23. Zach
ZACH
The building sounds different in the playoffs.
Luca takes it personally. Every shot that gets past the defense is an insult and he stops it like he’s settling a score. Six minutes into the first he makes a glove save so clean I watch the shooter look at his stick like it betrayed him.
“Happy birthday.” I push the cupcake across the counter with its single candle. She leans forward on both hands, closes her eyes and blows out the candle then grins at me.
“Well. At least you’re not dating a teenager anymore.”
“Mackie, nineteen is still teenage.”
“But it’s not barely past legal. That’s progress.” She pulls the candle out and licks the frosting off the bottom. “You should feel better about yourself.”
“I feel approximately the same amount of bad about myself.”
“Nineteen is a real adult age. Nineteen is respectable. Nineteen says ‘I make my own dental appointments.’”
“Do you make your own dental appointments?”
“I have never made a dental appointment in my life, but that’s not the point.”
“What did you wish for?”
“I’m not supposed to tell.” She’s already smiling in a way that means she’s absolutely going to tell me. “But if you have to know. I want to have sex with you in the video room at the practice facility.”
I feel my mouth drop open and she grins wider.
“Specifically,” she continues, like she’s placing an order, “I want to sneak in after hours and I want you to tie me up with skate laces. I’ve been thinking about it for weeks.”
“Mackie, there are cameras.”
“The video room doesn’t have cameras. I checked.”
“You CHECKED?”
“I did recon.” She takes a bite of the cupcake. “I also know the security guard’s shift change is at ten-thirty and the cleaning crew finishes by nine.”
She conducted a security assessment of a professional hockey facility. For sex. With skate laces. And I’m going to do it. I know I’m going to do it because she said skate laces and my brain stopped working and hasn’t started again.
“When?” I can hear myself surrendering in real time.
“Probably after the season. When things calm down.” She takes another bite. “Something to look forward to.”
She finishes the cupcake and I reach over and wipe frosting off her lip with my thumb but before I can pull away she catches my wrist and sucks my thumb in her mouth, holding my gaze. I have never been outmatched by another human being the way I am outmatched by this girl.
“Happy birthday,” I say again, because I don’t know what else to say.
“Best one yet.” She stands on her toes and kisses me, tasting like chocolate and sugar and the rest of the night is just us.
I lie there with her asleep next to me, thinking about eventually sitting in that room watching game tape with Barrett six feet away, Barrett standing there with the clicker walking through defensive zone coverage, and me trying not to think about she wants to do in that room.
What we’re going to do in that room. Because with Mackie it’s not even a question of ‘if’ anymore, but a question of ‘when’.
The scenario I envision is so catastrophically bad that I almost laugh out loud in the dark with her hair spread across my chest.
Game 2 is on a Wednesday. I walk into the building with Rodriguez at 3:30.
Some families are already here because the suite opens early for playoff home games and I can see them milling around the concourse level.
I find Mackie immediately. Standing by the railing with Juliette, and she’s mid-conversation but her eyes flick to me as I walk down the hallway and the look on her face is not subtle.
She’s looking at me the way she looks at me in my bed at two in the morning and she’s doing it right next to my best friend and his girlfriend.
Rodriguez stops to kiss Juliette, to hug Mackie, to say something to her that makes her laugh, then he walks off toward the locker room entrance and she turns and looks at me again raising her eyebrows as if she’s daring me to do something about it.
I walk into the locker room and sit in my stall and pull out my phone.
Me
Don’t look at me like that
Mackie
Like what?
Me
You know exactly what
Mackie
You look impossibly hot in that gameday suit btw
Me
Your dad is literally 10 feet away from me right now
Mackie
I can’t compliment my boyfriend?
Me
Not when I’m trying to avoid getting murdered before the biggest game of my life
I lock my phone and put it face down on the shelf above my stall. I need to stop thinking about this and start thinking about hockey.
