Page 142 of Puck You Both

He taps my chest once with his blocker, over the heart, where the A would live if the league allowed it , and skates off to face his team.

***

I KNOCK ON my favorite door in Milwaukee around midnight, with a bag of gas-station cheese curds and no speech. I’ve been using my key for months now, and even though I know intellectually that this is ridiculous, I can’t ignore the part of me that screams: maybe tonight you shouldn’t.

I drove straight after media, which dragged for hours, past three exits that would've taken me home, and stood in the parking garage for a while, working out what a man says on the night he ends his boyfriends' season, and come up empty.

So the plan is the bag and me.

Theo opens the door. Eyes red, hoodie mine, face bare of everything he wears for the world. He looks at me, then at the bag, and steps back to let me in. He doesn't touch me, which tells me more about the score than the scoreboard did.

The apartment is dim and silent. Patrick's at the kitchen island, hands around a glass of water going warm. He looks up, and I stand there in the hallway with my terrible curds and I don't say I'm sorry, because I'm not, and they know it, and the lie would be worse than the loss.

What I say is, "These are the worst ones the state makes."

"Gas station on Layton?" Patrick asks.

"Yeah."

"Theo's favorite."

"I know."

He gets down three plates.

We eat garbage curds at midnight, mostly quiet. Their grief comes through in turns, and I let each one arrive without trying to save anybody from it.

Theo relives his back-door chance in a burst, hands carving the air, one inch, half an inch, and then runs out of it mid-sentence and leans into me instead, and I hold him up and keep my mouth shut.

A while later Patrick says, to his water, "Seventeen years and it never once felt like something happening. Tonight it did." He turns his glass a quarter. "Worst night of my season. Best game of my life."

"Mine too," I say.

Sometime past one, Theo surfaces from my shoulder with his jaw set. "You're winning the whole thing now. To the end, the Cup, all of it." He jabs a curd at me for emphasis. "Otherwise tonight was just a robbery, and I won’t have that."

"Okay."

"I mean it. I'm coming to every game. I will be extremely loud."

Patrick tilts his head. "I’m not sure that’s possible."

"Just you watch."

Patrick's mouth climbs on one side for the first time all night. The three of us breathe easier for it, and I commit, silently, to winning the Cup out of spite and love and cheese curds.

Then Theo straightens up all the way.

He wipes his face with his sleeve that’s actually mine, looks at Patrick, looks at me, and there's a full breath where the air rearranges itself around whatever he's about to do.

"Okay. No." He picks up the curd bag and plants it back on the same spot with force. "If you think I'm going through your playoff run—" a finger points at me, "—as your unlabeled emotional support—" the finger swings between Patrick and me" —you're insane. Say it. Both of you. Properly."

The word's been living with us for weeks now, fed and housed and never spoken.

Patrick sets down his glass and looks at Theo the whole time he says it. "Boyfriends."

Two eyes land on me, then four. My chest is a wreck, but my mouth, for once in its stubborn life, is ready. "Boyfriends."

Theo looks between us, jaw working, and loses the fight with his face on the worst night of his year, in a kitchen that smells like fried cheese, and laughs while he cries, both at full strength.