30. Mackie
MACKIE
It doesn’t.
I don’t look up. My fingers keep moving on the keyboard even though I stopped understanding the words I was typing three seconds ago. “That’s in two days.”
“I know when it is.”
“So you want to tell my father—who just helped this team make the conference finals—that his goalie has been sleeping with his daughter for eight months. Two days before the biggest series of the season.”
“I want to stop lying to his face every day.” He puts the bowl down.
“Mackie, I sat next to him on the plane yesterday. For three hours. He showed me pictures of a fishing trip he wants to take this summer. He asked if I wanted to come. He asked me if I wanted to go fishing with him and his family and I said ‘that sounds great, Jack’ while your text thread was open on my phone under my leg.”
“Okay, well don’t sit next to him on the plane anymore.”
“That’s not the point.”
“I know it’s not the point.” I close my laptop with a snap and the sound is sharp in his quiet apartment. “I know what the point is. You’ve been making the point for three weeks.”
He’s quiet for a second. When he talks again his voice is careful in that way that means he’s been sitting on this longer than I thought.
“I can’t keep doing the thing where I look at him and pretend I don’t go home to his daughter every night.
It’s eating me alive. I feel like I’m going to slip and say something and it’ll come out wrong and he’ll find out sideways instead of from us and that’s worse.
That’s so much worse than just telling him. ”
He’s right. I know he’s right. I’ve known he’s been right for weeks, but I keep finding new ways to not deal with it.
Dealing with it means sitting across from my father and watching his face change.
I have played that scene in my head four hundred times and it never goes well.
Not once. In the BEST version he’s quiet and disappointed and doesn’t look at me for a week. In the worst version he murders Zach.
“After the conference finals,” I say. “We finish this series and then we tell him. In the window before the Cup Finals start”
“You said after the regular season.”
“I know.”
“Then you said after Round 1.”
“I know.”
“Then after Round 2.”
“Zach.”
“Mackie, you’re going to keep moving the line.”
“Because I know my dad and I know that once we do this we can’t undo it. There’s no version where we tell him and then everything is fine by dinner.”
“I’m not asking for fine by dinner. I’m asking for honest.”
I pull my knees up on the couch and press my forehead against them and breathe.
“Give me the conference finals,” I say into my knees. “Let me have the conference finals. Let him have them. This is his last real shot at the Cup and you’re the one in net for all of it and I cannot be the thing that blows up both of you right now. I can’t do that to either of you.”
Zach doesn’t answer right away. I lift my head and he’s still on the counter, pasta forgotten, and he looks tired. Not game-tired. All-over tired.
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay?”
“Conference finals. But Mackie—after. Win or lose. No more stalling.”
“After. I promise.”
We’re in his bed a few nights later. Zach just won Game 2 with thirty-one saves, one goal against, and a post-to-post in the second period that was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen which I tell him and he only says thanks and rolls over.
I lie there staring at the back of his head for about forty-five seconds before I poke him between the shoulder blades.
“Hey.” Nothing. I poke him again. “Zach.”
“Mm.”
“Talk to me, please.”
He doesn’t move and I wait because his breathing just changed and I know something’s coming. Rushing Zach when he’s building up to something is like yanking a fish out of the water before it’s on the hook—you lose everything.
He rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling. Then he turns his head and looks at me and his hand comes up and cups the side of my face and I was not prepared for that. At all.
“I’m scared,” he says. “About what happens next. I know we need to tell your dad and I keep getting mad that it gets delayed, and then I can’t even be mad about it because the reason we’re moving it is that we keep winning and I can’t be pissed about winning playoff hockey.
” He laughs but it’s hollow. “And part of me doesn’t even want to tell him.
Because right now it’s just us, it’s always just been us.
” His voice cracks slightly and he runs his thumb across my cheek.
“I don’t want to lose times like this with you. ”
I turn my face into his hand and kiss his palm. “We’ll figure it out,” I whisper, letting him pull me closer. I press my face into his neck and breathe him in, staying snuggled there until his body relaxes and he falls asleep with his arm around me. I don’t sleep at all.
He’s making eggs in the morning and I’m sitting on the counter with coffee and I’ve been awake for four hours building a case so I just open with it.
“The video room.”
“No.”
“You didn’t even let me—”
“I didn’t need to. No. We’ve been over this.” He doesn’t look up from the pan. “It’s my workplace. Your father’s workplace. The risk-to-reward ratio is—”
“Okay but hear me out.” I set the coffee down. “The wrist thing.”
His spatula stops moving.
“And the hair thing. And the hand over my mouth thing. And last week when you told me not to move and I almost died.” I tick them off on my fingers. “You like holding me down. You like telling me what to do. You like being in control. Yes?”
His ears are red. Full red, not pink, the color they go when he’s embarrassed about something real. He’s looking at the eggs like they hold the answer to whatever he’s feeling.
