17. Erica
ERICA
Chapter playlist:
Diamonds — Rihanna
Ionly know Jeremiah’s team scored because the whole section jumps up screaming at once, and half a second later I’m on my feet too, screaming right along with them. Ha! As if I have the faintest idea what’s happening on the ice.
Jeremiah offered me two tickets so I could bring a friend. I came alone, because can you imagine if I’d brought Zoe? She’d have her face mashed against the glass, fogging it up with actual drool. One of us needs to maintain a shred of dignity. Might as well be me.
Now I think it’s the second period (out of who knows how many periods), and I’m watching large men in blue and large men in red crash into each other.
I am trying and failing to reverse-engineer the rules from context clues.
Blue jersey good. Whistle bad, usually. Sometimes the whistle is apparently fine, and everyone claps, and I clap too, a half beat behind, like I’m a tourist doing the wave.
I’ve given up tracking who has the puck. Instead, I watch the crowd. When the section around me rises, I rise. When they roar, I roar. It’s like pretending I know the words to “Benny and the Jets,” just mouthing along to whatever I think the lyrics are.
The man directly behind me has been cheering with his whole chest since the team filed onto the ice.
He’s three beers deep by my count, and when the goal horn blares, he throws both arms straight up like this is the most important thing to ever happen to the universe.
His beer is liberated into the air. It lands on me.
Someone please give this man a sippy cup because he has no concept of how liquids work.
Now I have half his beer in my hair and down the back of my neck and it’s dripping in a slow, sticky line down my spine.
Toddler man doesn’t notice. He’s still roaring. Everyone is still roaring. And I’m standing in a puddle of Bud Light, screaming “WOOO” with the rest of them, because what else am I supposed to do? File a complaint?
This is the most action my hair has seen all week, I think, and keep clapping.
By the time the horn sounds for real, the final one (maybe), I’ve stopped even pretending to follow along. Jeremiah’s team wins.
My whole section is hugging and at least one man is crying into a foam finger.
A stranger hugs me and doesn’t seem to notice the beer smell on me.
Then the guys in red leave the ice, and I think it’s over, but then I have to sit through some kind of ceremony where they announce the three stars of the game.
Jeremiah’s name isn’t called, but one of the guys had green hair, so that’s fun.
Finally, the stadium starts to clear out, and I go to the place Jeremiah told me to go to meet him after he’s done with all the things hockey players do after they win a game.
I’m picturing champagne in the locker room and hopefully a shower.
Not that I’m actually picturing Jeremiah in the shower, just that I imagine he would want to wash the sweat off.
Kind of how I want to wash the beer out of my hair.
There’s a door marked FAMILY & FRIENDS, where a woman with a lanyard checks my name off a list and waves me toward a lounge.
One look through the doorway and I know I’m not going in.
Couches full of women I don’t know, huddled over somebody’s phone, a few of them in (and I’m not making this up) blinged-out red, white, and blue jackets.
I decide to stand in the hallway, so I find a stretch of wall a few feet down the corridor and lean against it instead. Whatever Jeremiah has to do while I wait for him eats up the better part of forty-five minutes.
When he finally emerges, Jeremiah is showered, hair still damp and pushed back, in a soft gray team hoodie and joggers, and has his feet shoved into slides.
I suppose actual shoes were too much to ask of him tonight.
He spots me against the wall and his whole face lights up, and he makes a determined beeline toward me.
He pulls me against him like I’m about to fly away, and kisses me, his lips crashing onto mine like one of those WW2 reunions. Then he squeezes his arms around me and spins me in a sweeping circle.
Oh, I think, somewhere very far away. Right. This is a thing we do now.
When he puts me down, he’s grinning like a man who just won something bigger than a hockey game.
“You’re my lucky charm,” he says. “I need you at all my games from now on.”
“Uh…How many more games are we talking?”
“All of them.” He says it like it’s obvious, like I asked what time it is. “Until I retire. And then some.”
And then some?
“You could sit with the Wags, so you don’t have to be alone,” he offers, steering me toward the exit with a hand at the small of my back.
“What on earth is a Wag?”
“Wives and girlfriends of the players.”
I snort. “I am neither of those things.”
“It’s early days.” He says it breezily, as if I wouldn’t notice. “In the meantime, I could introduce you to some of the women.”
“Are you talking about those ladies wearing the bedazzled jackets like they’re about to break into ‘Summer Nights’ at the lunch table?”
“You could be Sandy.”
“I’m more of a Rizzo.”
“I can see that.”
“Besides.” I tug my beer-soaked collar away from my neck. “I’ve always liked the T-Birds jackets better. You couldn’t pay me to wear one of those glittery things.”
