Chapter 29
SEE ME IN MY OFFICE
CORBIN
Morning skate just hits different. Every shot feels loose and relaxed. Every sprint down the ice is powerful. Every pass lands.
I don’t want to rest on the laurels of practice, though, since the devil is in the details, and the details are in the game.
As I finish my pre-game warm-up with a sweaty, intense session on the bike, where I log nine miles in twenty-two minutes, a text pings on my phone.
Mabel: Alexa, send a note to Corbin letting him know I sold out of orange habanero cookies and his sweet and salties, the gluten-free kind.
Alexa, set a reminder to place an order for more gluten-free pretzels for the sweet and salties.
Everyone is asking for them! Alexa, tell Corbin I didn’t think of his dick once today.
Just kidding, Alexa, don’t tell him that. Okay, customers coming. More later.
I crack up, but I can’t resist replying in kind.
Corbin: Alexa, tell Mabel I approve of the above message.
Mabel: Are you kidding me, self???? OK, gotta go.
As I ride, I place an order for pretzels from the local grocery store in Cozy Valley, asking for a rush delivery.
The app tells me they’ll be there in twenty minutes.
Perfect. Not sure if she’ll be able to bake more today, but at least she’ll have what she needs for tomorrow.
I’ve been trying to help out with inventory and placing orders, since I’m good at that stuff, and it’s easy enough to do on the go.
I send a message letting her know to be on the lookout.
Then, I hop off the bike, head to the locker room, and put on my uniform, hoping that easy feeling lasts through the game.
And it does.
I score in the first five minutes, flicking a wrist shot right through the Miami goalie’s legs. He curses, and that makes the goal even better.
Miller gives a fist pump from all the way on the other side of the rink, while guarding our net.
Riggs claps me on the back.
Lake knocks the back of my helmet. “Fuck, yes.”
When it’s time for a line change a minute later, I jump over the boards, revved up and full of energy from the goal. I should be exhausted after working all day yesterday, but my head’s clear. No distractions pulling me in different directions. Just hockey. Just this moment. It’s so damn welcome.
It’s tempting to ease up, thanks to the early goal. But nope. I watch every play from the bench when it’s not my shift, tracking the Miami defenders and their tactics, trading my observations with teammates on the bench, then passing pucks to them on the ice.
When the game ends, we’ve put another W on the board. It’s one game, but it’s better than the last one I played, and in this business, I’ll take that. Maybe code-switching is what I need in…everything. Keep work separate from personal, hockey separate from the bakery.
Yeah, that sounds like a good plan. One I’ll have to use when I return to the bakery next week after a short road trip. And one I’ll need when I teach Mabel how to ace pickleball.
The Foxes hit up Dallas, absolutely destroying the team there, and not gonna lie—it’s satisfying to pummel them. Next up is Seattle, and we win there, too, thanks to an assist from me.
When I head into the visitors’ locker room at the end of the game, I yank off my helmet with a newfound lightness in my limbs, a veritable fucking spring in my step.
Miller strides in next, clunking around triumphantly in his leg pads. “Dude, are you thinking what I’m thinking?” His eyes are bright, his smile is wide.
Lake follows, giving him a side-eye and scoffing, “Unless you’re thinking about the badass owl that landed in my bird sanctuary last week and is making a nest, then no, you and I are not the same.”
Miller ruffles Lake’s messy hair. “Your brain is a funny place.”
“Yours is,” Lake says to him with a grunt.
But Miller is undeterred. “I’m thinking, we had kind of an uneven November there. Then we won four in a fucking row in December. And what changed this month, boys? What fucking changed?”
He mimes a drumroll. Riggs grins slyly. Lake does too. Ivan laughs knowingly.
“We ate at Knighty Night’s bakery,” Riggs puts in.
Miller mimes slamming a buzzer. “Riggs is always right.”
“Say that again. I need to record it for posterity,” Riggs says as he unlaces his skates.
Miller clears his throat. “I vote that Knighty Night needs to bring us monkey chow or cowboy cookies before every game. That’s what worked.”
The names are so ridiculous, they’re funny. “Monkey chow for you. Done,” I say.
Ivan taps his stick on the floor over and over, chanting, “Streak, streak, streak.”
We all get in on it, and when the repetition ends, Lake says, “But the logic adds up.”
“You are such a superstitious motherfucker,” I say. Even now, the winger is taking off his gear in the same order he does after every game. “Seriously, is there anything you guys won’t do for a free meal?”
Lake seems to consider this, staring at the ceiling, then shaking his head. “Nope.”
I’m feeling generous. Call it the code-switching effect. “Fine. Tomorrow night you can all come over for sandwiches and cornhole.”
Miller pumps a fist. “Dude. Your sandwiches are legend.”
I toss my shoulder pads into the stall. “I know.”
“Cosign,” Riggs says from his stall.
I point at him like a cocky fighter pilot in a slick film. “Thanks, Fanboy.”
He flips me the bird, but I’m pretty sure he digs the new name. So do my other teammates since the new chant becomes, “Fanboy, Fanboy, Fanboy.”
