Ella
I've spent my whole life in hockey arenas, but always in the general seats.
The cheap ones behind a pillar, the nosebleeds my dad scored through a booster club, the standing-room spots where I did homework on my knees while Jason's team warmed up below.
I never sat with the families. I was adjacent to the families.
Background noise in someone else's experience.
Tonight I'm in the third row behind the glass with a HOUSER jersey and the other guys’ partners all around me. Cam and Essence are there, and Emerson Stag has a baby strapped to her chest, wearing tiny little headphones to block the incredible noise from the crowd and the speakers.
When the announcer calls Howie Houser’s name, I feel it in my sternum. My heart stutters each time the puck drops. Cam drops a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “It gets easier,” he says, gesturing at the ice. “But I thought you’d be used to it with your brother and all.”
I bite my lip, wondering how to explain that I somehow care a lot more about the man that I love getting injured. There’s no way to verbalize that yet, so I just squeeze his hand each time a Fury player collides with the glass.
I watch a Columbus forward drive Jason into the boards, and I realize I’ve barely watched him play since he went pro.
It’s different now, with my education on the human body and my experience with all the damage it can endure.
I see the angle of impact on my brother’s shoulder, and I calculate a rotator cuff strain and possible AC joint separation, and my hands grip the armrest.
"You okay?" Cam asks.
"Fine." But it’s a total lie.
Bernard's first shift is forty-five seconds long. He skates hard, cycles the puck, takes a clean hit along the wall, and comes off for a line change. I don't breathe until he's on the bench.
Essence squeezes my arm again. "You learn to trust the pads."
"I've seen what the pads don't cover."
She laughs. "Fair. But your man is tough."
My man. I watch Bernard on the bench, drinking water, listening to Coach, and I think: my man. The words fit in a way I didn't expect.
Jason wins a faceoff in the second period, and I surprise myself by cheering. Not the obligatory clap of a sister who was dragged along — a real, involuntary shout that makes Cam look at me with raised eyebrows.
I've spent twenty-three years resenting my brother's sport for consuming every resource my family had.
But watching Jason now, seeing his speed, his instinct, the way he reads the ice, I realize he's good at this.
And being proud of him doesn't diminish me the way I always thought it would. There's room for both.
Then Bernard hops over the boards for a fresh shift, and I forget about my brother entirely.
My boyfriend scores a freaking goal, and suddenly I’m screaming like a deranged fan, both fists in the air. I find myself wishing I was out there in the pile of guys congratulating him, but then he's skating toward our section and looking up. For me, I realize.
Our eyes meet through the glass, and I feel a swell of pride, connection, and contentment. I point at him and press my hand to my heart to convey what I’m feeling.
He presses his glove to his.
The arena roars around us, but I don’t notice. I’m basking in the wonder of choosing this place, this man, this life. This isn’t something secondhand or the scraps of someone else’s success. This is mine.
The Fury wins 4-2, and the crowd erupts. Cam grabs my hand, and he pulls me toward the corridor where the families wait for players to emerge from the locker room.
Other partners cluster in groups. Some with kids, some dressed up, all carrying the particular energy of folks who love men who do violent things for a living and then come home tender.
After an eternity, the locker room door opens, and the players filter out in postgame suits with wet hair and flushed faces. Spinner emerges first, scanning the hallway until he spots our group. “PAWs. Who's buying drinks?"
"Not me," Cam says. "I bought last time."
"That was November."
"And I'm still recovering." He shakes his head before finding his husband and pulling Banksy in for a kiss.
Jason comes out next, suit jacket over one arm, and gives me a nod that contains approximately forty percent less hostility than it would have a week ago. Progress.
Then Bernard walks through the door, and every coherent thought in my head evaporates.
He's in a charcoal suit with no tie, top button undone, hair still damp and curling at his temples.
His black eye has faded to a greenish yellow that somehow makes him look more attractive, not less.
