the Night

His forehead comes to rest against mine. Neither of us says anything for a long moment. Our breath comes out in twin clouds between us, and somewhere, the last slow chord of the song fades to silence, leaving just the two of us and the hum of the empty rink and his thumb still moving in slow, absent circles against my jaw like he isn’t ready to stop touching me yet either.

“Happy birthday, America,” Jeremiah says again, quieter this time.

I open my mouth to say something clever. Something about how he’s definitely living up to the nickname Zesty. Or how he’s been unfairly holding out on me and I’m entitled to compensation.

But it all sounds stupid in my head.

So I don’t say anything at all. I fist my hand tighter in the front of his shirt, pull him back down, and kiss him again.

17

ERICA

Chapter playlist:

Diamonds — Rihanna

Ionly know Jeremiah’s team scored because the whole section jumps up screaming at once, and half a second later I’m on my feet too, screaming right along with them. Ha! As if I have the faintest idea what’s happening on the ice.

Jeremiah offered me two tickets so I could bring a friend. I came alone, because can you imagine if I’d brought Zoe? She’d have her face mashed against the glass, fogging it up with actual drool. One of us needs to maintain a shred of dignity. Might as well be me.

Now I think it’s the second period (out of who knows how many periods), and I’m watching large men in blue and large men in red crash into each other. I am trying and failing to reverse-engineer the rules from context clues. Blue jersey good. Whistle bad, usually. Sometimes the whistle is apparently fine, and everyone claps, and I clap too, a half beat behind, like I’m a tourist doing the wave.

I’ve given up tracking who has the puck. Instead, I watch the crowd. When the section around me rises, I rise. When they roar, I roar. It’s like pretending I know the words to “Benny and the Jets,” just mouthing along to whatever I think the lyrics are.

The man directly behind me has been cheering with his whole chest since the team filed onto the ice. He’s three beers deep by my count, and when the goal horn blares, he throws both arms straight up like this is the most important thing to ever happen to the universe. His beer is liberated into the air. It lands on me.

Someone please give this man a sippy cup because he has no concept of how liquids work.

Now I have half his beer in my hair and down the back of my neck and it’s dripping in a slow, sticky line down my spine.

Toddler man doesn’t notice. He’s still roaring. Everyone is still roaring. And I’m standing in a puddle of Bud Light, screaming “WOOO” with the rest of them, because what else am I supposed to do? File a complaint?

This is the most action my hair has seen all week, I think, and keep clapping.

By the time the horn sounds for real, the final one (maybe), I’ve stopped even pretending to follow along. Jeremiah’s team wins.

My whole section is hugging and at least one man is crying into a foam finger. A stranger hugs me and doesn’t seem to notice the beer smell on me. Then the guys in red leave the ice, and I think it’s over, but then I have to sit through some kind of ceremony where they announce the three stars of the game. Jeremiah’s name isn’t called, but one of the guys had green hair, so that’s fun.

Finally, the stadium starts to clear out, and I go to the place Jeremiah told me to go to meet him after he’s done with all the things hockey players do after they win a game. I’m picturing champagne in the locker room and hopefully a shower. Not that I’m actually picturing Jeremiah in the shower, just that I imagine he would want to wash the sweat off. Kind of how I want to wash the beer out of my hair.

There’s a door marked FAMILY & FRIENDS, where a woman with a lanyard checks my name off a list and waves me toward a lounge. One look through the doorway and I know I’m not going in. Couches full of women I don’t know, huddled over somebody’s phone, a few of them in (and I’m not making this up) blinged-out red, white, and blue jackets.

I decide to stand in the hallway, so I find a stretch of wall a few feet down the corridor and lean against it instead. Whatever Jeremiah has to do while I wait for him eats up the better part of forty-five minutes.

When he finally emerges, Jeremiah is showered, hair still damp and pushed back, in a soft gray team hoodie and joggers, and has his feet shoved into slides. I suppose actual shoes were too much to ask of him tonight. He spots me against the wall and his whole face lights up, and he makes a determined beeline toward me.

He pulls me against him like I’m about to fly away, and kisses me, his lips crashing onto mine like one of those WW2 reunions. Then he squeezes his arms around me and spins me in a sweeping circle.

Oh, I think, somewhere very far away. Right. This is a thing we do now.

When he puts me down, he’s grinning like a man who just won something bigger than a hockey game.

“You’re my lucky charm,” he says. “I need you at all my games from now on.”

“Uh…How many more games are we talking?”

“All of them.” He says it like it’s obvious, like I asked what time it is. “Until I retire. And then some.”