“And I like the risk,” I say. “Christmas in the basement. The parking garage. The supply closet. Every single time we could get caught it’s—” I wave my hand around because the word I need doesn’t exist. “More. It’s more.”
“Mackie.”
“So you get what you want and I get what I want. The video room has a lock. It’s soundproofed. And it’s in the building where my father works, which is—I know this is insane—that’s the POINT.”
“Nobody wins in that scenario. If we get caught—”
“We won’t get caught. I’ve been casing that building since second grade.”
He turns off the burner and won’t meet my eyes. “You’re asking me to—” He stops, takes a deep breath, and starts over. “You want me to tie you up in the practice facility.”
“I want you to make my birthday wish come true,” I say. “And I want it to be somewhere that scares us both a little. Yes.”
He leans against the counter across from me and crosses his arms staring at me and his ears are still red but his eyes aren’t embarrassed anymore. I can tell he’s actually considering it.
“The door locks from inside,” he says.
“It does.”
“The walls are soundproofed.”
“For film sessions. Yes.”
“And you know the security schedule.”
“I know everything about that building, Zach.”
He sighs and I know I’ve won.
I’m at the facility the next afternoon for a media debrief—playoff credential stuff, nothing that requires my actual brain, which is good because my actual brain is still in his bed with his hand on my face.
The meeting ends and the smart move would be to go home to study for my final next week.
Instead, I’m walking toward Barrett’s office.
I have an envelope in my bag that I’ve been carrying around for two weeks waiting for the right moment, and the right moment is never going to come, so it might as well be now.
Barrett’s door is open. He’s at his desk with reading glasses on, which I will never not find hilarious because this is the man who once broke up a bench-clearing brawl by grabbing two guys by their jerseys and smacking their helmets together and now he’s squinting at a spreadsheet.
I knock on the doorframe. “Uncle Dean.”
He looks up and doesn’t exactly smile, but his face does the Barrett thing where it gets a fraction less stern, which is basically his version of a hug.
“Mackinnon. What are you still doing here?”
I drop into the chair across from his desk and pull the envelope out of my bag. “So I had an idea.”
“Never a good sign.”
“A few weeks ago I called the youth center in Wisconsin where Zach learned to play. I asked if the kids in their program could draw some hockey pictures—goalies, pads, whatever they wanted. They sent me these.” I push the envelope across his desk.
“I want to get them to Zach’s helmet artist. See if he can work them into a design.
For the Finals. If we get there. It’s short notice, but I thought...
maybe, you know, it would mean something to him. ”
Barrett opens the envelope. There’s maybe fifteen drawings inside—stick-figure goalies, wobbly pucks, one kid who drew a very enthusiastic cat in full goalie pads which is my personal favorite. Barrett looks at them for a long time. Longer than I expected.
He holds up the cat drawing. “This one yours?”
“That one’s a seven-year-old named Julian, and I will not have you disrespect his art.”
Barrett puts the drawings back in the envelope and I think he’s going to say no but he doesn’t. “I’ll talk to the equipment manager. He can get in touch with the artist who’s done Zach’s masks before. He’ll want lead time but if we’re in the Finals he can probably turn something around.”
“Thank you.”
“Does he know about this?”
“No.” I scuff my shoe on the floor. “I just wanted him to have something. From before all of this.”
Barrett watches me for a second. The reading glasses make him look like someone’s dad, which I guess he sort of is, to half the guys on this team.
“He’s good for you Mackie, you know that? I had my doubts at first but... he’s good for you.”
My throat closes up and I look at the ceiling because I am NOT going to cry in Barrett’s office. I am not. “Yeah, well. Jury’s still out on whether I’m good for his blood pressure.”
Barrett laughs and shakes his head. “I’ll let you know about this.” He holds up the envelope, which means I’ve been excused and he needs to get back to his spreadsheets.
I stand up to leave. I’m in the hallway, passing the weight room, when I see the door at the end of the hall. The video room.
After the season, we said. But the team flies out tomorrow morning, and tonight the facility will be empty.
I sit in my car in the facility parking lot with the engine running.
Me
change of plans
Zach
Mackie no
Me
Zachy yes
also you don’t even know what I’m going to say
tonight. Video room. The building is empty by 9
Zach
This is not a good idea
Me
It’s a great idea because you’re getting on a plane at 6 AM and I don’t want to wait
Zach
you’re unbelievable
Me
10 PM. Bring the laces.
Zach
if we get caught
Me
we won’t
Zach
if we DO
Me
then at least we won’t have to worry about telling my dad anymore
I put my phone down and rest my forehead on the steering wheel, my heart is hammering and I know this isn’t a solution. But I need him tonight. One more night before he gets on that plane. One more night before everything gets harder.
I set my alarm for nine-fifteen and start driving home, already thinking about what I’m going to wear.