28. Mackie
MACKIE
Zach is next to me, the light of his phone illuminating his face. His thumb swipes over the screen, refreshing a hockey forum for the third time in ten minutes.
“ESPN says you were ‘icily composed under pressure,’” I read over his shoulder. “Icily. Like you were cold. That’s a compliment, I think.”
“I was sweating so much I couldn’t see out of my mask for the last two minutes.”
“Icily sweating. Very composed.”
He puts his phone down and stares at the ceiling. His fingers drum a frantic, restless rhythm against his bare stomach, his body still playing the game.
“We should do something,” I say.
“It’s one in the morning.”
“We just won a Game 7. We should celebrate.”
“This is celebrating. We’re in bed. It’s very celebratory.”
“Zach.” I roll onto my stomach and prop myself up on my elbows. “There’s a hot tub on the roof of this building.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Mackie, it’s one in the morning and I just played sixty minutes of playoff hockey and I can barely feel my legs.”
“Which is exactly why you need a hot tub. Your muscles will thank me. I’m a wellness visionary.”
“You made me drink spinach this morning.”
“And look how that turned out! We WON. The spinach is undefeated. Now get up, we’re going to the roof.” I’m already out of bed, digging through his dresser. “Do you have swim trunks?”
“I am not—”
“Found them.” I hold up a pair of navy swim trunks that have never been worn because Zach Almardon does not voluntarily sit in hot water on rooftops at 1 AM. “Put these on.”
“I am not putting those on.”
“Then don’t.” I pull my shirt off and grin at him. “Put nothing on. That’s also an option.”
He stares at me. I watch his brain lose the argument with his body in real time, which happens right as I toss my shirt at him. It lands on his face but he doesn’t move it.
“You’re insane,” he says through the fabric.
“And you love it. Roof. Now. Bring a towel.”
The rooftop is empty, which I knew it would be because the only people who use the hot tub are a retired couple on the eighth floor who go up at 6 PM and are in bed by 8. I know this because surveillance is a lifestyle.
The hot tub is steaming and bubbling. The whole city is spread out below us, and when I lower myself into the water, I make a sound that is frankly obscene. Zach is standing at the edge in his towel looking at me like I’ve suggested we commit a felony.
“Get in.”
“Someone could come up here.”
“Nobody is coming up here.” I sink down until the water hits my chin. “Zach. You won Game 7 tonight. You made thirty-four saves. Get in the hot tub with your girlfriend and stop being a forty-year-old man about it.”
He drops the towel. He’s naked, and my mouth actually waters at the sight.
When he steps into the water, I watch every muscle in his body unclench at the same time.
He sinks down across from me. His head drops back against the edge, his eyes close, and he lets out a low exhale.
I can see his shoulders drop three inches.
He’s been carrying them around his ears since warmups.
“Good?” I ask.
“I’m not admitting you were right.”
“Your face is admitting it for you.”
I drift across to him and settle against his side.
His arm comes around me automatically. We sit there with the city below us and the stars above us, which I know sounds like a romance novel.
We would be the most ridiculous romance novel ever written: two idiots in a rooftop hot tub with steam rising around them, and a secret that could end everything.
“I can’t believe we won,” he says quietly.
“I can.”
“You can not. You were shaking in the parking garage.”
“I was shaking because of YOU, not because I doubted the outcome. There was never a scenario where you didn’t win tonight.”
“That’s not how hockey works.”
“That’s how believing in you works. The hockey is secondary.”
He turns his head and looks at me and—god. The way he looks at me. It makes me do stupid things. It’s why I sneak into his apartment and steal his jerseys and make him smoothies at 5 AM.
He pulls me in, his mouth hot and wet, and I'm practically climbing him to get closer. My legs lock around his waist under the water, sliding wet skin against wet skin until I’m straddling his lap. His hands are gripping my ass and I grind down on him, rolling my hips and gasping into his mouth.
"Fuck, Mackie, we can't do this here."
The jets are doing amazing things from this angle and I arch back slightly, reaching between us to grip him as I rise up on my knees to sink down on him.
"No one will know." I say, biting his lip, lowering myself a fraction more.
