3. Zach
ZACH
Living in the same building as Rodriguez and carpooling with him to the arena means I’m basically a hostage for whatever side quest he’s currently obsessed with.
This month it’s the figure skater who won’t make eye contact with him.
He’s been at this for a month now and I’m not sure why he hasn’t given up.
It’s the longest I’ve seen him commit to something, longer than the rubber duck war with Dex, or the few months where he exclusively ate breakfast burritos, longer than anything that isn’t hockey.
“Pucks and... Pucks?” I read the sign as we pull into a coffee shop a few streets from the practice facility.
“Don’t be so judgmental. It’s hockey pucks and espresso pucks.”
“No, I definitely got it. Solid marketing. I’m totally convinced to try their coffee.”
“Whatever, do you even like coffee? Come on, we need to be there right when Juliette’s skating class ends.”
“So you can hand a latte to a woman who won’t look at you.”
“She looked at me once.”
“When?”
“Last Tuesday. I said good morning and she kind of... glanced.”
“A glance. Wow. Wedding bells.”
“Shut up and be supportive.”
The bell jingles above us when he opens the door.
The barista has her back to us, fiddling with the espresso machine, and I’m looking at the menu board trying to decide what someone who doesn’t really drink coffee is supposed to order when she turns around and my heart stops.
It’s her. The same red hair that isn’t quite red, the same freckles, more of them than I realized or maybe I just couldn’t see them in the dark. I’m standing three feet away from the girl I have not stopped thinking about for seven days and Rodriguez is right next to me.
“Rodriguez!” She breaks into a huge smile, nose scrunching up the same way it did on the patio when she laughed about having a plan to be smooth. Then she turns to me. “And his friend!”
She knows it’s me. She has to know it’s me. But her face gives nothing away, just that bright open smile like I could be anyone, like we’re meeting for the first time, and I can’t tell if she’s playing it cool for Rodriguez or if she’s testing me to see what I do.
Rodriguez jerks his thumb between us. “Mackie meet Zach. Zach meet Mackie.”
Mackie. Her name is Mackie.
I’ve been lying in bed every night for the past week replaying each second of that conversation, and her name is Mackie and Rodriguez just said it like it was nothing, like he didn’t just hand me the one piece of information I’ve been desperate for since she walked out of the bar.
Rodriguez leans on the counter. “Okay, let’s talk about what a sort of uptight, maybe a little prickly, definitely fighting her feelings for me, girl from Canada is going to like.”
Mackie laughs and reaches for a cup and marker. “Rodriguez, who DOESN’T like you?”
“This girl apparently,” I say. She turns to me and our eyes meet where I swear there’s a half-second where her smile drops into something private and warm and meant only for me before she snaps it back.
“Great, we’ll let Rodriguez consider his life choices first. What can I get for you?”
Green. Her eyes are green. I couldn’t tell at the bar but in daylight, this close, with the window behind me, they’re impossibly green and I need to stop staring and order something like a normal person who hasn’t spent seven days remembering what her mouth feels like.
“Coffee,” I say. Nailed it.
“What kind of coffee?”
What kind? There are kinds. I know there are kinds. I’ve seen menus before. But my brain has completely abandoned its post and is running IT’S HER IT’S HER IT’S HER on a loop like an emergency broadcast.
“Black,” I say, because it’s the only word my brain produces. “Just. Black coffee.”
She tilts her head and studies me, like she’s already got me figured out and she’s enjoying watching me fall apart.
“Black coffee,” she repeats.
“Yep.”
“You sure? We’ve got seasonal stuff. Pumpkin spice. Caramel apple.”
“Those sound like candle flavors.”
I don’t decide to say it. My mouth does it on its own, completely independent of my brain, while Rodriguez stands two feet away humming to himself.
“Candle... flavors,” she repeats back to me.
“I didn’t—that’s not—” I’m going to pass out in this coffee shop. “I’m sure they’re great. The pumpkin. All of it. I just don’t really do... flavors.”
