17. Briggs
brIGGS
Christmas comes and goes in a ceasefire. Dad spends most of dinner asking when I plan to do something about Evie, and I spend most of it asking when he plans to stop test-driving the bathroom floor.
He’s got the foot in a walking boot, propped on two pillows he keeps rearranging. Every time I move to fix them, he tells me I’m doing it wrong, so I stop fixing them, and then he tells me I’ve given up on him.
By dessert, we’ve negotiated a mutual silence that holds through the dishes. Evie’s across town at Ray’s. She sends through a photo of a white plastic tree with half its lights out. I send her a picture back of my lopsided cookie.
It’s the smallest Christmas we’ve had since Mom died, just the two of us in a kitchen built for four. It hurts in a way I hadn’t expected. We grieve differently, the two of us.
While Dad likes to remember and reminisce, I prefer to pretend I can’t.
That doesn’t work as well on a holiday, when everything is already about the person who isn’t at the table. So I shut my mouth and let him recount stories of my brother.
We reminisce about how Ziggy used to swipe the expensive ornaments and arrange them like a trophy line across his dresser. How we’d spend every December fighting over who got to place the star, right up until the year we could manage the height without a kitchen chair.
It’s a shallow dive. We both carefully avoid the wreckage of the last two years.
Once Dad finally powers down for the night, I retreat to the pullout in my old bedroom. I lie there listening to the house settle, the last forty-eight hours running on a loop I can’t seem to kill.
Sleep is a lost cause; I manage maybe two broken hours before I give up at five, prep a pot of coffee, and sit on the sofa in the dark.
For hours, my brain keeps snagging on the same fragment of the other night—Evie’s hand fisting the fabric of the sheets and that sound she made when I got my mouth on her. Those few drawn-out seconds before the phone trilled where I actually thought: Vegas isn’t all that bad.
I haven’t been able to put the thought down since.
The rest of the morning passes in a series of repetitive motions—refilling the mug, checking a phone that has nothing to say, listening for the drag of the walking boot down the hallway.
“You awake?” Dad calls from his room around seven, catching me mid-thought.
“Yeah.”
“Come sit. Just for a minute.”
I oblige. He’s propped against the headboard with the bad foot elevated, the remote in his hand and the screen dark. I sink into the recliner in the corner.
We steer clear of Evie, the accident, and Zig entirely. Instead, he grills me on the season and whether Charlotte’s actually got the grit for a run this year. I give him real answers for once, skipping the deflections.
We sit in that quiet for a while, talking until I work up the will to go.
“You be good, son. Don’t be a stranger.”
“I’ll be back in a couple weeks.”
Dad’s eyebrows climb. “That quick?”
“We play the Aces then. Haven’t you been tracking the schedule?”
He snorts. “It’s on the fridge, smart-ass.”
“Then you already knew.”
Tampa at home on the twenty-eighth, Toronto on New Year’s Eve—it’s a stretch that leaves zero days off between now and January. Next month is the western swing—four cities in eleven days, with Vegas sitting right in the middle of the mess.
Which means this is the end of the line until then.
I pack the bag, hug him goodbye at the threshold, and load the rental one-handed while I argue with the shop about an early return. By the time I aim for the airport, the sun is up, but the streets are still empty enough to make the trip easy.
I’m at a gate coffee stand, watching my fourth cup of the morning go cold on the counter, when the phone lights up.
Evie
can you come by before the airport?
Fuck. I could’ve gone to her place. There was plenty of time to do the right thing.
But I knew exactly what would happen the second that door opened, and it wouldn’t have involved talking. I’d want her out of those clothes before I managed a full sentence. I’d lose the entire morning and one more scrap of resolve I can’t afford to spend.
The other night was good. It was really fucking good—enough that I caught myself doing the math on the flight schedule, wondering what it would take to push the return by twenty-four hours.
Then Dad fell, and I was twenty minutes away with my phone buried in a pile of clothes on her floor.
I can’t afford to lose my head like that because I know the invoice. I let a woman in once, all the way, and spent two years putting the pieces back together. I was out celebrating a win when Zig died.
Good things break.
With Evie, I’d put the armor aside to take what I wanted, and the ground gave out instantly. Every time I stop watching the horizon, something bad finds its way through the gate.
And if I turn this into something real and it fails later, it doesn’t stay between us. She still has to show up for her shift. My father is counting on that being simple.
I can’t be the reason his one steady thing gets complicated. More than that, I can’t promise I’ll be back in Vegas once he’s healthy enough to stand on his own.
Briggs
sorry. left early to drop off the rental
Three dots blink, then stall. My flight isn’t for three hours, but I needed to be clear of that house before I lost my nerve.
Evie
call me when you’re settled at the condo?
Briggs
we have a big stretch coming up. gonna be heads-down for a while
Evie
are you serious?
I know she must think I’m a coward and an asshole, and she’s not wrong. I’m pissed at myself, too, because I know it’s the wrong move. It’s just the only one I know how to make right now.
