21. Zach
ZACH
MARCH
The games keep coming and we’ve clinched a playoff spot which should feel like something except it mostly just means the deadline to come clean is now moved back again.
Every week we don’t tell him adds another week to the pile and the pile is getting heavy enough that I can feel it in every part of my body, in the way I hold my stick tighter when Jack skates past, in the way I have to remind myself to breathe when he says my name.
I gave her a key three weeks ago. Now she lets herself in when I’m at practice.
I come home and there’s Mackie on my couch with her laptop and Shredder is swimming in circles behind her.
The apartment smells like her coconut-vanilla shampoo that lives in my shower next to my unscented bar soap like they’re roommates and every time I walk through the door I have to stop for a second because it looks like a life.
Like a real one. Something I didn’t know I was missing until she showed up and rearranged everything.
Rodriguez came over last week to watch film and stood in the hallway sniffing the air like a bloodhound.
“Your apartment smells tropical, bro. Did you buy a candle?” I told him I switched body wash and he squinted at me for a full thirty seconds before dropping it, which I know isn’t dropping it, because he’ll just come back to it later.
Speaking of Rodriguez. He went to Toronto for the Olympic break in February and came back dating Juliette—the same Juliette who wouldn’t look at him for months, who shook her head at every coffee he brought her, who made him work harder than anything I’ve ever seen him work for off the ice.
He will not shut up about it. I’m happy for him.
But Rodriguez with a girlfriend is Rodriguez with a mission, and the mission is making sure everyone around him is also in love because he’s discovered that feelings are incredible and wants to share.
“When are you going to tell me who she is,” he says during warm-ups, skating in circles around me like this is a normal thing to do while I’m trying to stretch.
“There’s no she.”
“Z. Come on. Juliette and I want to do a double date thing. She’s got this friend from the skating program, really pretty, super nice, but I told her no because you’re clearly already seeing someone and I would never set you up behind your girl’s back because that’s a violation of bro code and I take bro code seriously. ”
“There is no girl and no bro code violation happening because there’s nobody to violate it with.”
“The tropical body wash says otherwise.”
“It’s BODY WASH.”
“Nobody switches to tropical body wash unless a woman is involved. That’s not even a theory. That’s a fact.”
Barrett’s whistle cuts across the ice. “RODRIGUEZ. WARM-UP MEANS WARMING UP. NOT PODCASTING.”
Rodriguez skates off and I watch him go and think about how two months ago he was camping out by my net asking about perfume in my hallway and now he wants me to go on double dates, and I don’t know how to tell him that the reason I can’t isn’t because I don’t have someone but because the someone I have is sitting in the family section of every home game pretending she doesn’t know me.
Practice runs long. Barrett has us doing breakout drills until my legs are shaking and Jack skates past twice and taps my pads both times and says “looking good, kid”.
I catch everything Dex throws at me and don’t let myself think about anything except angles and release points and the weight of the puck against my glove.
After practice I’m sitting in my stall pulling off my chest protector when my phone buzzes. I almost don’t check it because Rodriguez is three stalls down and has been watching me like a detective all week, but the preview catches my eye and my whole body goes still.
It’s a photo. Mackie, from the neck down, in a black bra and underwear, taken in what looks like a bathroom mirror.
Mackie
I have a surprise for you
equipment storage hallway. Past the lounge, left at the end. The door with the busted lock.
you have 10 minutes
I stare at my phone. My face is on fire.
Me
Mackie. I am sitting in a locker room full of my teammates.
Mackie
then stop sitting and start walking
Me
there’s a team meeting in 20 minutes
Mackie
PLENTY of time
9 minutes now
tick tock baby
I close my eyes for approximately four seconds pretending I’m going to make the responsible decision before I head for the shower. I take the fastest shower of my life, pull on joggers and a t-shirt, and walk out of the locker room in the opposite direction of the meeting room.
The equipment storage hallway is on the other side of the building from the locker rooms. It’s empty right now because practice just ended and everyone is either showering or heading to the meeting.
I can hear my footsteps on the concrete floor and I can hear my heartbeat in my ears and I’m walking fast enough that if someone saw me they’d think I was late for something, which technically I am.
I push open the door to the closet and she’s there.
