Epilogue
April
LOGAN
We go into the fourth game in the playoffs down three to none in the series. Hamilton is clobbering us, and even if we manage to win tonight, it might be my last home game ever in Buffalo.
The GM isn’t happy with me.
Maybe he’d be happier if we continued our winning streak into the playoffs, but that’s not how the playoffs work. Four, five, six, seven games in a row against the same team—if they’re better, they’re going to win the series. Luck only gets you so far.
It got me all the way from New Year’s Eve to the end of April. It got me into the playoffs, and it got me a chance to play multiple games in a row in front of my wife and my sister and parents, against my future brother-in-law.
It got me an amazing four month long audition to every other team in the NHL, although I’m really only interested in signing with Los Angeles. Anaheim would be all right, too, although the commute will be a bitch.
Better than flying across the country every time I’m worried about my wife, though.
As we finish dressing, I take a second to look around at my teammates. We don’t always agree about life or politics or whether our coach is a fucking asshole. But we’ve played some very good hockey together.
“All right boys.” I grab a marker and write $10,000 on the board. “Let’s make them welcome us back to their barn for game five.”
The dressing room door swings open and my dad walks in. He takes one look at the pledge I’ve put up and nods firmly. “All right.”
“What are you doing here?”
He waves the lineup card at me.
My entire life has been constructed around moments like this.
The brotherhood of the team, the mentorship of older players.
My family and hockey are inextricably linked, and in pushing back against Wilson and driving him to a leave of absence, I created fractures both seen and unseen in the hockey world.
But not in my family.
I grin. “Yeah, boss, tell us who’s playing.”
My dad takes a deep breath and booms out our captain first. “At center, we’ve got Jonas.”
As one, my team all claps.
“At left wing, Lego.”
This clap gets a cheer with it, too.
“On the right…Coop.”
Clap.
“On D we’ve got Toth—” Clap. “And Cherry.” Clap. “And in net, let’s go Suovi!”
The clapping and cheering peaks for our back up goalie, who’s getting his first start of the series.
Jonas stands. “You heard him, let’s fucking go.”
With a clatter of sticks and helmets, we file into the wide hallway. Stevo and Jonas both stop to talk to their kids in the space where family waits, and while they’re doing that, my dad claps me on the shoulder.
“Leave it all on the ice, son.”
“I will.”
“I mean it, Logan.” His grip tightens, through my protective gear. He turns me to look at him. His brow wrinkles. “Leave it on the ice. Everything before tonight. When you step out there, be this new man that you are, fully. The best way to honor the fans here is to give them that.”
It’s a slow starting game. After three wins in a row, Hamilton is finally showing some fatigue, and the assistant coach running the lines tonight mixes up our forward group in ways that play to our strengths.
So they don’t score first, but we don’t score either.
It’s a frustrating pace. Every shift that I’m on, I’m pushing as hard as I can. As soon as I’m back on the bench, I’m bombarded by the sounds of fans.
They’re frustrated, too.
They’ve been watching us fail for fifteen years.
And for two thirds of that time, they’ve been waiting for me to do something miraculous. It’s a common narrative among sports writers that a player puts a team on his back and carries them across the finish line, but hockey doesn’t actually work that way. Not forever.
I pulled off a superhuman second half of the season, but I’ve fallen back to mortal numbers here in the playoffs.
“Lego, Stevo, Fish…”
The coaches send me out with the second line. We go over the boards and I snag a lucky turnover, whipping the puck off the boards and back to Stevo. He gets it to Fish who carries it into the zone and gets a good shot on goal, although it goes off the post.
Back on the bench, we get iPads shoved into our hands to watch the play again.
“Good job, boys. Little tighter in the slot and you’d have him.”
I yank my glove off to touch the screen. My ring glints under the bright arena lights. I watch the play three times, then shove the iPad back behind me, someone taking it over my shoulder before we shift down the bench, ready to go back out again.
This time, we don’t get lucky.
This time, we need to make our own luck, and it takes a few cycles in and out of the neutral zone before we can force Hamilton to make an error.
But when they do, we pounce. Fish carries it into the zone, Stevo and myself swooping behind, forcing their defense to cover us, leaving him open to take the exact same shot again.
This time, he scores.
The whole barn erupts in noise. Our goal song blares and Fish swoops past our bench, Stevo and me following, glove taps for everyone.