“Really? After that whole Build-A-Bear ensemble?”
“Hey. You said I looked like an Arnold Palmer girl.”
“Robert Palmer…”
“Robert Palmer girl.”
He laughs, low, and bumps my shoulder with his. “I’m just teasing. I don’t want to push you into joining a sparkly girl gang if you don’t want to.”
“Good. Because I’m a terrible singer.”
“You’re my leading lady.” He says it so simply it nearly knocks the wind out of me. “We don’t have to put a label on this yet. I could just introduce you as my… my…”
“My Sharona?”
He blinks. “Huh?”
“How about lover?” I say, testing the way it feels. “How do you say ‘lover’ in Spanish?”
“Amante.”
“Ohh, I like that. Amaaaannnte.” I draw it out, telenovela-announcer style, dramatic enough to earn its own theme music.
He laughs, but he’s already shaking his head. “No. You can’t say that.”
“Why not?”
“That’s not what this is. That implies a fling.” His voice drops half a register, serious under the joke. “And I don’t do flings.”
I pout.
“How about we figure it out over dinner?” he says. “I’m starved, and there’s a Mexican place I want to try so I can silently judge their salsa.”
“Why would you want to silently judge their salsa?”
“Because I’m Mexican, dear. That’s my duty.”
“That’s a good one. Dear. I can be your dear.”
“So when I introduce you, I’d say, this is Erica. My dear.” He pauses, delighted with himself. “A female deer.” Then he catches himself, wincing. “Sorry. I watched way too much The Sound of Music growing up. My nanny loved it.”
“How do you say it in Spanish?”
“Querida.” He tilts his head. “But that one reads more like something you’d call a daughter.”
I let that sit for a beat, and somewhere underneath the joke a small, quiet, unhelpful thought surfaces. Girlfriend. His girlfriend. Nobody is ever going to measure up to this again, and you know it, and you’re going to end up alone with a lot of cats who don’t even like you very much.
I just shrug. “You’re right. We don’t have to put a label on it.”
We’re a few steps down the hall when a voice cuts through the corridor behind us.
“There he is. Primo!”
Two men are already crossing toward us. Both have Jeremiah’s same dark, easy coloring, but that’s where the resemblance splits: one’s built lean and fit, the other looks like he splits firewood for a hobby.
Jeremiah’s whole face breaks open with surprise and he pulls each of them in for a quick bro hug.
“No way.” Jeremiah holds them both at arm’s length, grinning like he still doesn’t believe it. “What are you two doing here?”
He turns, an arm sliding around my waist. “This is Erica.”
No label. No My Sharona. No Dear, a female dear. It’s better this way.
“Erica, these are my cousins. Nacho and Dante.”
Dante is the one built like a lumberjack. I shake both men’s hands. Very demure.
“Wow.” Jeremiah shakes his head. “So good to see you guys.”
“Tickets for this thing were harder to get than the FIFA World Cup,” Dante says.
“I could’ve gotten you tickets.”
“Nah. We didn’t get too much of a nosebleed.“
“How’s Olive?”
“Due any day now.” Nacho says it with the pride only an expectant father could. I suppose this Olive person is his wife. Hmm. I think I’ll order nachos with olives at the restaurant.
“She wanted to come but couldn’t fly. I’m here one night, tops. I didn’t want to leave her too long.”
“Erica and I were just about to go eat,” Jeremiah says.
“We plan on silently judging the salsa,” I say.
“Yes!” Nacho throws his fist in the air, not unlike Toddler Beer Man. Sans beer. “Judging salsa is my favorite pastime.”
“Oh no. Here we go.” Dante’s already shaking his head. “He doesn’t stop at the salsa. He judges the whole restaurant. Then he makes fun of everything.”
“Nacho’s a chef,” Jeremiah explains. “He owns eight restaurants.”
“Nice!”
“He’s insufferable at restaurants,” Dante says, grinning like it’s the best thing about him.
“If you can’t be insufferable at restaurants, what’s the point of living? I always say.”
Nacho points at me like I’ve just confirmed something he already suspected. “She’s a keeper.”
I’ll allow it.
Luna Roja is a short walk from the arena, tucked between a shuttered dry cleaner and a bar with a line already snaking out the door.
The cousins fall into step around Jeremiah like they’ve done it a thousand times, and I can see the family resemblance, not just in their looks but also the way they carry themselves.
They banter, easy and loud, picking up some old inside joke about a goat. The cousins include me in the crazy conversation, just dropping me in as if I was there that day. No small talk. No asking what I do for a living. It’s refreshing.
“What do you recommend?” Nacho asks me once we’re seated, already frowning at the menu.