“You don’t do flavors.”
“In coffee.”
“Because you drink it black.”
“Yes.”
“Every day.”
“...Constantly.”
I have never once in my life voluntarily consumed black coffee. She must know that. I can see it in the slight tilt of her smile, because a week ago she saw me holding a beer as a prop and now I’m doing the exact same thing with a coffee order and she sees right through me.
“One black coffee for the guy who definitely drinks it constantly.” She turns to the machine. “And one maple latte for Rodriguez’s latest victim.”
“She’s not a victim, she’s a future girlfriend.”
“Mm-hmm.”
I watch her work, her hands moving on the machine without looking, pulling the shot, steaming the milk.
A week ago those hands were fisted in my shirt pulling me down to her mouth.
I force my eyes to the menu board like it’s suddenly the most interesting thing I’ve ever seen.
PUMPKIN SPICE. MAPLE. MOCHA COOKIE CRUMBLE.
Candle flavors. I called them candle flavors. To her face.
“Here you go.” She slides the cups across the counter. “Black coffee. Maple latte. A surprise for Rodriguez.”
“Thanks Mackie.” Rodriguez grabs his cups. “Wish me luck.”
“You’re gonna need it.” She looks at me. “Enjoy your black coffee that you definitely drink all the time, Zach.”
She holds my gaze for one beat longer than she needs to and I can feel the dare in it, the game, the play along and keep the secret and don’t let Rodriguez see, and I nod because what else can I do.
“I will,” I say, like a liar.
The coffee is terrible.
I take a sip in the passenger seat and can barely keep the grimace off my face.
Rodriguez asks if it’s good and I say great and he tells me I’m holding it weird and I tell him I’m holding it normal and I take another sip to prove a point and it takes everything I have not to cough.
I don’t know how people drink this every day.
But I’m not thinking about the coffee. I’m thinking about her standing behind that counter saying nice to meet you with a straight face while I stood there holding a drink I don’t want for the second time in our short history.
Rodriguez has been talking since we got in the car, running through his game plan for Juliette. Should he say something about her skating? Is that creepy? What if he compliments her posture? Do women like posture compliments?
I’m nodding but I’m not listening. I keep thinking about that half-second when the smile dropped.
She looked at me like she was glad I found her.
Because that’s what happened, right? She said I’ll see you around and a week later I walked into her coffee shop, three blocks away, and found her without even trying.
Except I didn’t find her. Rodriguez brought me here because of a figure skater. It was an accident. She doesn’t know that though. She probably thinks I came looking.
“–and then I was thinking maybe I could mention the maple thing, like ‘hey, I noticed you’re from Canada, do you miss real maple syrup?’ is that a thing Canadians care about or is that just a stereotype—”
“I think that’s a stereotype.”
“Really? Shit. Okay, no maple conversation. What about hockey? She’s a figure skater, that’s basically the same ice—”
“I don’t think figure skaters like being compared to hockey players.”
“Why not? We’re both athletes. We both appreciate the ice. We both—”
“Fall down professionally?”
“I don’t fall down. I occasionally make controlled contact with the playing surface.” He takes a sip of his coffee, steering with one hand. “You’re quiet today.”
“I’m always quiet.”
“Yeah, but this is like, extra quiet.” He glances at me. “You good?”
“I’m fine. Just tired.”
“You’re always tired. That’s your whole thing. Tired and quiet and weirdly good at stopping pucks.” He turns toward the facility. “You sure you don’t want to talk about anything?”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Okay, but if there was—”
“There isn’t.”
“—you would tell me, right? Because I’m your best friend and I’m emotionally available and I give great advice.”
“You’re trying to win over a woman by bringing her coffee she didn’t ask for.”
“That’s different. That’s romantic.” He pulls into the lot. “One day she’s going to realize I’m the best thing that ever happened to her and she’s going to feel so stupid for making me work this hard.”
