35. Zach
ZACH
I can’t tell my girlfriend’s father about my girlfriend.
I know how it sounds. I spent six months begging Mackie to have this conversation.
Now I’m the one holding the door shut. The hypocrisy is so bitter.
But superstition doesn’t care about hypocrisy.
It doesn’t care about fairness, or logic, or the fact that Mackie said I’m done hiding and I said not yet.
Superstition cares about one thing: the machine is working. Don’t touch the machine.
And the machine is working. I’m playing the best hockey of my life.
The team is healthy. The defense is locked in.
Rodriguez is scoring at a pace that’s making national headlines, while Barrett has the group dialed so tight that practices feel like a formality.
Everything is clicking. Everything is right.
Somewhere in the back of my goalie brain, in the place where rational thought goes to die, I genuinely believe that telling Jack Anderson about his daughter is the thing that will break it.
Mackie doesn’t push. But I can feel it. The thing she’s not saying. I’m the one who put it there this time.
The Cup is right there. It’s RIGHT THERE.
Game 1. Home ice. The building is full two hours before puck drop, and I can hear it from the locker room–the weight of the thousands people who paid to be in the same room as this. I sit in my stall taping my stick. My hands are steady. My mind is clear. The routine is holding.
I eat the last cookie from the pregame container and close my eyes. Visualize the first save. Glove side. High. Clean.
Rodriguez drops into the stall next to mine. “You good?”
“I’m good.”
“You look good. You look locked in.” He bumps my pad with his fist. “Let’s go steal a Cup, Z.”
The team files out for warmups. The noise from the crowd is a wall of sound that pushes against my chest. I skate to my crease, tap both posts, drop into my stance. The ice is perfect and this is it. This is what I told Mackie about during truth or dare, a lifetime ago. It’s here.
I scan the building during warmups because I can’t help it.
The family suite is up and to the right.
I can see figures behind the glass but can’t make out faces from this angle.
Mackie’s up there somewhere. Or she’s not–she mentioned rinkside work, interviews with the media team, quick-hit player clips for the team’s social channels. She could be anywhere in the building.
Warmups end and we file back toward the locker room for the final twenty minutes. I’m heading down the corridor, fully locked in and running my visualization one last time, when I see her.
She’s walking fast, wearing black jeans and a team jersey with her media credential swinging around her neck.
She spots me and her whole face breaks into a smile.
Her eyes scan down my body, then back up to my face, taking inventory of me–pads, chest, shoulders, like she’s checking that all the parts of me are still accounted for.
She tilts her head toward a recessed doorway just off the main hallway. It’s barely an alcove, not visible unless you’re standing directly in front of it. The smart move is to keep walking toward the locker room.
Instead, my feet stop. Mackie could stand at the edge of a cliff and tilt her head like that, and I would gladly follow her over. It’s the only thing about myself I understand anymore.
She pulls me in by the front of my jersey.
Her back hits the wall and my glove drops, thumping against the concrete as I cup her face in my hand.
I’m kissing her in the corridor of the arena.
In eight months we’ve never done anything this stupid.
Eight months of my apartment and her car and three suburbs out, of not being in the same room as anyone we know, and here I am with my chest protector between us and my pads bumping her knees and her dad’s stall sixty feet that way and I don’t remember deciding to do any of it.
Her fingers fist in the fabric of my jersey, pulling me closer.
“For luck,” she whispers against my mouth.
I kiss her one more time, fast, because even the stupidest version of me knows we have seconds. I’m just pulling back to step out of the alcove when I hear it.
“Mackie, are you back here? Someone said your mom is looking for–”
I know before I turn my head.
Jack is standing there with his helmet in his hand. He came looking for his daughter, and he found her with my mouth on hers.
The corridor goes dead quiet.
Mackie’s hand drops from my chest. “Dad–”
“Don’t.” The word fills the space. Mackie presses back against the wall.
Jack isn’t looking at my face. He’s looking at my bare hand cupped against his daughter’s jaw, at the goalie glove on the floor between us. His eyes track from the glove to my hand to her mouth, and his jaw locks.
“What the fuck.” His voice is too quiet. “What the fuck is this.”
“Dad, I can explain–”
“Don’t. Don’t DAD me right now.” His voice climbs. “How long.”
“Anderson–” I cut in.
“I’m not talking to you.” He doesn’t look at me. “How long, Mackinnon.”
“Since October.”
“October.” He says it like he’s trying the word out. “You’ve been sneaking around with my goalie since October.”
“It wasn’t–”
“Don’t tell me what it wasn’t. I know what it is.”
He takes a step into the alcove, shrinking the space instantly. Mackie presses harder against the wall, her hands shaking at her sides.
“Let’s go.” Jack reaches out like he’s guiding a toddler out of a store. “You and I are going to have a conversation somewhere that isn’t a public hallway.”
He reaches for her wrist but I step sideways in front of her. In full pads I’m twice her width, and she disappears behind my back as Jack’s hand lands hard against my chest protector. Mackie’s fingers fist in the fabric of my jersey. I plant my skates. I'm not moving. That's the only plan I have.
“Almardon.” Jack’s voice is flat. “Step aside.”
“No.”
Behind Jack, skates thump on the rubber flooring. Rodriguez’s voice catches halfway through asking what's going on. I can’t see around Jack, but I know the shapes of them—Rodriguez, Dex, Brody, half a dozen guys wishing they’d walked down any other hallway.
Dex’s voice comes from somewhere behind Jack. “Anderson? You good?”
