Page 89 of Cherry Picking

“Briggs.”

“Fine.” He rubs the back of his neck, looking properly caught. “I circled the date on the calendar last month.”

I lose whatever I was about to say, heart clenching. “Wow.”

“Don’t make it a thing, Evie.”

I wave a dismissive hand. “It’s my civic duty.”

He takes my empty cup out of my hand at his passenger door, and neither of us mentions it again. By the time we get to the arena, there are still hours to puck drop. The lot is mostly empty, and he badges us through a side entrance.

“Come on,” he says, holding the heavy door. “It’s the only time it’s actually quiet in here.”

Our boots are the loudest things on the concourse, and the ice is a flat, blue mirror behind the glass with nobody on it to ruin the finish. He guides me down a rear corridor, past a bunch of sticks and a laundry cart left in the hall, pushing into the room.

His stall has thirteen stitched into the wood, his skates positioned neatly underneath. A photo is taped inside the door—his mother holding him when he was small—and he doesn’t say a single word about it.

When we leave the room, he walks me up to the glass with a hand resting at the small of my back, close enough that I can see the black scuffs on the boards from the morning skate. He hooks an arm around my shoulders and pulls me into his side.

We stand there a minute without saying anything, until his phone starts vibrating against his hip. He pulls it out, and I catch his thumb hitting Decline before I can read the name. It buzzes again immediately.

“Ted,” he mutters. “Christ, the man is relentless.”

“You could just answer it.”

“I could.” He shoves it back into his pocket without a glance. “But that would involve talking to Ted.”

He gets me settled in my seat, low in the bowl. I’d stay in the empty quiet with him another hour if I could, but he has a game to play.

“I have to go get armored up,” he says. “I’ll look for you.”

He presses a quick kiss to my temple. Then he’s gone toward the tunnel, met at the mouth by a woman in a Kings quarter-zip who starts talking low at his shoulder.

As the clock bleeds down, the doors open, and the stands fill in a slow, noisy tide, navy and brick red flooding the bowl until the quiet is gone. Around me, the family section settles in—wives, girlfriends, a few parents, everyone exchanging news by name.

Lily Hartwell finds me with two beers. “Drink one of these. The first game is always a lot.”

“It’s very loud.”

“It gets louder.” She settles in. “You’ll want these good seats to spoil you now. Sam’s first two years, we were up in the three-hundreds—the club buries the young guys. I couldn’t tell which small man was mine for an entire season.”

She’s right, we are close. Close enough that when the Kings pour over the boards for warm-ups, I feel the cold coming off the ice. Close enough to find Briggs in the huddle without trying.

Number thirteen. Navy jersey, red on the shoulders. He skates a loose loop, taps his stick against Augie’s shin pads, and I lose track of my own breathing for a second.

“There he is,” Lily says, catching me looking. “You’ve got the face.”

I turn to her. “Ew, should I wipe it off?”

“Keep it.” She sips her beer, looking smug. “It’s a good face. Don’t fight it.”

Briggs finds me during warm-ups, and I’m not fully prepared for it. He’s mid-lap, gliding backward along the far boards. His head comes up to sweep the lower bowl once, twice, and then stops. On me.

He doesn’t wave or do anything obscene that a camera might catch. He just holds the look, the same way he held it at the table last night, then taps his stick twice against the glass and skates on.

My entire chest goes helium-light.

For weeks, I was the one watching from Murphy’s couch, hunting for a jersey through a screen with two thousand miles between us. Now, I’m ten feet from the glass, and he’s the one looking for me. That’s a dangerous place to be.