10. Mackie
MACKIE
Kara shows up forty minutes before the end of my shift later that afternoon and installs herself at the corner of the counter with a latte and a look that tells me she has something to say.
I last about eight minutes before giving into her stare.
“Just say it.”
“You’re in love with him.”
“I’ve known him for like a month.” I’m wiping down the espresso machine and trying to sound casual but my hands are moving too fast, the way they always do when I’m lying, and Kara has known me since seventh grade so she can definitely see it.
“Mackie.” She wraps both hands around her cup.
“You’ve been watching this guy for almost two years.
You just couldn’t figure out how to talk to him because he’s notoriously shy and never shows up to any team events.
You used to describe him to me as the guy who stays late when everyone else goes home and I would nod along and think ‘okay she’s normal’ and then you’d repeat his stats from memory and I would think ‘oh no’. ”
I scrub at a spot on the counter just so I don’t have to look at her. She’s right about the stats. I had his save percentage memorized before I knew his middle name. Which is Robert by the way. That’s probably not a thing normal people do.
“Also,” she continues, “you are extremely off limits. Which raises the question—is this guy insane, or does he not know who your dad is?”
“He knows who my dad is.”
“So he explicitly said to you, Mackie Anderson, I am aware that dating you is completely unhinged because your father could pull strings with people who have been in hockey for longer than I’ve been alive and have me quietly removed from the roster and most likely from the earth and no one would even blink—”
“He didn’t say it like that—”
“Has he said anything like that? At all? Ever?”
I scrub the spot harder. Because she’s right and I hate that she’s right and it actually hadn’t occurred to me until just now.
That when Rodriguez introduced us as “Mackie meet Zach. Zach meet Mackie” I figured it was a done deal.
Or that they’d talked about it later. Or something.
But I’m realizing now, with sickening clarity, that Kara is right.
Zach isn’t insane. And I’m about 99% certain he doesn’t know my dad is on the team with him.
“Mackie.”
“...Fuck.”
Kara picks up her cup and raises her eyebrows at me over the rim. “Tell him tonight.”
“I will.” And I mean it. I have the absolute best intentions of telling him. I’m already rehearsing the words in my head. Zach, there’s something I need to tell you. Zach, my dad is on your team. Zach, you know Jack Anderson? Funny story.
None of them sound right.
“Promise me.”
“I promise,” I say.
I’m sitting at what has to be the longest red light in recorded human history with bags of food on my passenger seat because I stopped for Korean corn dogs on the way to Zach’s and then realized you can’t eat street food without something sweet so I had to stop at a second place for bubble tea and now I can’t get Kara’s voice out of my head.
Zach knows who I am. He has to.
How else would I have gotten into the facility today?
I said hi to my dad on the way in like I always do.
I’ve been coming to that building since I was six years old and everyone in it knows my face.
Zach has been on the team for almost two years.
He’s seen me in the hallways. At family skates.
At team events. I’m practically a permanent fixture and my dad’s an institution and... he has to know.
Except.
Except he’s the backup. He doesn’t really go to team dinners. He doesn’t do the family stuff. He and Rodriguez live in their own little world and Rodriguez introduced us as Mackie and Zach, no last names, why would there be last names, everyone knows me.
Everyone, except apparently, the one person I’ve spent the last two years obsessing over from the sidelines.
Which is a thing I’m sitting with now. I assumed he knew who I was.
I hadn’t stopped to consider the possibility that before Rodriguez dragged him into the coffee shop, Zach Almardon had never, not once, noticed me.
While I was memorizing the back of his head from the family suite he had no idea I existed.
The light turns green and I don’t move until the car behind me honks.
Am I making this up? The whole thing? Because if he didn’t know who I was before the coffee shop then what exactly made him notice me that night at the bar and has everything since then been me filling in gaps? Overcompensating? What if I stopped texting him tomorrow, would he even notice?
I pick up my phone to call Kara mainly to reassure myself and see a text from Zach.
