Page 30 of Single Pucking Orc

She went back to the desk. She looked at the file. Trombley. Nine o’clock.

Non-recurring, she’d written, in her head, at twenty to seven.

She was going to have to give it its own line.

CHAPTER 9

The decision took Rognar about four seconds, which he’d later learn was three and a half seconds too many for anyone to leave him alone about.

Bex had a Tuesday morning class—something about kinesiology, she’d texted, with a photo of a lecture hall and a sad face. Morning skate was optional. He’d looked at the gap in the schedule, and then at his daughter, who was gumming the corner of the giraffe bag on the kitchen floor. And for some reason he couldn’t later decipher, he’d decided that an optional skate was a fine place for a baby.

He carried her into a locker room that smelled of tape and wet gear and old sweat, and the whole room went quiet. It went silent in a way it never went silent. Not for Coach. Not for the general manager. Not for the time a bird got into the rafters and stayed for a week. A room full of the largest males in the state, half-dressed, mid-argument about something involving Jensen’s playoff beard, and the room went silent and stupid at the sight of one green baby in a sling.

“Oh,” said Fen, in a voice Rognar had never heard him use.

Then it was chaos, but a reverent kind.

They came off the benches. They came around the stalls. Korvash got there first and put his hands up before Rognar had even unclipped her. Rognar handed her over. His shoulders were shot from carrying her since five. Korvash tucked her against his chest with the head cradled exactly right and rocked without being told, like he’d done it a thousand times.

“Where’d you learn that?” he asked.

“Four kids, remember?” Korvash didn’t look up, cooing down at Charlie.

Fen was digging in his stall. He came out triumphantly holding something green, and shook it open. It was a jersey. An Enforcers jersey in home green with STONEBREAKER across the back over the number 9, and it was the size of a pillowcase.

“I ordered it three days ago,” Fen said. “Next-day shipping. Cost me extra.”

“Fen.” He looked from the jersey to his daughter. “That’s a 4T.”

“It’s the smallest one they make.”

“It covers her whole body.”

“She’ll grow.”

“She’s six months old. By the time that fits her she’ll be walking. She’ll be talking.”

“So she’ll have it ready.” Fen held it up against Korvash and Charlie, and the hem hung past Korvash’s knee. He frowned at it, undefeated. “It’s aspirational.”

“It’s a suffocation risk,” said a level voice from the tunnel, and every other sound in the room went away.

Nora stood three steps in. She had the diaper bag over her shoulder. The one he’d left on her porch that morning. He’d been juggling and it hadn’t fit and he’d told himself he’d grab it later. He’d known even then that later meant she’d bring it. She’d stopped dead, because there was a professional hockey team on its knees on the rubber matting.

He saw her before she saw him. He’d think about that later, when he replayed it. He’d been looking for her without having decided to look, his eyes going to the tunnel mouth the second the light changed. Like she registered on some frequency he hadn’t known he had. He'd spent half of last season giving Tarmek hell for knowing exactly where Edie was in any room before he'd admitted why. Apparently that kind of thing was funnier from the outside.

She wasn’t cooing. He hadn’t expected that either. She walked in, took in the scene—the giants, the kneeling, the enormous jersey—and she didn’t make a single soft noise. She looked at the 4T and delivered her professional assessment, and Fen, who did not take notes from Coach, took the note.

“…Yeah,” Fen said slowly, lowering the jersey. “Yeah, that’s fair. I’ll get a bib made.”

And that did it. Something in his chest gave way, as quietly as a light switching off. He had to look at the ceiling for a second. He examined the rafters. He thought about the bird.

“I got one that fits,” said Kowalski, and produced, from nowhere, a jersey in an actual infant size, snap crotch and everything, and would not say where he’d gotten it. “Don’t ask me.”

“Where did you⁠—”

“Don’t ask me.”

Charlie, meanwhile, had started fussing. She’d been at it all morning, one fist jammed against her jaw, gnawing and grizzling and building towards a real cry. Now she twisted in Korvash’s arms and let out a proper wail. Twelve enormous males flinched in unison.