“Or she’s going to file a restraining order.”
“Pessimist.” He parks. “You coming or what?”
I look at my black coffee. I’ve had maybe three sips and it’s not getting better.
But I can’t throw it away in front of him because then he’ll know, and for some reason I don’t want to give him that.
Not when he already watched me fumble my entire personality in front of her.
Not when I’ve already kissed the girl behind the counter and I need to figure out how to go back there without him.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m coming.”
Rodriguez is out of the car before I’ve even unbuckled, maple latte in hand, practically running for the front doors of the rink.
The figure skaters are finishing up, there’s maybe six of them standing around chatting. Rodriguez spots Juliette immediately, unlacing her skates on the bench.
“How do I look?” He asks, smoothing back his hair with one hand.
“Like a guy who’s about to get rejected again.”
“Your support means everything to me.”
He’s already walking toward her, latte extended like a peace offering she’s made clear she’s not interested in. I hang back with my terrible coffee and watch him do the smile, the head tilt, the whole Rodriguez routine that works on literally everyone except this one specific woman.
Juliette looks at the cup. Then at him. It seems like maybe today’s the day, but then she shakes her head and picks up her bag and walks toward the locker room before he can respond.
He trudges back holding the latte, head down and dejected.
“She said she can’t,” he says, shoving it at me. “Not won’t. Can’t. That means something, right?”
“Maybe.” I take a sip because I need something to wash the taste of burnt dirt out of my mouth and it’s actually really good, sweet but not too sweet. “This is delicious, by the way.”
“I hate you. Come on, practice in twenty.”
I follow him and somewhere between the rink and the door I drop the black coffee in the trash without looking back. Rodriguez doesn’t notice because he’s too busy analyzing the difference between can’t and won’t.
The maple latte is empty by the time I get to my stall.
Twenty minutes later I’m in the crease and my head is not where it’s supposed to be.
This doesn’t happen to me. The crease is the one place where my brain shuts up.
It’s only angles and distance and where the puck is going.
I’ve been this way since juniors, better on the ice than I am anywhere else, the rink is where I make sense and everything else in my life is the part I can’t figure out.
So when Dex winds up from the left circle I’m set and reading it but my brain serves up the image of her behind that counter and the puck beats me clean through the five-hole.
I stand there for a second like I don’t recognize myself.
“Almardon!” Coach’s voice bounces off the boards. “You sleeping in there?”
“No, Coach.”
“Then act like it.”
I reset. The next drill Jack Anderson sends a pass across the slot and Dex one-times it and I get the blocker on it, a clean save that snaps the puck up into the netting. Good. That’s more like it. My body remembers what to do even when my brain is being useless.
Anderson skates by the crease and taps my pads with his stick. “There you go, kid. See it, stop it.”
“Yeah.” I drop back into position. “See it, stop it.”
Luca’s working on the other end of the ice with the goalie coach, doing his thing, taking up the whole net with every bit of his six-four frame and moving like someone built a wall and taught it to be athletic.
I watch him swallow a shot with his glove without flinching and I try not to compare myself the way I always do.
He’s six-four. I’m six-one. He’s been the starter for years. I measure the gap every day.
Dex scores on me again with a shot I should have had.
“Come on, Z.” He taps his stick on the ice. “That was a meatball. I’m giving you meatballs out here.”
“Throw it again.”
He does and I snag it out of the air and squeeze it in my glove.
“Better.”
“Throw it again.”
He does. I catch it. He does. I catch it. We go back and forth until the rhythm takes over and I stop thinking about anything except the puck and the angle and my glove closing around rubber. For a few minutes everything is quiet and simple and the way it’s supposed to be.
Then practice ends and I pull my mask off and my brain goes straight back to the coffee shop. The way she said nice to meet you. The warmth underneath it. The fact that she’s three streets away from this building and I have her name now but I still don’t have her number. I need to go back there.
Tomorrow. I’ll go back tomorrow.