18. Mackie
MACKIE
It’s Sunday night. We’ve been lying on Zach’s bed for an hour doing nothing.
He’s reading something on his iPad, and I’m scrolling through social media.
Someone posted a poll ranking the hottest goalies in the league.
Zach is currently in fifth, which is frankly an insult.
I can’t vote without inventing fake email addresses, and I already have six of those, so I’m just seething quietly about it.
“Unfuckingbelievable.” I mutter it under my breath after the site requires a phone number. I’ve already registered under both mine and Kara’s.
“What’s unbelievable?” He leans over to look at my screen, which I angle away from him. He raises his eyebrows like he can’t believe I just did that.
I hold out for three seconds and then turn the phone toward him. “Someone posted a poll. Hottest goalies in the league.”
He looks at the screen and his ranking. “Fifth seems right,” he says, and goes back to his iPad.
“It does NOT seem right. It’s an outrage. You are at minimum a top three. Arguably number one. The fact that a guy from Minnesota is above you is statistically impossible and I’m taking it personally.” I toss my phone across the bed. “Let’s play truth or dare.”
He looks up. “What?”
“Truth or dare. Right now. My rules.”
“What are your rules?”
“Whatever gets asked, both people answer. Two for one.”
“That’s not how truth or dare works.”
“It’s how Mackie truth or dare works. I’ll go first to show good faith.” I sit up straighter. “Ask me.”
He sighs the sigh of a man who has been dating me long enough to know that resistance is futile. “Truth or dare?”
“Truth.”
“Okay. What’s your—”
“Biggest phobia. Let’s start easy. Mine is porta potties.”
“...Porta potties.”
“Being inside a porta potty when it tips over.” I watch the horror dawn on his face and keep going. “You’re in there. Pants around your ankles. No escape. The door is now the ceiling or possibly the floor, and everything that was in the tank is now—”
“Please stop.”
“On you. In your hair. And you can’t get out because the door opens the wrong way now. You’re just lying there marinating in—”
“MACKIE.” He puts a hand over my mouth, which, given recent events in my parents’ basement, sends a hot flush through me. “I think you might be the scariest person I’ve ever met.”
“Thank you,” I mumble through his hand. “Your turn.”
He thinks about it, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Shots I can track the whole way but my body doesn’t get there in time.”
“I meant like a real phobia. Spiders. Heights.”
“That IS a real phobia. I see the puck leave the stick. I read it perfectly. I know exactly where it’s going, and my glove is late by an inch. That’s the worst feeling in the world.”
“Zach, that’s not a phobia, that’s a job hazard.”
“It keeps me up at night. That’s a phobia.”
Of course that’s his answer. Of course his deepest fear isn’t snakes or the dark—it’s seeing the exact right thing to do and not getting there fast enough. I file that away because it explains about ninety percent of how he operates in every other area of his life.
“Fine. Traumatizing. Love it. Next round.” I rub my hands together. “Truth or dare.”
“Truth.”
“What do you want the most out of life? The one thing you’ve never said out loud.”
He stares at his hands. I can see him deciding, turning it over, checking it from every angle the way he checks everything before he commits.
“To win the Stanley Cup,” he says. “As the starting goalie. Not a backup who dressed for a few games and gets his name on it because he was in the right place at the right time.” He pauses, and his voice goes quieter.
“I want to be the reason we win. I want to be the wall. I’ve never said that to anyone because it sounds insane. ”
“It doesn’t sound insane.” I squeeze his hand. “I can see it someday. Game Seven. Tied score. You in net.”
He nods once, like he doesn’t actually believe it but wants to. “Your turn.”
“Rinkside reporter,” I say immediately, because I’ve been wanting to say it out loud for months. “But not for the NHL.”
He tilts his head and waits.
“The PWHL. I want to be the person who covers the women’s game.
” Once I start, I can’t stop. The words tumble out the way they do when I’ve been thinking about something for a long time and finally have someone to say it to.
“Because the women’s game is different, Zach.
Nobody’s there for the contract drama or the endorsement deals.
They play because they love it. The people who show up love it.
There’s this energy in the building that’s just purer than anything I’ve ever felt in any arena, and I’ve been in NHL arenas my entire life. ”
He watches me without interrupting. The quiet, undivided attention makes my throat tight.
