13. Zach
ZACH
Jack tosses me a roll of tape before morning skate without looking up. “How was your weekend?”
“Fine.”
“Just fine? You didn’t do anything? Go anywhere?”
“It was a quiet weekend.”
“Quiet weekend,” he repeats, shaking his head. “Twenty-two years old and every weekend is a quiet weekend. When I was your age I was—”
“Getting into trouble.” I’ve heard this speech four times.
He always stops before the details, which means the details are either boring or incriminating and either way I don’t need them right now because I’m trying to tape my stick without looking at his face.
His face that looks like her face. The same jaw.
The same way their eyes go narrow and they tilt their heads when they’re thinking about something.
I tape the blade then pull it off and start again. The edge isn’t right. Rodriguez is watching me from two stalls over. I can feel it.
Practice starts, I’m in net and everything is fine for about five minutes. Stopping pucks is the one thing in my life that still makes sense. The puck comes, I read it, I stop it. No lying involved. No guilt. It’s only angles and reflexes and the sound of rubber hitting leather.
Then Rodriguez drifts over.
He positions himself near the net like he’s retrieving pucks but he’s really just hovering. He’ll swat one into the corner and then lean on his stick and talk to me while the rest of the line resets.
“So I came by your place Friday night.”
My hand tightens on the stick because I’m pretty sure I know where this is going. “Okay.”
“You weren’t answering your phone. I figured you had it on silent or something so I was going to knock and see if you wanted to grab food.”
“I was busy.”
“Yeah, I know you were busy.” He flips a puck off the ice with his blade, catches it, then drops it. “Because I could hear someone laughing inside your apartment. And it wasn’t you because I know what you sound like when you laugh and this was a girl.”
I don’t say anything. I’m staring straight ahead at the far boards. My heart is pounding and a weird ringing has started in my ears.
“Also,” he says, “the hallway smelled like perfume. Not a little bit. Like she had just walked through there.”
Barrett’s whistle screams from center ice. “RODRIGUEZ. ARE YOU PLAYING HOCKEY OR ARE YOU APPLYING FOR A JOB AS A GOALTENDING COACH? GET BACK IN LINE.”
Rodriguez skates away but he’s back ninety seconds later.
“I’m not done.”
“I figured.”
“So there’s a girl.”
“There’s no girl.”
“There is a girl in your apartment who laughs and wears perfume and you’re not answering your phone on a Friday night. That’s a girl, Z. That’s definitively a girl.”
Barrett’s whistle shrieks again. Rodriguez leaves then comes back the minute Barrett is distracted.
“I’m not doing this with you.” I tell him.
“Because I’m trying to narrow it down. It was like kind of florally, with maybe vanilla—”
“RODRIGUEZ!” Barrett’s voice bellows across the ice. “IF I HAVE TO BLOW THIS WHISTLE ONE MORE TIME I’M SCRATCHING YOU FROM THURSDAY.”
Rodriguez skates away for real this time and I stand in my crease and stop twelve more shots but with every single one of them I’m thinking about the fact that Mackie was in my apartment Friday and Rodriguez was outside my door.
He could hear her laughing and he could smell her perfume which means this is going to get worse before it gets better.
The locker room is where it gets worse.
Rodriguez is still getting his pads off when he starts back up and Dex and Brody migrate over because it’s clear that it’s feeding time at the aquarium and I’m on the menu.
“All I’m saying is that Z had a girl in his apartment Friday night and he won’t tell me who she is.”
“I didn’t say I had a girl—”
“Perfume in the hallway. Girl laughing. Phone off.” Rodriguez ticks each one off on his fingers. “That’s an airtight case.”
“What did the perfume smell like?” Dex asks like this is a real investigation.
“I don’t know but I was going to go to the mall this weekend to see if I could figure it out.”
“So we don’t know who she is,” Brody says. “Also, why would knowing what the perfume is help us narrow it down?”
“You don’t know anything,” I say.
“We know she exists and she smells good and she makes you act weird at practice,” Rodriguez says. “That’s a lot, actually.”
Brody leans back. “What if she doesn’t live here. What if she’s from out of town.”
“Why would she be from out of town?” I ask, and I know as I’m asking it that I should just stop talking entirely.
“Because you never go out. You never bring anyone around. You don’t date locally. You’re like a monk except apparently on Friday nights when a mystery woman shows up at your apartment.”
“Z.” Rodriguez points at me. “Where did you play junior?”
“What does that have to do with—”
“Vancouver. You played junior in Vancouver. You lived there for what, three years?”
“Two.” Fuck, why do I keep answering him.
“Two years in Vancouver.” He looks at Dex. Dex nods slowly. Brody nods slowly. They’re all nodding like they’ve just cracked a cold case.
“She’s from Vancouver,” Dex says.
“She is NOT from—”
“That’s why you never bring her around. She flies in. She stays at your place. The perfume. The laughing. The going dark on the weekends. It all tracks.”
Roman walks past pulling a shirt over his head. “What tracks?”
“Z’s got a girl in Vancouver.”
“It’s not—”
“It’s probably serious,” Brody says. “It’s been going on for a while. He’s been weird for weeks.”
“Months,” Rodriguez corrects.
“Married serious?” Roman asks.
Suddenly everyone goes extremely still. Brody’s holding one sock, his mouth wide open. Dex has stopped unlacing his skate and is staring at me. Rodriguez is just sitting there with his arms crossed looking satisfied that he’s unleashed this.
“I’m not married.”
“That’s exactly what a secretly married person would say,” Brody says.
“I’m twenty-two!”
“So? My cousin was married with twins at twenty,” Roman says.
“There are no twins. There’s no wife. There’s nobody in Vancouver.”
Rodriguez gasps. “I didn’t even CONSIDER kids!”
“Two,” Dex says. “At least.”
“Nah, three, definitely.” Brody says. “He’s got three-kid energy.”
“What the hell is three-kid energy?”
“Tired all the time. Goes to bed early. Never wants to go out. Checks his phone a lot. That’s a dad, Z. You act like a dad.”
“I act like a GOALIE.”
“What is ‘three-kid energy’?” Jack asks, coming around the corner with a towel over his shoulder, still half-laughing from whatever he overheard.
“We figured out that Z has a wife and three kids in Vancouver,” Rodriguez announces.
“I DON’T—”
“Good for you, kid.” Jack squeezes my shoulder. “You should bring her by for dinner sometime. Chloe loves kids. How old are they?”
I look at Luca. He’s been sitting in his stall this entire time with his pads half off, watching all of this unfold like the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen. He hasn’t said a single word. He catches me looking at him and shrugs with one shoulder, and goes back to removing gear.
I sit there after everyone clears out and think about how the secret I built to protect Jack’s daughter just turned into three children and a wife in a city I haven’t lived in for years.
I’m on my couch that night watching film when my phone chimes.
Mackie
so I heard a really funny story today
Me
oh no
Mackie
my dad got home from practice and told my mom that you have a family in vancouver and I’m wondering why I didn’t hear about this from you
Me
it’s not what it sounds like
Mackie
it sounds like we have three children
Me
Rodriguez heard you laughing in my apartment on friday and now the entire team thinks I’m hiding a family in canada
Mackie
RODRIGUEZ WAS OUTSIDE YOUR APARTMENT???
Me
apparently he could smell your perfume in the hallway
Mackie
oh my god
oh my GOD
Me
this is your fault
Mackie
what did you tell them
Me
nothing. I kept saying there’s nobody and the more I denied it the worse it got
Mackie
incredible
well your secret fake wife says goodnight
try not to wake the kids