“Get the fuck out of my way, Almardon.” Jack places his hand flat against my chest.
I open my mouth to speak, but Jack’s fist hits the concrete wall directly beside my head. Mackie flinches into my back.
“You LITTLE–”
He can’t even get to the end of the sentence. His fist hits the wall a second time, closer to my ear, and Mackie makes a small sound.
“You sat in my kitchen. You sat at my TABLE. You sat at my fucking–”
He’s breathing like he’s been skating suicides. Behind me, Mackie is pressed so close I can feel her shaking.
Roman’s hand lands on Jack’s shoulder from behind. He’s the only guy in this hallway who would dare do it.
“Jack,” Roman says once. “Not here.”
“Don’t fucking touch me, Roman.”
Roman doesn’t move his hand.
“Jack.”
“You knew.” Jack’s not looking at me anymore. He’s looking past me. “You knew about this.”
I turn my head just enough to catch Barrett walking up.
Barrett doesn’t deny it or try to explain. Just holds Jack’s gaze. “Not here. Not now.”
“I’m not playing with him in net.”
“Jack.”
“I’m serious, Barrett. Call the backup. I don’t care who you put in that crease. It’s not going to be him.”
“We’re not doing this in a hallway.”
“We’re not doing this at all. I’m not playing.”
“You don’t have that option.”
“The hell I don’t.”
“You don’t.” Barrett takes one step forward.
“You’ve been playing for twenty years to get to this exact hallway.
You are not walking away from Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals because you’re angry at my starting goalie.
You can be angry tomorrow. You can be angry next week.
You can be angry for the rest of your life.
Right now you have forty seconds to get your head on straight and skate to center ice. This is not a request, Anderson.”
“Get him out of the building.”
“No.”
“Barrett–”
“No.” The word lands flat. “I’m not putting a backup in Game 1 of the Cup Finals because you caught your daughter kissing him in a closet. That’s not a coaching decision. That’s a tantrum. And you don’t get to throw one on my bench.”
Jack looks at him. Then past him, at me. Then at Mackie, half hidden behind my pads.
“This conversation isn’t over.” He’s not looking at me. He’s speaking to Barrett and the corridor and whoever else needs to hear it.
“It is for now.” Barrett says.
Jack turns and his skates thump down the corridor toward the tunnel. He doesn’t look back.
Barrett watches him go. Then he turns to me.
“Almardon.”
“Coach.”
“You’re playing in four minutes. Get your glove. Get your mask. Get to your crease.”
He turns to Mackie. “Mackinnon.”
She steps out from behind me with her chin up.
“Go home, honey.”
“Uncle Dean–”
“Not tonight. Go home.”
Barrett touches her shoulder once, then turns and follows Jack down the corridor.
Mackie turns to me. Her hand comes up to my cheek.
“Zach.”
“Go home, Mack.”
“I’m so–”
“Don’t.” I pick up my glove off the floor. “Don’t apologize for that. Not for that. I stepped in front of your dad on purpose.”
She goes up on her toes and kisses the corner of my mouth. “Win,” she says into my jaw. “Please.”
I skate out, tap both posts, and drop into my stance. The crowd is roaring, but the noise doesn't reach me.
When the puck drops, I make the first save purely on muscle memory—short side, glove, clean—and the crowd noise finally hits me half a second after the whistle.
The first period is quiet on the ice. My defense is moving, but nobody’s calling anything. No sticks tapping the ice to signal a switch, no voices directing traffic. I’m running my own crease entirely blind.
They score on a rebound when I kick the first shot into traffic. The puck sits at Jack’s feet for half a second, but he doesn't react, and someone else buries it before I can reset. 1-0.
During intermission I sit in my stall with my mask on the bench. Rodriguez and Brody drop down on either side of me without speaking. Nobody says Jack’s name. Barrett walks through with his clipboard and doesn't even stop.
In the second period, their winger carries up the right side with speed. Our defense shifts wrong and Jack is closest to the play, so I call his name the same way I have a thousand times.
"Anderson. Middle."
He doesn’t turn his head.
The winger cuts in and puts it glove side before I can get a piece of it. 2-0.
Rodriguez manages to score on a breakaway late in the period, making the building sound like itself for just a second, but they answer two minutes later. I don’t even see the puck until it’s past my pad. 3-1 going into the third.
I make fourteen saves in the final period, but none of them matter. With three minutes left, their center gets a clean look and buries it to make it 4-1.
The locker room has a silence I’ve never heard before. Nobody is looking at Jack. Nobody is looking at me. Rodriguez is stripping his gear with unusual care, like each piece of tape might explode in his hands.
I don’t shower. I pack up and walk to the parking garage in my suit with sweaty hair. I get to my car and sit for a minute in the silence before punching the steering wheel once, hard.
The passenger door opens and Rodriguez drops into the seat without a word and drops his head back against the headrest.
“Bro… that was,” he whistles.
“So now her dad knows.”
“Yeah.” Rodriguez exhales. “I figured that out when he tried to go through you in a hallway.”
“He wasn’t going through me.”
“Z.” Rodriguez turns his head. “I fucking told you he was going to snap. You told him no. In front of six guys.”
“Seven.”
“Seven guys. Fine.” He drags a hand down his face. “That was the single most unhinged thing I have ever seen you do.”
“I’d do it again.”
“I know you would, you crazy bastard.”
We sit for a while.
“Go home,” he finally says. “Sleep. Eat something. Text Mackie. Game 2’s in two days.”