I shift again, taking him a little deeper as his hips buck up to meet me. His head drops back against the edge of the hot tub and I'm considering where to give him his next hickey when I hear the scrape of the door opening behind us.
Then footsteps, and a voice I would recognize in my sleep.
“Z! Bro, I went to your apartment and you didn’t answer so I tracked your phone and it said it was still in the building but since you weren’t at your place and you weren’t at mine I—”
Rodriguez stops. He’s holding a beer and he takes in the scene: me straddling Zach in a hot tub, very obviously naked, very obviously in the middle of doing something we shouldn’t be doing on the roof of his apartment building.
Zach’s reaction is instantaneous and completely insane.
Both hands fly off my body and then fly back because he realizes that me turning around means Rodriguez gets a full show, so instead he pulls me against his chest and locks his arms around me, pulling me into him so tightly that I can’t breathe.
His chin is on top of my head. I’m pinned against him.
“Rodriguez. This is—we were just—the hot tub was—”
“Dude, relax.” Rodriguez drops into one of the deck chairs, cracks open his beer, and takes a sip with the energy of a man watching a sunset on a cruise. “I know.”
Zach goes completely still. “You know what.”
“I know about you two. Mackie and you. The whole thing.” He takes another sip. “Found out this morning.”
Zach’s hands are still clamped over my back.
I can feel his heartbeat against my chest going about two hundred beats per minute.
He’s holding me like I’m a grenade he’s trying to smother.
A normal person would probably be mortified, but honestly I’m more focused on the fact that he looks like he might pass out and drown.
“This morning,” Zach repeats. “How did you—”
“I ran into Mackie outside your door. She told me she was visiting Linda Smith.” Rodriguez looks at me. “Linda Smith, Mackie. The worst cover story in the history of cover stories.”
“I PANICKED!”
Zach’s head is turning between us like he’s watching a tennis match. “Wait. You’ve—this morning? Before the game? You KNEW before the game and you didn’t—”
“What was I going to do, tell you I knew about your secret girlfriend before you had to start Game 7? I’m chaotic, Z, I’m not insane.” He stretches his legs out and crosses his ankles. “I told Mackie I’d keep it quiet until after the game. And I did. You’re welcome.”
“Oh my god.” Zach’s hand comes up to cover his face. “The breakfast. The gym. ‘You’re a good person, Z.’ That’s what that was?”
“I was being supportive!”
“You were being weird. I thought you were having a stroke.”
“I was managing a very complicated emotional situation while maintaining game day focus. I read about compartmentalization in Juliette’s book.”
I’m laughing. I can’t help it. Zach is having a full existential crisis with his hand over his face and Rodriguez is sitting three feet away in a lawn chair drinking a beer and everything about this is so absurdly, perfectly us that I can’t do anything except laugh.
“Are you not—” Zach pulls his hand off his face. “Rodriguez. Are you not freaking out about this? At all?”
Rodriguez tilts his head. “I freaked out this morning. I did a lap of the hallway. I spilled coffee on the carpet.” He takes another sip.
“But then I thought about it and here’s where I landed.
You’re my best friend. Mackie’s basically family.
You’re both dumb. Like, historically, all-time, hall-of-fame dumb.
But you love each other and I’ve watched you be happier this season than the entire time I’ve known you and I’m not going to be the guy who makes that into a problem.
” He looks at Zach. “Ride or die, Z. That’s the deal. ”
Zach doesn’t say anything for a long time. Rodriguez drinks his beer. I’m sitting in the hot tub with my arms crossed over my chest. Zach finally let me go, and crossing them seemed polite. I'm watching these two figure out how to say what they mean without actually saying it.
“What really hurts my feelings,” Rodriguez continues. “Is that Barrett knew before me.”
“You told him about Barrett,” Zach says to me, mildly accusatory.
“He guessed.”
“Barrett walked in on you two at CHRISTMAS,” Rodriguez adds helpfully. “At the party. Where I WAS. Where I was playing white elephant while these two were—”
“We were NOT—”
“I don’t want the details.” Rodriguez holds up his hand. “Actually, yes I do. No. Wait. No. I don’t.” He takes a long drink of his beer. “I’m going to need a minute.”
“Take all the minutes you need.”
