Jeremiah #3
There’s a guy up ahead playing electric guitar through an amp the size of a lunchbox, absolutely wailing on a solo. Eyes closed, one foot up on his own guitar case, sweat rolling down like he’s headlining a stadium instead of a strip of sidewalk between a bank and a Chipotle.
“He’s really going for it,” I say.
“He’s really loud is what he’s doing.” She stops to watch him hit a note that seems to cause him genuine physical pain. “There’s a difference between talent and volume. He’s picked a side.”
“He’s got confidence, though.”
“Confidence isn’t the same as good. Half the worst people I’ve ever met had incredible confidence.” She drops a twenty in his case anyway.
I have never in my life met anyone like this.
He winds into a big finish, misses the landing by a full half-step, and takes a bow like he nailed it.
“See?” she says. “Confidence.” She starts walking again, easy as anything, not even glancing over. “Keep up, Zesty.”
She tops it off with a wink, like the word’s just part of her vocabulary now.
I almost miss it. It takes a few steps before it lands, before I register the word she just used like it’s something we’ve always called each other.
Zesty.
That nickname is maybe two hours old. And somehow it’s already made it out of the rink, out of the hotel, clear across the city and into the mouth of a woman I’ve known for four days.
DC is not that small of a town. It really isn’t.
“How do you know that?”
She blinks, like she genuinely didn’t notice what she’d said. “Know what?”
“Zesty. You just called me Zesty.”
“Did I?” She actually looks surprised at herself. It’s maybe the first fully unguarded thing I’ve seen her do all week.
"You just said ‘Zesty.’ Right at the end there. Like punctuation."
“Huh. Weird.” She doesn’t even slow down, already onto something else like nothing happened.
“No, you called me Zesty on purpose. Just tacked it onto a sentence like a verbal tic.”
“Oh. That. I have a very specific superpower.” She says it completely straight-faced. “Mind reading. Extremely limited range. I mostly just pick up embarrassing team nicknames.”
“Now you’re just mocking me.”
“Telepathy. Very rare gift. I don’t like to talk about it.” She’s fighting a smile and losing badly, and it takes about four more seconds before she cracks entirely. “Fine. I heard your friend say it to you outside the post office. He called you that right before you walked in.”
“Oh brother!”
“I liked the sound of it. Great word. Very versatile.“
“It’s a nickname. As of about three hours ago.”
“Oh? For what?”
So I tell her. The whole thing. The skate, the squelch, the avalanche of Diablo packets.
Every single one printed with the same quote like somebody hunted through an entire shipment for a matching set.
I tell her the nickname stuck before I even got my sock off, and that I still don’t actually know half these guys beyond a jersey number and a locker assignment.
This whole roster only got put together for the Stars and Stripes Tournament, and apparently the fastest way a hockey team builds trust is by ruining each other’s gear.
I tell her about Tyson’s jersey and the chirping between players.
“So it’s not just you.”
“It is very much not just me. And now I’m stuck with this nickname.”
“Zesty and dangerous,” she repeats, once she’s got the whole picture, testing the weight of it. “So if you’re Zesty then who’s Dangerous?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you.” I just blurt it out like my mouth has absolutely no communication with my brain.
“Me?”
Why did I say that? I hardly know this girl. Maybe she is dangerous on several different levels. Namely, dangerous for me because I can’t stop thinking about her. Because she’s a distraction and I’m not even mad about it.
“Yeah,” I say. “I think you might be a little dangerous.”
She thinks about it for exactly one second, like she’s trying on a hat in a mirror. “I like it. Zesty and Dangerous. We can be a whole thing. Very Bonnie and Clyde.”
“Bonnie and Clyde robbed banks and died in a hail of bullets.”
“Every love story has its rough patches.” She says it so lightly, so completely without missing a beat. “Did you know that Bonnie was eating a fried bologna sandwich when they ambushed them? Have you ever tried fried bologna? It’s pretty good.”
“No, I can’t say that I have.”
“You should try it sometime.”
It takes me a full block to register what she actually said.
Every love story has its rough patches.
And by the time I do, she’s already pointing at something else entirely, a dog in sunglasses, a gang of preteens on ebikes doing wheelies in the middle of the street.
We walk two more blocks before she peels off toward her building, waving without turning fully around, already halfway into the crowd.
“See you around, Zesty.”
“Count on it, Dangerous.”
She laughs, low and easy, almost musical, then disappears around the corner. I stand there on the sidewalk grinning like an absolute fool and I realize I never once thought to ask her name.
I’ll get it next time, I tell myself, watching her go, and somehow I already believe there will be one.