Coop takes the next face off at the center line while we catch our breath on the bench, and fifteen seconds after we break the seal, his line—usually my line—scores again.
Fuck. Yeah.
“All hail the blender,” I shout at our coaches.
Six days later, I touch down in LA only long enough to collect my wife and a travel bag full of bikinis and sex toys. Then we fly south to a resort in Cabo for the weekend.
“I’m so proud of you,” she keeps saying.
Which I know, and appreciate, but I’m not feeling it for myself just yet.
We took Hamilton all the way to seven games. Three home games. Two wins in front of the Buffalo fans.
And then a gutting loss that hurt more than I thought it could, both physically and emotionally.
But holding my wife in the crystal clear ocean is healing.
Her arms and legs are wrapped around me and I’ve got my hands under her ass, keeping her secure as we bob, the warm waves pushing us this way and that.
“This is perfect,” she whispers.
“Happy honeymoon.” I roll my cheek against hers.
“Are you happy?” She cranes her head back and bites her lip.
“God yes.” I brace her hips with one arm so I can use the other to free that worried flesh.
“Salty,” she whispers as my thumb touches her tongue.
“Sorry.” I kiss her, licking away the ocean. “I’m so happy. I’m sorry if I can’t shake off my regret. It’s just because I won’t get a chance to do it again for those fans.”
“But you will get another chance.”
“I know.” I press my forehead against hers. “The rollercoaster is new.”
“Maybe you should do something special for Buffalo before you move.”
“I’ve moved, Frankie. I’m not leaving you all summer long.” I drop my hand to her waist, where a firm little bump is starting to make itself known. I’m not missing a second of this summer of change with her.
“We can go back together. And you need to pack up your house. That can’t be all on your parents.”
“They love shit like that.”
She laughs. “We’ll argue about that later. But something for the fans…”
“Okay, I’m listening. Tell me.”
We float and we talk, and then when we have a couple of very good ideas, I pluck at the strings of her bathing suit bottoms.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting us refocused on the honeymoon part of this getaway.”
Her laugh pulls at the knot of tension I’ve been carrying since game seven.
I bury my face in her neck. Her skin is warm and salty, and I never want to let her go.
June
FRANKIE
Before we get into our alphabetical queue to enter the auditorium, Liz and Sloane and I take a we fucking did it group selfie. Then I find my spot in line. G for Granger.
The processional inside is surreal. Way more emotional for me than my undergraduate commencement.
I find Logan, or he finds me. He stands half a head above everyone around him, and his gaze is piercing in its single-focused intensity.
Everything about his grinning expression and puffed chest posture screams, that’s my wife.
I sure am.
The dean of the medical school gives some welcoming remarks, and then that’s followed by an invocation and a keynote address by a former Olympian that is really meaningful.
She talks about sacrifice and determination, and it makes me more emotional than I expected.
Four years of early mornings and late nights, of labs and lectures and clinical practice, all to get us to this point—which is just the start of the next stage of our training.
But we’re all doctors now.
When they call my name for the hooding ceremony, I stand on legs that aren’t quite steady. As I walk up to the stage, my brief bio is read out loud.
“Francesca Granger is staying at UCLA for her residency in emergency medicine, an area she has focused on throughout her medical degree.”
I catch Logan’s eye as I cross the stage.
One of my favorite professors drapes the hood over my shoulders, then I shake hands with the Dean before floating back to my seat.
The rest of the ceremony passes in a blur. When it’s finally over, we spin outside as a class, our friends and family following behind.
It takes no time at all for Logan to make his way to me.
“Dr. Granger,” he says, and there’s so much emotion in those two words that I nearly lose it.
“Mr. Granger,” I reply, walking into his open arms.
He lifts me off my feet, spinning me around. When he sets me down, he cups my face in his hands.
“I am so fucking proud of you,” he whispers. “You’re such a good girl.”
Around us, cameras flash and my classmates cheer. Sloane wolf-whistles.
He kisses my temple and keeps his voice low. “Later, I will show my incredibly smart, sexy, accomplished wife exactly how proud I am.”
“Yes, please.”
“We have dinner guests first.”
“Whose terrible idea was that?” I make a face at him.
He kisses my nose. “If we rush, I can go down on you before they follow us?”
“Yes. That. Please? Pretty please?”