Chapter Sixteen
Away Game
Sydney
The house is different when Archer isn’t in it.
Not bad. Just different. Like I’m suddenly aware of the refrigerator humming and the heat cycling on and all the small mechanical noises that his presence normally covers up. He left this morning for a three-game road trip, West Coast swing, and the house has felt different all day.
The twins seem to be handling it okay. Lily spent the afternoon teaching her stuffed giraffe a dance routine she claims I taught her, though I don’t recognize a single move.
Luke built a tower out of magnetic tiles and then sat next to it for twenty minutes, studying it from different angles, before carefully dismantling it tile by tile and starting over.
They’re fine. They’re three. Their world is the size of this living room, and as long as someone is here cutting their strawberries and reading their books, they don’t track the absence the way I do.
His FaceTime comes in at 5:30, right before dinner, and Lily sprints to the kitchen so fast she nearly takes out a chair.
“DADDY!”
His face fills the screen. He’s in a hotel room somewhere—beige walls, a generic headboard, the universal décor of a man living out of a suitcase.
He’s wearing a t-shirt, his hair is damp from the shower, and he looks tired, but he’s smiling, and Lily is pressed so close to the phone that all he can see is her left eyeball.
“Lil, back up a little. I can see your brain.”
“DADDY, I taught Jeffrey a dance.”
“Who’s Jeffrey?”
“Her giraffe,” I say from behind the camera.
“The giraffe has a name now?”
“The giraffe has had a name since Tuesday. Keep up, Lockwood.”
He grins, and I feel it in my ribs. Through a phone screen, from three thousand miles away, the man grins, and I feel it in my ribs. That’s not normal. That’s not a thing that should happen to someone who is just a friend helping with the kids.
Luke takes the phone next. He holds it with both hands, very serious, and tells Archer that he built a tower today and it was “structurally sound.” Archer asks him where he learned that phrase, and Luke says “the internet,” and Archer looks at me over Luke’s head through the screen with an expression that says we need to talk about his internet access, and I nod.
“You guys being good for Auntie Syd?” Archer asks.
“Yes,” Luke says.
“VERY good,” Lily adds, which is a lie—she bit her brother’s arm during a disagreement about crayons at 2 PM, but I’m not going to bring that up on FaceTime because she apologized, and he forgave her, and the crayon situation has been resolved.
“Good. I miss you guys.”
“Miss you too, Daddy,” Lily says, and then she’s done with the phone and runs back to Jeffrey and her dance routine.
Luke hands me the phone. “Tell Daddy about the tower.”
“I think we already told him about the tower, buddy.”
“Tell him again. With more detail.”
I take the phone, and Luke wanders off, and it’s just me and Archer’s face on the screen, and neither of us says anything for a second.
He’s leaning against the headboard, one arm behind his head, and I’m standing in the kitchen wearing his sweatshirt—the one that I grabbed this morning because the house was cold, and it was right there, and it smells like him, and I’m not going to examine that decision right now.
“You wearing my hoodie?” he asks.
“Sorry, I was cold.”
“I don’t mind.” His mouth does something—not a smile, not a smirk, just a slight movement at the corner. “Looks good on you.”
“Everything looks good on me,” I tease.
“True.” He says it fast, throwaway, and then clears his throat. “So how’s everything? Anything I should know?”
“Luke’s tower was structurally sound. The giraffe is living his best life. I went grocery shopping, and your fridge now has actual vegetables in it. Oh, and the plumber called about the bathroom thing. I told him next week.”
“The bathroom thing.”
“The drip. In the master bath. You mentioned it last week.”
“I mentioned it once, and you called the plumber.” His eyebrows drift up.
“It was dripping, Archer. Someone had to call.”
He’s quiet for a second, looking at me through the screen with that expression he gets sometimes—the one where his eyes go soft and his jaw relaxes, and he looks like he wants to say something, but the words are stuck somewhere between his brain and his mouth.
“Thanks, Syd.”
“Stop thanking me. Go eat dinner. You have a game tomorrow.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t call me ma’am.”
“Goodnight, Syd.”
“Night, Arch.”
I hang up and stand in his kitchen, pressing the phone against my chest for a second before I put it down.
Bedtime is smooth. Lily requests a story about a princess who is also a shark, which is not a book that exists, so I improvise. Luke wants a chapter of his octopus encyclopedia. I read both, tuck them in, and leave the hallway light on the way Archer does.
Then I pour myself a glass of wine and turn on the game.
It’s strange watching him on TV. I’ve done it before over the years, I’ve caught his games here and there, usually at a bar back in Minnesota or on Lauren’s couch during playoffs.
But watching him from his own living room, on his own couch, with his kids sleeping upstairs and his sweatshirt and scent around me, is a different experience entirely.
He’s good. He moves in the crease with a controlled intensity that doesn’t match the man who stands at the kitchen counter and forgets where he put his coffee mug.
Every save is a full-body reaction, coiled and explosive, and I catch myself leaning forward on the couch every time the puck comes near him.
The camera cuts to a close-up between plays, and he’s standing in the crease, tapping his posts, mask up, scanning the ice.
His jaw is set, and his eyes are locked in, and he looks like a completely different person than the one who FaceTimed his kids two hours ago and made a joke about a giraffe named Jeffrey.
My phone buzzes. Then buzzes again. Then three more times in rapid succession.
The group chat. Winnie started it last week—her, me, and Tori. We haven’t named it yet, which is a whole ongoing debate.
Winnie: Is anyone else watching this game? Banks just took a hit and barely flinched. I swear these men are made of something other than skin and bone.
Tori: Zayden’s been on the ice for like six straight minutes. Someone tell him he’s allowed to rest.
Me: Archer just made a save with his face. His actual face. Is that normal?
Winnie: Unfortunately yes.
Tori: Welcome to the girlfriend experience. Minus the girlfriend part. You know what I mean.
Me: I’m the nanny, Tori.
Winnie: Sure you are.
Tori: Absolutely. The nanny. Who wears his sweatshirt and watches his games and lives in his house.
Winnie: Very nanny behavior.
Me: I hate both of you.
Winnie: You love us.
Tori: She loves us AND she loves Archer. Two things can be true.
I put the phone face-down on the couch and take a long sip of wine and look at the TV.
The game continues. Archer stops thirty-one shots.
The Knights win 3-1, and the broadcast cuts to the postgame, and there he is, hair sweaty and matted from the helmet, answering a reporter’s questions in that low monotone he uses for media.
He thanks the team. He talks about defensive structure.
The reporter asks about a save in the third, and he shrugs and says “just got a piece of it” like he didn’t fully extend across the crease and block a one-timer with his shoulder.
My phone buzzes.
Archer: We won. 3-1. Good game.
He texts me after games now. Before his agent, before his parents. He texts me.
Me: I watched. You stopped one with your face.
Archer: Cage on the helmet, not my face. Close though.
Me: Very reassuring. The twins are asleep. Luke’s tower survived the night. Jeffrey did not learn the dance.
Archer: Jeffrey lacks commitment.
Me: Don’t we all.
Three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again.
Archer: Thanks for holding everything down, Syd. I mean it.
Me: Always.
I turn off the TV and sit in the dark living room in his sweatshirt and finish my wine.
I put the phone down. I pull the hoodie up to my chin and breathe in, and it smells like him —detergent and deodorant and something underneath that’s just Archer, that I’ve known since I was fourteen and have never been able to describe—and I sit in his house watching the post-game highlights on his TV, and I think about what Tori said.
Two things can be true.
I love them. And I love him.
And I don’t know which one scares me more—the fact that it’s true, or the fact that I’ve stopped trying to pretend it isn’t.