29. Zach
ZACH
I open my bag and pull out the container that Mackie put in there this morning.
Ten chocolate chip, sea salt cookies. The ones she’s been making me before games.
I mentioned once that I liked chocolate.
She took that single data point and built an entire system around it, because that’s what Mackie does.
She left them on the counter with a sticky note that said “eat two before warmups, save the rest for after, don’t share” with the word don’t underlined twice.
I pop the lid, take one out, and bite into it. I close my eyes for half a second because they’re perfect. They’re always perfect. For about three seconds the locker room disappears. It’s just me and a cookie my girlfriend made.
“What’s that?” Dex is at my shoulder. He’s staring at the container and before I can close the lid he reaches in and takes one.
“Those are mine—”
“Holy shit.” Dex takes a bite then closes his eyes and almost moans. He holds the cookie up. “Brody. brODY. Get over here.”
Brody materializes. Takes a cookie. Breaks it in half and passes the other half to the guy behind him and suddenly there are hands everywhere, guys reaching across stalls, breaking cookies in half and passing pieces down the bench, and my ten cookies—my ten personal cookies that my girlfriend made for me and explicitly told me not to share—are gone in under a minute.
I’m holding the remaining half of my original cookie, watching professional hockey players fight over crumbs.
I can hear Mackie’s voice in my head and I’ve failed her in six seconds flat.
Rodriguez watches the whole thing from his stall grinning like a man watching a nature documentary unfold exactly as narrated.
We win Game 2 and the locker room after has that reckless joy that only comes from being up 2-0 in a series where you know you’re the better team.
Jack’s standing in front of me, still in his base layer, sweat drying on his neck, and he’s got that post-game looseness that makes him look ten years younger.
“Good game, kid.”
“Thanks.”
“Hey.” He leans closer. “Where’d you get those cookies?”
My hands stop. Because Jack Anderson is sitting three feet away asking me about his daughter’s cookies and I can feel every drop of blood in my face draining at once.
“The—the cookies?”
“Yeah. Brody gave me half of one.” He’s not suspicious, just curious. It’s almost worse. “Really good. Tasted like someone browned the butter. My wife does that trick. My daughter does it too.” He shrugs. “Whoever made those knows what they’re doing.”
My mouth opens but nothing comes out. I can feel Mackie’s name forming on my tongue like a reflex. I’m two syllables from ending my entire life when Rodriguez appears behind Jack’s shoulder like a guardian angel in compression shorts.
“He made them,” Rodriguez says.
Jack turns. “Who made them?”
“Z bakes.” Rodriguez drops this with the conviction of a man stating the earth is round. “It’s his thing. Been doing it since juniors.”
I stare at Rodriguez. Rodriguez stares back. The message is clear: go with this or die.
“Since juniors,” I confirm, because apparently I bake now.
“Huh.” Jack nods slowly. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for a baker.”
“It relaxes him,” Rodriguez adds. “Like meditation. With flour.”
Barrett walks past. Stops then reverses and he nods once at me.
“Almardon. Make more. Bring them for 3 and 4.”
He keeps walking. Rodriguez waits until he’s out of earshot and turns to me with pure, unhinged delight.
“You heard the man.”
“I don’t bake.”
“YOU DO NOW. Four dozen by tomorrow. Plane leaves at ten.”
“Four DOZEN?”
“Twenty-three guys on the roster, coaching staff, training staff, pilots. You should always give cookies to the pilots—they’re flying us through the air in a metal tube, they deserve cookies.” He squeezes my shoulder. “Call your girl. Be charming.”
Mackie
you want WHAT
Me
four dozen cookies by tomorrow morning
Mackie
Zach it is 11 PM
Me
the team loved them. They think I made them
Mackie
they think YOU made them
Me
Rodriguez told your dad I’ve been baking since juniors
Mackie
you burn TOAST
Me
I know
Mackie
my dad ate my cookie and someone else got credit
MY dad. MY cookie. YOUR credit
this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me
Me
worse than hiding our entire relationship?
Mackie
SIGNIFICANTLY worse. You stole my cookie identity
Me
Barrett wants more
Mackie
…Uncle Dean liked my cookies?