“My dad’s been talking to the media department about getting me connected.
Pulling strings, calling in favors, asking if anyone at the network has room for an intern.
” I pick at the edge of the pillowcase. “Which is great. It’s amazing that he’s doing that.
But it also means he thinks I want to cover the NHL.
Because why wouldn’t I, right? I’m Jack Anderson’s daughter. The path is right there.”
“But you don’t want the NHL.”
“I grew up watching my dad play a thousand games, and the NHL never once made me want to pick up a pen. The women’s game did.
When I tell him that—” I stop and take a deep breath before continuing.
“He’s going to hear it as his daughter saying the thing he built his whole life around isn’t good enough for her.
I’m going to have to say, ‘actually, Dad, I want to cover a league you’ve probably never watched’. ”
“That’s not what you’re saying.”
“I know. But he’s going to hear it that way. That conversation scares me almost as much as the other one.” I laugh, but it’s thin. “I’m really collecting difficult conversations I need to have with my father.”
Zach’s quiet for a second. “The women’s game is cleaner. I’ve always thought that. The hockey is different, but it’s not less.”
I open my mouth and close it. I was prepared to defend this, and he’s just sitting there nodding like I told him the sky is blue. Like it’s obvious.
“I don’t think you need your dad to open doors for you. I think you could probably kick them down yourself. You’re going to be incredible at this.”
The knot of anxiety that I’ve been holding in my chest loosens just slightly. “Okay, new round. Truth or dare?”
“Truth.”
“Tell me about your family.”
He looks away from me, hesitating for a moment like he always does before he answers a question like this.
“What do you want to know?”
“Whatever you want to tell me. Both people answer, remember? I’ll go first.” I tuck my legs under me.
“My dad obviously you know. My mom was eighteen when she got pregnant with me. My dad was this wild young NHL guy who was—I mean, the stories my mom tells sometimes.” I shake my head.
“She’ll be on her second glass of wine and start with ‘your father, before you were born.’ What follows is always something that makes me think, damn, I would have never put up with that.
He was a huge playboy, Zach. Legendary. Somehow my mom looked at this disaster of a person and said yeah, I’m keeping him and the baby.
Nineteen years later, they’re still together.
She knows about us, by the way. I’m actually pretty sure of it.
I don’t think she minds. I think she’s just happy I’m happy.
Or maybe she recognizes my dad in me, and you’re the calming one.
It’s weird. I try not to think about it. Okay, your turn.”
He nods slowly, like everything I’ve just said makes perfect sense.
“My dad left when I was eight,” he says. “About a month after that, my mom drove me to my grandparents’ house. Her parents. She brought my bag inside and told me I was going to stay with them for a while.” He trails off, like he’s stuck in the memory. “She didn’t come back.”
“Zach—”
“My grandparents never explained it. I was just there now. That was the situation. They were good people. They took care of me, but they were old and tired. They didn’t know what to do with an eight-year-old, and I didn’t know what to do with any of it.
We all just sort of existed in the same house and didn’t talk about it. ”
He pauses and I hold my breath, waiting for him to continue.
“I used to sit on their front porch and watch the neighbor kids play street hockey. One day they needed a goalie, and somebody’s older brother had pads that were three sizes too big.
They put me in front of the net and told me to stop the ball.
” The corner of his mouth moves. “I was terrible. But I kept showing up. They kept putting me in, and after a while, I started getting better. One of the moms in the neighborhood noticed me out there every day. She got me connected with a youth center that had a community hockey program for kids who couldn’t afford it.
That’s where I learned to actually play. That’s where I started.”
“That’s how you became a goalie? Because some kids on a street needed someone to stand in the net?”
“Well, there’s a lot more to it after that. Some coaches noticed me and started talking to my grandparents about it. They agreed to put me into actual programs and lessons and stuff.” He looks at the ceiling.
I’m holding it together so hard I can barely breathe. He just handed me the missing piece of him—the thing that explains the quiet, the caution, the way he braces for impact—and I don’t have the right words. I don’t know if there are right words.
But I can show him. I can show him what he gets on the other side of all that.
“Okay,” I say. “New round. Truth or dare?”
“Truth.”
“How many kids do you want with me?”