37. Zach
ZACH
The plane is quiet. Not the good kind.
I’m in my usual seat against the window at the back of the plane with my headphones on, nothing playing. Rodriguez is across the aisle, asleep or pretending to be.
My phone buzzes and I glance down at the screen.
Mackie
ok don’t be mad
I gave Juliette cookies to give to Rodriguez to give to you
has he handed them over
Me
there are no cookies
Mackie
goddammit ROMEO
hold pls. you can see what I’ve been dealing with
A screenshot appears.
Mackie
the cookies
Rodriguez
what cookies
Mackie
the ones your girlfriend who’s entirely too good for you gave you this morning.
Rodriguez
those are mine now
Mackie
don’t make me fly to Miami
Rodriguez
you can’t afford a flight to Miami
Mackie
I WILL FIND A WAY
Rodriguez
fine. they’re in my backpack. he gets them when he’s off the plane
Mackie
now
Rodriguez
after we land
Mackie
NOW romeo
I look across the aisle. Rodriguez has one eye cracked open and sighs when he sees my face.
“She snitched,” he says and shoves a plastic container at me.
Me
got them
Mackie
good
don’t let him have any, he doesn’t deserve good luck cookies
Their building is louder than ours. Their fans have been drinking since noon and they’ve already started the you can’t win chant before I’m out of the tunnel for warmups. Somebody against the glass is holding a sign with my picture on it and an X through my face.
They score on a power play in the first. Their center cycles it low, my defense loses contact for half a second and I can’t get my stick down in time.
Another in the second.
Two more in the third.
Rodriguez finally scores on a breakaway and the bench erupts and for one second the team sounds like itself. He skates to me with his arms over his head and taps my pads and says something I can’t hear because the crowd is booing him loud enough to drown out his voice.
4-1.
Late in the third there’s a scramble in front of my net. Four bodies, sticks everywhere. The puck deflects off someone’s skate and trickles past my pad. This lazy little roll that shouldn’t beat anyone. I was a half-inch out of position. The horn blows.
5-1. 0-3 in the series.
The visitor’s locker room in Miami is smaller than ours.
Guys are stripping gear without talking. Brody is sitting forward on the bench with his head between his knees. Dex is staring at his phone. Roman is leaning against the wall with his eyes closed.
“Where’s Coach?” somebody asks.
“GM pulled him aside,” Rodriguez says. “They’re down the hall.”
I set my helmet on the bench next to me and start unstrapping my pads. Footsteps thump across the locker room and stop in front of me. I look up and Anderson is standing there.
“Get up.”
I stand, one pad half off and hanging at a weird angle from my leg. From the corner of my eye I see Dex put his phone down and put his hand out to stop Rodriguez from standing up, too.
“Stop seeing her,” Jack says.
“Anderson, I–”
“Stay away from her. You don’t talk to her. You don’t text her. You don’t touch her. She’s my kid. She’s my kid.”
“That’s not what–”
“I have one. I have one daughter, Almardon. One. And she’s nineteen and she’s in your apartment and she’s been lying to me for eight months fucking around with you. Some backup goalie nobody who only has a shot at the playoffs because-”
I open my mouth and nothing comes out.
“You know what she’ll be in three years. You KNOW. She’ll be twenty-two in some city she’s never been to because you got traded and she’ll give it up. The reporting thing. She’ll give up her entire career for you. Because you’ll be on a road trip when it matters and she’ll have to choose.”
I think about Mackie sitting on my couch with her laptop open, typing something about the PWHL with the face she makes when she’s writing something she cares about.
Going toe-to-toe with her own father about what she wants most in life.
About her following me to every city I play in, sitting in suites and stands and being supportive and never getting what she actually wants.
How does she even know that this is the life she wants if it’s the only thing she’s ever known?
I could swallow her. All of the ambition she has, the person she could be.
I don’t think I would do that. Smother her until there was nothing left except a trophy wife and a mother.
He’s still talking.
“Chloe wanted to be a vet. Then she called me and told me she was pregnant while I was on a road trip and everything changed like that.” He snaps his fingers in front of my face and I flinch back.
“You want her like that? You want Mackie like that? You want her twenty-six with a kid on each hip while you’re in another city celebrating after a win. Or in the suite at thirty-five counting down the seasons.”
He breaks off, breathing hard.
“End it with her. Get your head back in this game. You’re not special and you’re letting a fling sink your career. We’d be one game away from a Cup win instead of a loss if it wasn’t for you being an absolute failure to this team.”
I stop breathing for a second before my brain catches up, every moment from the past months flashing like a highlight reel in my head.
Mackie at the arena asking me questions for her journalism class, turning her phone recorder off and saying, that was just for me to know.
Laying in my bed and playing truth-or-dare which was really just twenty questions.
Cheating at mini-golf, grinning at me as she kicked my ball, already planning how she was going to deny it.
Mackie in my driver’s seat, opening it up on a stretch of road with her head back, screaming with laughter and looking like the most alive person I had ever seen.
She built me a routine so the anxiety doesn’t eat me alive on game days.
She told me I who I could be before I believed it myself.
She’s not smotherable. I’d have better luck asking the sun to stop shining than I would asking her to stop being who she is.
“No.”
Jack blinks.
“What?”
“No. I won’t.”
“Almardon–”
“I love her. I love her and I’m not going to stop seeing her. Not tonight. Not for the series. Not after. You want Barrett to pull me? Tell him that. You want the team to trade me? I’ll give you my agent’s number. I’ll give you whatever you want, except that.”
Jack stares at me for a moment as if he can’t believe what I’ve just said, then he pivots and walks to the door.
Ripping it open just as Barrett walks through.
He shoulder checks him on the way out and Barrett looks around the room.
At Brody, now sitting with his mouth open staring at me.
Dex, still with his hand on Rodriguez’s arm.
Roman, stoic as always, but with an eyebrow raised like he wasn’t expecting what just happened.
Barrett stumbles a half-step and looks back at the door Jack just went through.
“What the fuck.”
Dex stands and rolls his shoulders. “Family meeting, Coach. You missed it.”
Barrett drags his hand down his face. “Please tell me Jack didn’t find out about the bowline.”
“What’s a bowline?” Rodriguez asks.
“It’s a knot,” Dex whispers.
“Why are we talking about knots?”
“We aren’t,” Barrett says. He pinches the bridge of his nose and looks at me. “Almardon. I don’t even know who to be mad at right now. I’ll circle back.”
He walks out and I sit down hard on the bench, running my hands through my hair and blowing out a slow breath.
“So that happened,” Rodriguez says. “You got any more cookies?”
Brody laughs. “‘I’ll give you my agent’s number.’ You just offered him your agent’s number, Z.”
“I was making a point.”
“You made it. The point is very made.”
“For what it’s worth, Almardon, you handled that about as well as a guy can handle getting screamed at in his underwear,” Dex says, picking at the tape on his stick.
I look down. I’m not in my underwear. I’m in my compression shirt and my goalie pants and one pad is hanging off my leg like a broken wing.
“Close enough,” I say.
Roman leans back and closes his eyes again. “The nobody backup goalie part was rude, though.”
“I’m getting that put on a t-shirt,” Rodriguez says.
“Make sure you get a knot underneath. Probably one made with skate laces, right Zach?” Dex asks.
I feel my entire face turn red, and I can’t help but laugh.