Zach
I’ve been trying to send this for two days and keep deleting it
I’m just going to rip the bandaid off and say it now before I lose my nerve
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the other night. specifically about what we did and how you felt
I’m sending this with my eyes closed. please tell me you’re almost here so I can stop staring at my phone waiting to see if you’re going to laugh at me
I pull into a visitor parking spot in his building’s garage and try not to laugh because even over text he still can’t quite say it.
He typed the words and I can practically see him hovering over the send button, deleting and retyping, maybe closing the app entirely and opening it again.
This is the same guy who rehearsed asking for my number in his car for twenty minutes.
Me
I’m in the parking garage
Zach
oh thank god
Me
Are you talking about my pussy?
Zach
jesus christ
Me
because I brought dinner, but if you had something else in mind…
I grab the bags and get out of the car. Okay.
So I’m definitely not making up how much he likes me.
But Kara’s right. I can see it now, sitting here with his text on my phone.
He might be the most quietly observant person I’ve ever met but he is completely, genuinely oblivious to this one specific thing.
And the guy who just typed that out with his eyes closed and his heart probably hammering in his chest definitely doesn’t know he sent it to his teammate’s daughter.
And I’m going to have to break it to him. Double fuck.
He opens the door before I knock, which means he was watching for me through the peephole.
His ears are red and he takes the bags from me without making eye contact and disappears into the kitchen.
I stand in his hallway for a second watching him go, thinking about how this man sent me a text about fingering me and now can’t look at me.
We eat on the couch where he’s got game film pulled up on his laptop while he’s narrating a neutral zone sequence, breaking it down with his hands, and I can see the goalie brain working in real time, angles and probabilities, and I’m nodding along but Kara’s voice is so loud in my head it’s practically a third person sitting between us on this couch.
Tell him. Just tell him.
But he’s explaining a forecheck and his whole face is alive with it, the way it only gets when he’s talking about hockey. And I’ll tell him, I will. But not yet. Not while he looks like this, animated and unguarded, more words coming out of him in five minutes than he usually says in a whole day.
The film keeps rolling. A puck shoots across the rink and two guys race for it and without thinking I make the call. “Icing.”
The whistle blows on screen. Icing.
Zach glances at me. “Good eye.”
“My dad taught me.” I keep my voice casual. Testing the water. One toe in. “He’s a big hockey guy.”
“Oh yeah? Does he still play?”
“Yeah.”
I don’t elaborate. I’m staring at the screen and inside my head there’s a version of me that is screaming SAY IT, MACKIE, OPEN YOUR MOUTH AND SAY THE WORDS, and there’s another version of me that’s watching the way our knees are pressed together on his couch and thinking about how this might be the last time he lets me sit this close to him.
The film keeps going. The opposing team is cycling the puck and the goalie is shifting in his crease and I can see it, the gap opening up on one side, and my mouth moves before my brain catches up.
“Glove side high.”
The shot comes. Glove side high. Goal.
Zach pauses the video and turns to look at me.
“Okay. That was more than luck.” He’s studying me now. “You said your dad plays beer league?”
My heart is in my throat. I pick at a thread on his couch cushion and I hear myself say, “Well, I’ve never heard anyone use the term ‘beer league’ to talk about The Show.”
I’m holding my breath waiting for him to put it together.
“Your dad was in the NHL.”
“Is.”
“Your dad is in the NHL.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“What team?”
I look at him. Fuck why is he making this so hard. The answer is right there on the screen, right there in this apartment, right there in every hallway I’ve walked through.
“Zach, it’s your team. It’s… it’s the Puckaneers.”
He doesn’t move. I watch it travel through him, every interaction we’ve ever had rewriting itself behind his eyes, the bar, the coffee shop, the practice facility.
“Your dad is Barrett?”
I blink. “What? Uncle Dean. Eww. Why would you think that?”
“He’s the only one old enough to—”
“My dad is Jack Anderson.”
There. I said it. Now it’s out there and I can never go back to the weeks where I thought he’d picked me despite everything, where I thought he looked at the risk and decided I was worth it. He didn’t look at the risk because he didn’t know there was one.
His mouth opens and stays there. “Defenseman Jack Anderson.”
“Yes.”