Me
he nodded. A Barrett nod
Mackie
...how many
Me
four dozen. Rodriguez says maybe five to be safe
Mackie
I need Juliette. Tell Rodriguez they need to be at your apartment in 20 minutes
Me
why?
Mackie
we’ll need both ovens obviously
Mackie arrives at my apartment at 11:20 with grocery bags over both arms. There's flour already dusted across her shirt from a batch she started at her parents’ house before realizing she didn’t have enough supplies.
She takes over my kitchen the way she takes over every room she enters.
She’s got bowls out and butter softening, her phone propped against the backsplash playing music.
The whole apartment shifts from mine to ours in thirty seconds.
I lean against the counter and watch her work.
I’ve seen Mackie in a lot of contexts but I’ve never seen this—her hands moving without hesitation, scooping and leveling and adjusting.
She doesn’t measure the vanilla. She eyeballs the brown sugar.
She cracks an egg one-handed without looking at it.
My eyes track the movement, stuck on her. I can't look away.
Rodriguez calls to confirm his oven is preheated and he’s sending Juliette to bring the next batch upstairs.
We now have two cookie operations running simultaneously six floors apart in the same building at midnight.
It's not a sentence I ever expected to think, yet here I am, standing in my own kitchen while my secret girlfriend runs a production line for a lie my best friend told.
Rodriguez and Juliette come down to deliver chocolate chips and don’t leave.
He sits at my counter and eats cookie dough off a spoon, yelping when Mackie slaps his hand away but sneaking another spoonful when her back is turned.
The four of us are packed into my kitchen and all I can do is lean against the counter and watch them, letting the noise wash over me without worrying about tomorrow.
“Stop eating the dough,” Mackie says without looking up. “If you keep eating the dough the count will be off and I will end you.”
“I’m not eating the dough,” Rodriguez says, the spoon still in his mouth.
“Rodriguez.”
“Fine.” He puts the spoon down. “But for the record, the dough is better than the cookies.”
“The dough is NOT better than the cookies. The dough is a PRECURSOR to the cookies. You don’t look at a caterpillar and say it’s better than a butterfly.”
“That analogy doesn’t work.”
“It works perfectly. Stop eating my caterpillars.”
I’m laughing and Mackie is pointing a spatula at Rodriguez and Rodriguez has his hands up in surrender and the oven timer goes off and she pulls the tray out and the cookies are golden and perfect.
“Is this my life now?” she asks. “Baking cookies at midnight for a hockey team that thinks my boyfriend is a self-taught pastry chef?”
“Apparently.”
“Your teammates are going to eat these on a plane tomorrow and say ‘wow, Almardon is such a good baker’ and nobody is going to think ‘I wonder if he’s been ghost-baking with his secret girlfriend who learned this from the very wife of the very teammate whose daughter he’s secretly dating.
’” She shakes her head. “The irony has layers. Like a cake. Which you also can’t make. ”
“When you say it like that—”
“It IS like that. I’m running a clandestine baking operation so that a professional hockey team can have superstitious snacks and my own father will eat one tomorrow and compliment YOU.” She closes the oven door with a bang. “I love you so much but this is BANANAS.”
Rodriguez grabs two cookies off the cooling rack on his way out. “Production tax,” he says, and shoves one whole into his mouth. Juliette hugs Mackie and follows him and I hear them laughing as the elevator doors close.
“Barrett’s going to take at least three,” she says. “I can tell. He’s a secret cookie person.”
“You can tell.”
“I have instincts.”
The apartment is quiet. Mackie is leaning against the counter looking exhausted and proud.
“Fifty-two cookies,” she says, smiling. “This is the most romantic thing I’ve ever done and nobody will ever know.”
She’s got flour on her cheek and chocolate on her thumb. She’s been up since six, and she’ll be up again at dawn. She did all of this for a team that will thank me tomorrow.
I pull her in and hold on. When she moves to deal with the mess, I catch her hip.
My hand comes down on her ass. It's not hard but not an accident either. It’s been on my mind since the night on the couch when my hand landed on her thigh and she made that needy gasp. She doesn’t flinch. She pushes back.
“Again.”
I do it harder. The sound she makes is the same one from the couch and she turns in my arms and pulls me down into a kiss that tastes like chocolate and sea salt and I stop thinking about cookies.