We’re up 1-0 after the first on a Jack redirect that’s pure instinct—the kind of goal that only a twenty-year veteran makes because the timing isn’t something you learn, it accumulates over a thousand games and lives in your hands the way breathing lives in your lungs.
Rodriguez has the primary assist and he’s been playing with this reckless energy since the playoffs started, skating like a guy who has nothing to lose.
I catch myself scanning the stands and stopping at the family box. She’s up there somewhere.
Second period we score two more. Luca stops everything. 3-0. Shutout. We’re up 2-0 in the series.
My phone buzzes in the locker room.
Mackie
two more
I’m so proud of this team
and you
Me
I didn’t do anything
Mackie
you were ready. That’s doing something.
Games 3 and 4 are a road trip. The plane is quieter than usual—guys have headphones on, some watching film on tablets, and the card games that usually start before we’re off the ground don’t happen. Rodriguez is next to me making notes on his phone, which is something I’ve never seen him do before.
“You’re studying,” I say.
“Juliette showed me her prep process for competitions. She annotates everything.” He doesn’t look up. “Athletes are athletes, Z. Doesn’t matter what the ice is for.”
Game 3 is a war. Away building, hostile crowd, everything faster and harder. They score first and the noise is deafening. Luca makes two saves in the first five minutes that keep it 1-0. We tie it in the second and then score three in the third and the crowd goes quiet.
With twelve minutes left and the score 4-1, Barrett looks at me. “Almardon. You’re closing this out. Luca needs the rest.”
Luca taps my pads on the way out and says “all yours”.
Suddenly, I’m standing in an NHL playoff crease in a hostile building and I can hear my own breathing inside my mask.
The ice feels different under my skates—more real, like it knows what's at stake even if that makes no sense.
The first shot comes thirty seconds later.
I read the release off the winger's blade, track the angle, and my glove finds it.
The sound of puck hitting leather is the only thing in the world for one second, and then it's not, and I'm already resetting for the next one. Second shot is low glove, I kick it wide, the defenseman clears. Four shots in twelve minutes. 4-1. Final. We’re up 3-0.
At the hotel I check my phone.
Mackie
you played!!!!
TWELVE MINUTES
I watched every second
you stopped everything
Me
four shots
Mackie
FOUR PLAYOFF SHOTS
Zach that’s huge
Me
it was garbage time
Mackie
it was YOUR time. Take the win.
I take the win. For once I let myself have it.
Game 4. They play desperate because nobody wants to get swept at home and the crowd is rabid from puck drop.
They score twice in the first and once in the second and Luca is fighting it—not in a way anyone in the stands would notice, but I can see the half-second delays because I’ve been watching him for two years and I know what he looks like when he’s thinking instead of reacting.
Thinking instead of reacting is the first sign that the workload is catching up.
We lose 4-2. Luca throws his water bottle in the hallway and nobody says anything because that’s the deal with your starting goalie in the playoffs—you give him space, you let him be angry, you trust that the anger resets by next game.
Barrett catches me in the tunnel. “Almardon, stay ready.”
“Yes sir.”
“You played solid in Game 3. I want you to know that didn’t go unnoticed.” He puts his hand on my shoulder and holds it there and the weight of it reminds me of Anderson. “Whatever happens, you’re ready.”
Whatever happens. I walk to the bus turning that over because whatever happens means Luca gets hurt or has a bad night or something goes wrong and suddenly it’s my net and my game and I’ve spent my entire career sitting in that distance between “stay ready” and “you’re starting” and I still don’t know what happens when it closes.
I check my phone on the silent bus ride back to the hotel.
Mackie
it’s okay. One loss doesn’t change anything
you’re coming home 3-1
game 5 is at our place
bring it home
Game 5. Home. A chance to clinch. And underneath all of it, the way it always is, the thought I can’t turn off—every game closer to the end of the season and the conversation that starts with ‘Jack, I need to tell you something.’