Chapter 2 #2
The game itself settled something in me I hadn't expected.
I'd come braced for noise and chaos and not much else, but watching Carter on the ice was something different entirely — he wasn't the biggest guy out there or the loudest, but he saw the whole ice in a way that seemed almost unfair, threading passes into spaces that hadn't existed half a second earlier.
Liam scored. The building came apart. But it was Carter who set it up, patient and unhurried even at full speed, and I caught myself leaning forward to watch him do it again.
A playmaker. I knew enough about hockey by then to recognize one when I saw one.
After the final buzzer, Justin's priorities reorganized themselves with startling speed — from can we get pretzels to can we go to the gift shop to, once we were standing in front of a wall of jerseys, can I get the number nine one.
I bought it without hesitation. He wore it out of the store.
We found Anne waiting near the family entrance, and the boys spent the wait doing slow, deliberate laps around the hallway, Justin's new jersey swallowing him whole, sleeves flapping.
When the players started filtering out, Carter spotted Justin before Justin spotted him, and his whole face came open, unguarded and delighted.
"No way." He crouched down, taking in the jersey like it was the single best thing he'd seen all night. "You actually got it."
"Nine," Justin said, pointing at his own chest, in case there was any confusion.
"Nine," Carter agreed, solemnly, like they were sealing a contract. He held up a hand, and Justin high-fived it with the same full-body commitment as before. "Come on. You've gotta see the locker room."
He took Justin's hand like it was the most natural thing in the world and led him through the doors, Finn trailing immediately after because wherever Justin went, Finn was constitutionally required to follow. I watched them go, half-amused, half-something-else I didn't have a name for yet.
By the time Anne and I caught up, Justin was wearing Carter's helmet, several sizes too big, tipped back so he could actually see out from under it, parading in a slow, triumphant circle around the lockers like he'd personally won the game.
Finn demanded his own helmet two seconds later — somebody else's, retrieved from somewhere — and then it was both of them, weaving between stalls, narrating their own imaginary breakaways at top volume, while half the remaining team watched with the indulgent amusement of men who'd clearly seen this exact scene before.
Carter caught my eye over the chaos and grinned, like he was checking whether I approved. I did. I just hadn't expected to.
"Dinner," Anne said, appearing at my elbow. "Liam wants to take everyone out before it gets too late. You in?"
"We're in." I looked at Justin, still circling in a helmet he could barely see out of. "Obviously."
"Can Carter come?" Justin called over, helmet muffling half the question, before I'd even finished answering Anne.
I looked at Carter. Carter looked back at me, eyebrows raised, entirely too pleased with himself for someone who hadn't said a single word to make this happen.
"If he wants to," I said, mostly to Justin, and only a little bit to Carter.
"I want to," Carter said, far too quickly to be anything but completely sincere about it.
That dinner turned into two more dinners, and the two days in between.
Liam and Anne wouldn't hear of us staying anywhere but the team hotel for as long as we could manage, and Anne came by both afternoons with Finn in tow so the boys could swim while we sat with our feet in the water and talked the way we used to before three hundred miles got in the way.
We took the boys to the St. Louis Zoo the morning after Game 1, the two of them shrieking their way through the penguin house and demanding to know which animal was the fastest, the strongest, the most likely to win a fight against a hockey player.
Carter joined us straight from practice, still a little damp around the collar, and Justin attached himself to his side for the rest of the afternoon like it was simply the natural order of things now.
The night before Game 2, Anne offered to take Justin for a sleepover with Finn — both boys campaigning so hard and so transparently for the idea that I suspected they'd planned the request together in advance. Which meant, for the first time since we'd arrived, it was just me and Carter.
I knew a setup when I saw one. Anne had all the subtlety of a brass band — she'd practically sung the words just the two of you down the phone — and I told myself, firmly, that this was two adults getting dinner, nothing more, my settled stance fully intact.
Carter texted me that afternoon, before I'd even figured out what to do with a free evening.
I know a place. Quiet, nothing fancy, best food in the city and nobody'll bother us. Let me take you. 7?
And then, a second later, before I could answer:
And tell Anne I said thanks. Not subtle, your friend. I owe her one.
I read it twice, which was two times more than a woman with a settled stance needed to read a dinner text.
Then I told myself I was only smiling because it was funny, typed back 7 is good, and went to go stand in front of my suitcase for a genuinely embarrassing length of time trying to decide what a person wore to a not-a-date with a man she wasn't interested in.