“Two-time Norris Trophy finalist Jack Anderson.”
“That’s him.”
“Jack Anderson who’s about ten games away from his thousand lifetime games ceremony, Jack Anderson.”
“Yes, Zach. That’s the one.”
“Mackie, he’s been to the Olympics. TWICE.”
“I’m well aware of his stats, Zach.”
He stands up and walks to the kitchen.
I stay on the couch and listen to him open a cabinet.
Then close it and open another one. He’s not getting anything.
He’s just putting his hands on things, giving his body something to do while his brain catches up to the fact that he told Jack Anderson’s daughter he can’t stop thinking about her… well, the way she feels.
I want to go in there. Touch him. Talk him through it.
But something about the way he stood up stops me.
He didn’t look at me. So I stay on the couch hating myself for not realizing sooner that he didn’t know, for letting this go on, for every time I walked through that building and waved at Hank and hugged my dad and never once thought to mention any of it because I assumed everybody knew.
He comes back and sits heavily on the couch next to me. Not close like before. There’s a full cushion of space between us and I can feel the distance like a physical thing.
“He’s been nice to me, Mackie. He’s been nice to me this entire time and I’ve been—” He gestures between us. “With his DAUGHTER!”
“To be fair, you didn’t know that.”
“OH GOOD. Great. That’ll be a fantastic defense. ‘Hey Anderson, I know I’ve been doing things to your daughter that I can never describe to another human being, but in my defense I’m also a moron.’”
I would laugh at that if my chest wasn’t caving in.
“You’re not a moron—”
“I am literally the stupidest person alive. Everyone on that team knows who you are. You just called our head coach ‘uncle’. I bet the equipment guys know. The Zamboni driver probably knows. I am the one singular human in that entire building who didn’t put it together.
” He turns and looks at me. “How is that possible? How did I not know?”
“I don’t know.” The words catch in my throat because I can feel what’s coming next. And it’s definitely going to be him breaking up with me, followed by me crying. Or maybe it’s the other way around, my nose is already prickling and yep, I’m definitely going to cry first.
“Your dad told me I had good instincts and he says ‘good work, kid’ to me at every practice.”
“He really likes you, if that helps. He talks about you a lot at home.” My eyes are burning now and I reach for my bubble tea just to have something to hold because my hands are shaking.
I can hear what he’s actually saying underneath the panic.
‘Good work, kid’ means something. And he just found out he’s been putting it at risk every time he touches me.
“And what am I supposed to say to him, Mackie? Oh, your daughter has been hanging out at my apartment watching game film with me. Just fucking around.”
“Well we haven’t actually fucked yet.”
“Don’t.” He says it sharply. “Don’t cheapen what we have, Mackie.”
“So we have something?”
And for one horrible second I think maybe he likes me enough to fight for this, to disregard every bro-code and unwritten rule of hockey. But he drops his head into his hands and scrapes his fingers against his scalp. I can feel the answer before he says it.
“I don’t know what we have, Mackie. I don’t know what this is anymore.”
I swipe at my cheek with the back of my hand.
No one has ever actually broken up with me before.
I haven’t liked anyone enough to get to a point where we’re sharing dinners on couches or co-owning a pet together, even if the pet is a pretty self-sufficient betta fish.
The bubble tea is sweating in my hand and I set it on the coffee table next to the laptop that still has the paused game on it and something about that makes the whole thing feel unbearable.
“Do you want me to go?” I hear myself ask and I hate the way my voice trembles on the last word.
He sighs and the only thing that makes this worse is that he looks like he’s about to cry too.
“Yeah. I think that’s probably for the best.”
I stand up and walk toward the front door, grabbing my shoes and purse from where I dropped them on the floor.
Everything in me is screaming to turn around and try one last time to get him to talk through this, that maybe we can figure it out, hockey-code be damned.
But I risk a glance back at him sitting on the couch with the cushion of space where I used to be and I know that if I push right now I’ll lose him completely.
“Take care of Shredder, okay?” I say to the door because I can’t look at him. Then I slip into the hallway and make it to the elevator before I let out the first sob.