Chapter 4
THEO
"BLINKER."
"The blinker is a spoiler. Nobody needs to know my plans."
"That Kia needs to know your plans."
I check my mirror. The beige Kia that has been disrespecting me personally since the last exit speeds up to close the lane I'm about to take.
"Oh, you want to play?" I floor it. "EAT MY ENTIRE ASS, BEIGE DEMON."
Patrick's right hand closes around the door handle.
I slide into the lane with plenty of room. Several feet. Two, minimum. A luxurious amount of feet if you aren’t a coward.
"Why did I let you drive?"
"Because you're answering campaign emails." I point at his phone. "Also, daylight loophole."
He finally looks up. "What daylight loophole?"
"You banned me from driving after dark."
"I banned you from driving my car."
"You specifically said after dark."
"That was before the Roundabout Incident."
“You keep calling it an incident like the city didn’t put four exits in one circle and expect people not to choose emotionally.”
He stares at me.
I stare at the road, because one of us has to.
The thing with Patrick is fresh, two weeks maybe, and already the best sex of my life, which is inconvenient.
Great sex is supposed to happen with men who own decorative swords and think sheets wash themselves.
It's not supposed to come from a man who keeps an emergency charger in his glove box and once paused halfway through blowing me to ask if my knee was okay.
I’m not attached. I just spend most nights at his place, know his Wi-Fi password, and bought him the good coffee because watching him drink the bad kind was ruining my mornings.
Unrelated behaviors.
I'm not going to ruin this by asking what we are.
Asking would destroy the arrangement. Questions lead directly to some man pulling on his pants and telling me I’m fun.
I know I’m fun.
People adore fun right up until fun takes up closet space or gets too loud at breakfast. Then comes the careful voice. The one that says, You’re a lot, Theo.
Sometimes they add in a good way before leaving.
Patrick has never asked me to lower my volume. He simply looks at me until I run out of momentum, then feeds me.
And then, there’s the Wall Problem.
I have thought about him standing in that doorway approximately nine hundred times since it happened. Nine hundred and one now, because traffic slows and leaves my brain unsupervised for four seconds.
Does that bother me?
Yes.
It bothers me that I didn't know, because I would've put on a better show.
That part I haven't told Patrick. I'm also pretty sure Patrick hasn't stopped thinking about too, although we haven’t discussed that either.
Look at us. Communicating.
Patrick goes back to his email. "The shelter needs updated headshots."
"They can have my roster photo."
"They want one without the black eye."
"Oh, well. That eliminates the whole season."
"And with a shirt."
"Now they're discriminating."
His thumb pauses over the screen. "I'm writing that you'll comply."
"Tell them my body is central to the campaign."
"Your body is central to several complaints."
"Jealousy is ugly on you."
The corner of his mouth twitches, and I want to take a picture of that almost-smile and stare at it until I die.
Not attached, though.
***
THE SHELTER SITS on a narrow Chicago side street, weathered brick, a hand-painted PUCKS FOR PAWS sign over the door, and exactly one open parking spot out front.
Patrick points at it. "No."
"I can fit."
"You cannot."
"Watch me."
"That sentence has never once ended well."
I pull past the space and begin the maneuver. The parking sensors start screaming immediately, which is rude, because I haven't done anything yet. "They're very dramatic."
"You're six inches from that Subaru."
"Six inches is plenty."
Patrick closes his eyes.
I reverse. The beeping accelerates. I crank the wheel, pull forward, reverse again, and feel the back tire kiss the curb. Gently. Romantically, even.
Patrick’s eyes snap open. "You hit it."
"The curb is fine."
"The curb isn't what worries me."
I straighten us out and put the car in park, only slightly diagonal, which is a style choice. "See? Perfect."
"We're four feet from the sidewalk."
“That gives pedestrians room to admire the car.”
He gets out, walks around the front, studies my work for a long moment, then looks at me over the roof.
Apparently, he has notes.
***
THE PLACE SMELLS of dog biscuits and bleach.
Scuffed linoleum, a bulletin board buried under adoption photos, donation jars on every flat surface, muffled barking from a kennel wing somewhere in the back.
Folding tables are set up under a banner that says BORDER BATTLE FOR PAWS in two different handwritings, as if two people fought over the marker.
"What the puuuuck!"
We’re two steps inside when a large parrot leans off its perch behind the reception desk and screams directly into my soul.
The parrot stares at me. I stare back.
"Oh. You're perfect," I whisper.
"What the puuuuck!"
"Exactly."
A tiny woman with silver hair hurries out from behind the desk. "Hendrix, manners!"
"Kiss kiss!"
"No harassing strangers."