Leaning against a shelf of folded towels in jeans and a zip-up hoodie with her hair down and she’s grinning at me like she’s been waiting for this all day, like she planned this the way she plans everything, with strategy and timing and zero hesitation.
She’s got the hoodie unzipped low enough that I can see the edge of her bra.
“Hi.” She’s bouncing on her toes. “Close the door.”
“Mackie, this is insanity. What are you doing here?”
“I had a meeting with the media department.” She grabs the front of my shirt. “Zach. They offered me an internship.”
“What?”
“The playoff internship. I’m going to shadow their reporters during home games. I get a press credential. It’s actually happening!”
I want to tell her that I’ve never been prouder of another person in my life but I don’t get the chance because she pulls me down and kisses me.
Her back hits the shelf behind her. Her hands are under my shirt and Jack is somewhere in this building and I’ve got fifteen more minutes before the meeting.
She hooks her fingers into the waistband of my joggers and pulls my hips against hers and I groan into her mouth, the sound bouncing off the concrete walls.
I should be thinking about the hundred ways this ends badly but all I’m thinking about is the way she tastes and the heat of her skin under the hoodie where my hand has found its way to her bare stomach.
“We can’t do this here,” I say against her lips, and even I can hear how unconvincing it sounds.
“We’re doing it here.” She bites my bottom lip and tugs. “That’s the fun part.”
“The fun part is the risk of someone walking in?”
“The fun part is you not being able to say no to me even when you know you should.”
She’s right. I can’t. She unbuttons her jeans and shoves them down her hips and I should stop her but I don’t because my hands are already helping, pulling them down far enough.
Her mouth is on my neck, sucking hard on the skin just below my jaw and I can feel her smiling against me while she does it.
I know she’s leaving a mark and I should care about that but I can’t because she’s wrapping her legs around the outside of mine and pulling me closer and I want her so badly I can’t see straight.
“Mackie, I don’t have a condom.”
“I told you I’m on birth control.” She pulls back far enough to look at me. Her eyes are bright and certain and her voice doesn’t waver. “If you’re okay with it, I am.”
I look at her half-undressed in an equipment closet inside my workplace and I have thirteen minutes before a mandatory team meeting. She just got the news she’s been working toward for years and she wants to celebrate it here, with me, like this.
Fuck it.
I push my joggers down far enough and lift her onto the edge of the shelf. She gasps at the cold metal against her thighs and wraps her arms around my neck. Then I’m inside her with nothing between us and I stop breathing.
She’s so warm. So close. Every part of her. I can feel everything.
“Zach.” Her voice is barely there. “Oh my god.”
“Yeah.” I can’t think of a single other word. My forehead is on her shoulder and I’m holding still through what feels like an act of god. She’s breathing hard against my ear and her fingers are digging into the back of my neck, every nerve in my body is lit up in a way that’s never happened before.
She shifts her hips. Just slightly. Testing.
“Don’t move yet. Please. Give me a second.”
“We have ten minutes.”
“Mackie. I’m serious. If you move right now this is going to last about ten seconds.”
She giggles against my neck and tilts her hips up, clenching around me. Her nails dig into my shoulders through my t-shirt and her mouth finds my neck again, and every thrust is this overwhelming full-contact thing that makes the back of my brain go white.
I can hear a distant voice in the hallway and pause my movement.
“Don’t stop,” she whispers, pulling my hips closer. “Don’t you dare.”
I don’t stop. If anything the sound of those footsteps makes my grip on her hips tighten and I don’t understand that about myself yet, I don’t understand why the danger makes everything more vivid but it does and I can feel it in both of us, an edge that has nothing to do with the sex and everything to do with where we are.
She pulls back from my neck and looks at me and her hand comes up to my face and her thumb traces along my jaw and I slow down without deciding to.
I press my forehead against hers and my hips slow to something that barely counts as moving and she lets out a shaky exhale and holds my face with both hands.
“I got the internship,” she whispers again, and her voice cracks on it this time, and I realize the bravado and the racy text and the ambush in the storage closet were all Mackie’s way of processing something that scared her as much as it thrilled her, because she doesn’t know how to sit still with good news, she has to burn through it.
“I’m so proud of you, Mack.”
“Don’t make me cry right now, I swear to god—”