I power the phone down.
At the gate, I pull the headphones on and cue the airport playlist. It’s loud enough to replace thinking. I’m early—hours early, the gate mostly empty, a screen overhead cycling through cities I’m not going to.
Somewhere behind me, a guy says my name. Then again, “Hey, aren’t you—”
I pretend not to hear him.
Two nights later, we take down Tampa 3–2 at home, which buys the dressing room a decent mood. It also means fines court is back in session, because nothing makes this team pettier than points in the bank.
It’s a Kings institution—or a hockey one generally. Every room I’ve been in has had one, just different names for the same purpose. A kangaroo tribunal where guys pay petty cash for crimes against the room. The pool funds the rookie dinner at the end of the season.
We convene in the lounge on New Year’s Eve, after morning skate. Duval stands at the whiteboard in a judge’s robe he bought online, clutching a gavel that’s been confiscated twice already. Hartwell presides from the sofa as the appeals judge.
“First order of business.” Duval smacks the board. “Foster. On Tuesday, you posted your goal on Instagram with the caption ‘they’ll be teaching this one.’”
“They will,” Fozzy says.
“It went in off your shin pad.”
“Off my shin pad on purpose.” The room boos, and he stands to address it, arms spread. “You can’t fine me for confidence.”
“We can fine you for the caption,” Hartwell rules. “Forty bucks.”
Fozzy sits back down, muttering about a rigged judiciary. Duval moves down the list. Ekman gets twenty for wearing sandals in December. Kyo gets ten for calling Bellan “sir” in a media scrum, which Duval argues made the team sound like a military academy.
“I was being respectful,” Kyo protests.
“You were being a narc,” Fozzy says.
“That’s not what a narc is.”
“Appeal denied,” Hartwell says, without looking up.
Duval flips the board over, and the room groans. The back is reserved for the big one. “August Kessler. On the twenty-ninth, you told a reporter that this team, quote, ‘plays with more heart than any group I’ve ever been a part of, and honestly, I love these guys.’”
The lounge erupts. Augie stands and takes a bow.
“That’s a hundred dollars,” Duval says over the noise. “Public sincerity. Aggravated by the word love.”
“I’d say it again,” Augie announces. “I’ll say it right now. I love every man in this room.”
“Two hundred.”
He pulls his wallet and pays cash on the spot to a standing ovation. Kyo takes a picture of him holding the bills over his head, martyred and thrilled. Augie’s tie is crooked, and Fozzy is mid-boo in the frame.
Kyo airdrops it to half the room. I look at the picture in my palm and laugh, alone at my stall. My thumb starts moving before I can weigh the choice. This is the exact kind of weirdness Evie would like.
I send it.
The dots come up fast. My chest lifts on pure reflex, hopeful as a dog at a door.
Evie
don’t text me unless it’s about your dad’s care. thanks.
The lounge keeps going without me. Somebody’s contesting a fine, and Duval’s gavel is banging. I can’t get into it. It’s like watching a room through frosted glass.
Something goes cold and flat in my chest. My thumb is still hovering over a picture that suddenly isn’t funny anymore.
“Maxie.” Augie drops onto the bench, counting the cash he’s about to lose. “Settle a dispute. If I get fined for loving the boys, can I write it off as—”
“Ask someone else,” I snap.
“I’m asking you because you did taxes for—”
“Augie, I don’t care.” It comes out with an edge that doesn’t belong anywhere near a kangaroo court, loud enough that Kyo looks over. “Figure it out yourself for once.”
The bench goes still. Augie leans back and puts both palms up.
“Sorry,” I mutter, already standing. “Give me a minute.”
I push off and find somewhere without an audience. The bathroom is empty. I brace both hands on the sink and make myself look at the mirror, which I’ve been dodging since the airport.
I’m a dipshit. I decided for both of us that ending it clean was safer than trying, then delivered the news like I was canceling a dentist appointment. Now I’m surprised she took me at my word.
I run the cold water and hold my wrists under it. She’s told me plenty about herself—she doesn’t leave people hanging and she doesn’t do second chances. There won’t be a follow-up or a crack in the door I can talk through.
If I want back in, a picture won’t do it, and neither will a phone call she can just as easily decline.
When I come back out, Duval’s robe is off, and Hartwell has the gavel. Augie watches me cross the room, then slides over to make space on the bench without a word.
“Fine me,” I tell Duval.
He blinks. “For what?”
“Unsportsmanlike conduct.” I put a hundred dollars on the table. “Being an ass to the captain’s favorite center when he didn’t deserve it.”
Augie looks at the cash and grins. “Atta boy.”
Duval writes it in the ledger and bangs the gavel. I sit there with my hands on my knees, already running the schedule in my head. We’re in Vegas on the thirteenth. Two weeks until I’m back in that city.
It cost me a hundred bucks to square things with Augie. Whatever squaring things with Evie costs, it’s going to be higher than petty cash.