"I'm not a stranger." I offer the bird my hand for inspection. "I'm Theo."
Patrick catches my wrist. "Don't."
"He likes me."
"He likes earrings. You're wearing two."
I cover my left ear. "You let me walk into danger."
"I'm reconsidering the rescue."
The woman hugs me without warning. She's tiny, but she commits with her whole body. "Theo! I'm Celeste, but everyone calls me Mama Paws. You're far too thin."
"I’m— I'm an athlete."
"Exactly. All cardio, no sense. There are cookies in the office."
I look at Patrick over her shoulder. "I live here now."
She pats my cheek and turns to Patrick. "And you must be Patrick Gh—"
She pauses.
Patrick waits with neutral expression. He's good at this part. He's had thirty years of practice.
"Patrick," she finishes.
"Perfect."
A robotic voice breaks out from the folding tables: "Word of the day. Nemesis."
I turn to where a small group of Chicago Wolves are milling around. Petrov, the Russian Wolf, studies his phone screen for a moment, then lifts his gaze, looks around until his eyes stop at me, and points. “You are nemesis. No offense.”
"Moreau!" And there's Becker, strolling over with something behind his back.
Becker and I have chirped each other across three seasons of Wolves–Vipers games.
He once spent an entire power play calling me travel-sized, so I scored and blew him a kiss on the way past the bench.
We're basically pen pals. “They sent the little one.”
I smile. “They sent you too, apparently. Budget cuts?”
He ignores it. "There's this shelter tradition for visiting Vipers." He produces a plastic dog cone with VISITING LOSER written across it in red marker.
Mama Paws opens her mouth to object, but I don’t give her the chance. I take the cone. "Absolutely."
Becker blinks. He planned for resistance. First mistake.
I strap the cone around my neck, climb onto a folding chair, and hold an empty donation jar above my head. "Attention, Chicago criminals! For every ten dollars in this jar, Becker performs one push-up and gives one sincere compliment about the Milwaukee Vipers!"
Becker's grin dies. "Wait."
Petrov arrives first and feeds a twenty into the jar.
“Traitor,” Becker says.
Petrov shrugs. “Is for charity.”
"Two push-ups," I announce. "Two compliments."
“That isn’t the tradition.”
"It is now."
Ace, Groover, and two shelter volunteers start digging out cash.
Becker points at Patrick. "Control your winger."
Patrick has already located the coffee. "No."
Within three minutes, Becker owes forty-seven push-ups, and has admitted, on the record, that our power play is "occasionally competent", our alternate jerseys are “not completely hideous,” and that Patrick's glove hand is "fine, whatever, statistically elite, fuck all of you."
I ring the donation jar against the table every time his form slips.
At push-up forty he looks up at me from the floor, sweaty and betrayed. "I've never been on this side of it."
I crouch down, cone bumping his forehead. "Growth is painful."
Behind me, the front door opens.
Cold air.
Then, Wall, ducking under the frame.
He's in a black hoodie and carrying a laptop and a hefty folder, and he is somehow even bigger without the pads.
"Sorry I'm late." He holds the folder up toward Mama Paws. "I was waiting on the printer."
The printer. He printed things.
And then there are the hands. I knew he had big hands, every goalie does, but his are just…absurd. The folder looks travel-sized in his grip. One of those hands could cover my entire face, which is not a thought I'm having, because I'm here for charity.
Very aggressively for charity.
***
THE MEETING STARTS twelve minutes late because Hendrix steals a pen and Mama Paws refuses to begin until everyone has taken a cookie.
“Drop it,” Patrick tells Hendrix.
“Kiss kiss!”
“I don’t negotiate with birds.”
Hendrix bites the pen clip.
“I think you have lost this one,” I say.
He gives up on the pen and takes the seat beside me.
Wall connects his laptop to the shelter’s projector. A spreadsheet fills the white wall above the donation bins. Printed copies wait at every seat around the folding tables.
I flip through mine.
Campaign dates. Estimated costs. Volunteer numbers.
The final page is titled CONTINGENCIES and includes, I shit you not, a plan for "weather events." This man printed backup plans for the sky.
“I sent this yesterday,” Wall says.
Patrick examines his copy. “I reviewed it.”
Wall pauses with one hand on his laptop. “And?”
“I made corrections.”
Patrick reaches for the projector cable.
Wall doesn’t release it.
For several seconds, they hold opposite ends while everyone watches.
Then Wall lets go.
Patrick connects his laptop. A revised timeline replaces Wall’s version. Several cells have comments attached, and the launch date is now highlighted in yellow.
Wall sits back slowly.
This is already better than television.
"Your launch schedule doesn't allow enough lead time for sponsor approvals," Patrick says, advancing a slide.