That amuses me, and I’m pretty sure it delights Riggs too.
When it ends, Miller calls out from the other side of the locker room. “Wait. Is Lake coming too? To the—”
“The single dad club,” Lake says. “And yes, you assholes, this cat dad’ll be there. Since…well, food.”
I shower and get dressed, the good mood following me.
Tomorrow night, I can set up the garage for Charlotte and some friends to watch a movie while the guys hang out in the yard with the cornhole board and some grub.
The first week at the bakery went well. We hired a part-time employee to help us out—Zakiya’s little sister, Aisha, was looking for a job, and we needed the help.
And…Mabel and I stuck to our no-touching plan.
Fine, it was easy to do since I wasn’t there. But I won’t let details get me down.
We head to the team jet and make the quick trip back to San Francisco, where the bus takes us to the arena.
After I grab a hoodie I left in my locker, I head toward my car, phone in hand, ready to go home and crash.
Mabel just sent me a text—a pic of a cupcake with a candle on top.
Ode to the firehouse—our special for tomorrow, the caption says, and I smile. She’s good.
But as I’m walking down the corridor toward the players’ lot, Theo swings around the corner, dark eyes lasered in on me.
That’s odd. But maybe he’s stressed from all the late nights he’s putting in.
He didn’t travel with us on this trip, though that’s not unusual—he doesn’t go to all the away games.
“You’re working late,” I say by way of greeting.
He doesn’t offer a fist bump, a clap on the back, or a “good game.” Instead, he points to the doors leading up to the second floor. “You. Me. Now.”
“Your office?” I ask.
A crisp nod is his answer.
That’s not good. I gulp but try not to show a shred of emotion. I follow my best friend up the stairs, and the click of his wingtips on the floor is ominous.
When we reach his office, he shuts the door with a decisive snap, and my gut twists. I tell myself to stay stoic. He has to have found out I’ve been messing around with his sister. Not once, not twice, not even three times.
My head swims with the realization that it’s been four times. For fuck’s sake, I’m addicted.
But more so, I’m a liar. I’ve been lying to my best friend about all these goddamn feelings for his sister.
These emotions that claw at me. I haven’t been forthright with him.
But how can I be forthright when Mabel and I aren’t a thing?
Not really. What’s done is done, and the guilt over the lies of omission is mine to live with, and mine alone.
“I heard something, Corbin,” he says, jaw tight, tone sharp.
“What did you hear?” I ask, as nonchalantly as I can while dread swirls in me.
“I heard from my former first-grade teacher, who’s in the knitting club, who heard it from Zoe at the gym, who heard it from the barista at Rise and Grind, that you hooked up with my sister in the middle of the bakery.”
A laugh scrapes my throat because that is a serious game of small-town telephone. But still, the words hooked up hang heavily in the air.
I scramble for an excuse. Except, hold on.
The mental gymnastics he just went through tell me he doesn’t actually know what we did in the kitchen, so he doesn’t know I’ve lied to him.
Sure, he must know that I kissed his sister on opening night.
But I did it in front of Ronnie, Tiffany, and Brittany.
I stay on the facts—just the facts.
“What did the barista see?” I ask, keeping my cool.
He huffs. “You guys were kissing. She saw it, and it was in front of that fucking flying asshat from Webflix.”
Must have been Joni who started this somehow. She probably lingered outside out of view. She probably saw that kiss.
Think fast. Think really fast. But then it hits me—I have to do what I do on the ice. Pivot and go with a new play. And that play just happens to be…the truth.
Or some of the truth.
“Dude,” I say in a conspiratorial tone. “Ronnie and his friends were coming at Mabel and saying stuff like, ‘Oh, you’re so sad about your ex talking shit about you on Webflix.’ So I claimed we were together.
I wanted to shut down the idea that she opened the bakery because she was sad over Dax.
I wanted to mess with them, change the narrative, as they say. ”
Theo pauses, his eyes narrowed, but he’s clearly considering my take. “You did it to fuck with Ronnie?”
I see the spark in his eye, and I know where this is going. “Yes, your enemy.”
Sometimes I soothe him with monkey bread. Sometimes I soothe him by distracting him with his other enemies. “And Webflix, by extension, since Ronnie’s show is with them,” he adds, like he should be twirling a mustache in an old-timey movie.
I keep going, so he knows I’m on the good side. “I had to sell it, so I kissed her in front of them. They made it seem like she was desperate over Dax, and fuck that.”
“Fuck Dax,” Theo echoes. After a few seconds, he unleashes a huge sigh of relief. “You are a motherfucking genius. I knew it. You are the playmaker.”
I feel a little oily taking that compliment from him, even though I know this lie of omission is better than the truth. Since there won’t be a fifth time with Mabel.
“Exactly. And we want people to say good things about the bakery, so if this little charade helps, so be it.” Then, I tell him about the pickleball challenge, so he knows we’ll need to fake date for that.
“You’d better make sure she destroys them. If you have to fake-date your way through that, you need to do it.”
“I will,” I say, wishing I weren’t looking forward to spending time with Mabel on the court.
But I seriously am.