He scans the hallway the way he scanned the airport baggage claim two months ago, except this time, when his eyes find me, he doesn't have to pretend he's not looking.
"There's my girl,” he says, and his arms open, and I walk into them and press my face against his chest and breathe in soap and ice and Bernard.
"Great game," I murmur into his shirt.
"Great jersey." His hand finds the nameplate on my back and traces it through the fabric. "Looks good on you."
Somewhere behind us, Spinner is organizing a group outing. A bar, apparently, where the whole team can celebrate the win. Cam and Essence are in. The Stag brothers are discussing logistics and babysitters. Jason is on his phone, presumably coordinating something that involves protein.
Bernard looks down at me. "You want to go out?"
I look up at him. "I want to go home."
His eyes darken. His hand tightens on my back. "Yeah?"
"Take me home, Bernard."
We say our goodbyes. Spinner calls us boring. Cam gives me a knowing look. Jason watches us leave and says nothing, which at this point qualifies as enthusiastic support.
The parking garage is cold and dim and mostly empty — the fans cleared out during the locker room wait, and the concrete cavern echoes with our footsteps. Bernard's G-Wagon is parked in the players' section, tucked in a far corner near the wall.
He clicks the key fob. The lights flash. I grab his hand and pull him past the driver's door, toward the back of the car.
He arches a brow. “Ella?”
“There are still things I haven’t tried, Bernard." I open the rear door. The leather interior glows in the overhead light, wide and deep and private. “Care to teach me about car sex finally?”
He stares at me. Then, in the back seat. Then, at the empty garage around us. "We're in public.”
"A very dark, very empty parking structure." I climb in and sit on the leather and look at him standing outside, jaw working, hands clenching, visibly losing the battle between responsibility and desire. I unzip my pants and wiggle them down around my ankles. “Are you coming?"
His eyes blaze as he leaps in, closing the door. The overhead light fades, and we’re in darkness with our feelings and our pulsing sexual tension.
"I love you," I tell him, pulling his face to mine. "I love you, and I'm so proud of you, and I want you right here."
"I love you too," he says against my mouth. "I love you, and this is a terrible idea, and I'm absolutely going to give you what you need.”
He maneuvers us so I’m on my knees on the back seat, with him behind me running his hands along his name on my spine, cupping my ass, sliding into me bare and hot and hard with his suit barely undone.
We laugh and fumble and thrust, grunting together in the dark, and it’s not graceful. It’s messy and perfect and so fucking hot I come twice before Bernard is pressing into me, groaning in release.
"I can't believe you talked me into car sex," he murmurs against my neck.
"I can't believe it took this long."
He pulls out, shaking his head, reaching for napkins from the console to wipe up the mess he left between my legs. “Ella, we've only been together for two months."
I let my knees fall open while he cleans me up, appreciating everything about this. “You’ve been an incredible tutor.”
He rears back to look at me, his face barely visible in the dark, lit only by the glow of the garage exit sign. "I'm not your tutor anymore."
"No." I trace his eyebrow scar with my thumb. "You're my person."
"Your big, slobbery St. Bernard."
"Who rescued me?"
"You rescued yourself, Ella." He kisses my forehead. "I just drove the car."
I pull him closer, and we stop talking for a while.
The G-Wagon's windows fog in the cold garage air, and the leather seat is warm beneath us, and I feel Bernard's hands and Bernard's mouth. This man who showed up every single time I needed him, and most of the times I said I didn’t, whispers to me how he wants to cut ties with his father.
How he met a new agent and learned the phrase ‘cease and desist.’
We lie tangled in the back seat, my head on his chest, his hand tracing slow circles on my hip. The parking garage is silent except for the tick of the cooling engine and the distant hum of the arena above, and my boyfriend telling me all his troubles and his plans to overcome them.
I settle against his chest and close my eyes and listen to his heartbeat and feel absolutely, completely, ridiculously whole.