“Seven months. Seven months and I didn’t—the body wash, Z. The TROPICAL BODY WASH. It was her shampoo the whole time, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I KNEW IT. I told you nobody switches body wash like that! I said that! I said those exact words!”
“You did say those words.”
“And you LET me think it was body wash. You looked me in the eye and said ‘I switched body wash’ and I BELIEVED you because I’m a TRUSTING PERSON, Zach, I trust people, that’s my whole thing—”
“Rodriguez.” I splash water at him to interrupt his spiral. “Thank you. For this morning. For not telling him and letting him focus on the game. That meant everything.”
He’s quiet for a second. Then he nods. “Of course.” He looks at Zach.
“She’s good for you, Z. I’ve known that since the body wash.
” Then turns back to me. “He’s good for you too, Mackie.
Even though he’s going to age approximately forty years once Jack finds out and whatever’s left of him will need extensive rehab. ”
“That’s very encouraging.”
“I’m a realist.” He finishes his beer and stands up.
“Okay. I’m going back inside. You two enjoy your”—he gestures at the hot tub—“situation. I’m going to go process the fact that I’ve been the last to know about everything in my life, apparently, including my best friend dating the alternate captain’s daughter for the better part of a year, and Barrett knew before me, which I will never, ever, EVER forgive you for. ”
He walks toward the door then stops and turns back.
“Also, Mackie.”
“Yeah?”
“The smoothie thing. The spinach. That was you?”
“How did you—”
“He NEVER ate spinach before this season.” He points at Zach and shakes his head. “Linda Smith. Spinach smoothies. You two are the worst secret-keepers I’ve ever met. Ride or die, and I say that with love and also genuine concern for your future.”
The door scrapes shut behind him. His footsteps fade and then it’s just us and the hot tub and the city.
Zach hasn’t moved. “He knew all day,” he says. “And he didn’t tell me.”
“He wanted you to have the game.”
“He let me play a Game 7 completely focused because he—” He stops and opens his eyes, staring up at the sky. “I don’t deserve him.”
“You do.”
“I lied to his face every day for seven months.”
“So did I. And he sat in a deck chair and called us dumb and said ride or die.” I turn in the water to face him and his hands find my waist under the surface. “That’s Rodriguez. That’s just who he is.”
“He called us hall-of-fame dumb,” Zach says.
“We are hall-of-fame dumb.”
“Accurate.” He kisses my forehead. “We should go inside. I’m turning into a lobster.”
“Five more minutes.”
“Mackie.”
“Three more minutes.”
“If someone else comes up here—”
“Nobody is coming up here. We’re fine.” I press my face against his neck. “Two more minutes. Then we go inside and you hold me and we sleep.”
Tomorrow we start Round 2 and the secret gets heavier and my dad is one hallway, one unlocked phone, one too-long glance away from finding out, and none of that exists yet. Right now it’s just the hot tub and the steam and him.
Two more minutes.
Back in his apartment, my hair is dripping on his floor. I’m wearing one of his t-shirts and nothing else, standing in the kitchen drinking water when he comes up behind me and places his mouth on my neck.
“I thought you were tired,” I say, but I’m already tilting my head to give him more room.
“I was until I saw you in my shirt.” His hand edges under the hem of the t-shirt and down and I grab the edge of the counter because my knees feel like they’re not going to hold me up.
“You have no idea what you looked like in the water.” He whispers.
“When you climbed in my lap I almost lost it.” His fingers press harder and I roll my hips against him.
“I wanted to pull you down and feel you but we were outside and I just had to sit there.” He slides his fingers through me and starts up a rhythm that has me whimpering.
“I’m not sitting there now. Come, Mackie. ”
I bite down on my lip, trying to control it, to hold on, to make it last but I can’t and I come, wedged between his body and the counter and he doesn’t move until I’m done.
“Rodriguez might have come back and heard us,” I say, still breathing hard.
“He didn’t.”
“He MIGHT have.”
“Doe that bother you?”
I look at him. He’s looking at me, and he knows the answer, I don’t even have to respond.
“Come to bed, Mackie,” he says, and kisses my forehead. I let him lead me down the hall and somewhere below all of the want is the knowledge that we’re one round closer to the conversation I’ve been dreading since October.