Chapter 1 #2
The shark leaned back in his chair.
We all held our breath.
Rhett clasped his hands in front of him, steady as stone. The silence stretched like taffy, pulling thinner and thinner until I thought it might snap—
"I'm in."
Two words. That was all it took.
The Drop detonated.
Beer sloshed. Someone's hat flew. One second I was on the footrail, the next I was somehow three feet to the left with my arms around Desrosiers, screaming directly into his ear while he screamed directly into mine.
The noise was enormous. Apocalyptic. The kind of sound that should have structural consequences. I heard glass shatter somewhere—probably a casualty of over-enthusiastic gesticulation—and somebody's chair fell over. Biscuit barked in a high, confused register.
On the TV, Rhett and Hog shook hands with the shark, but nobody was watching anymore. The celebration had become a separate event, untethered from the source.
Jake grabbed Evan by the front of his flannel and kissed him like they'd just won the championship.
Like the buzzer had sounded and the ice was theirs, and nothing else existed.
Evan raised his hands to cup Jake's face—gentle, careful, holding something precious—and Jake melted into it, all that chaos going quiet for as long as it took their lips to meet.
When they broke apart, Jake was grinning so wide it looked painful.
Evan's ears were red.
Juno had the camera pointed at them—of course she did, she was a professional—but she was crying, actual tears streaming down her face while she narrated in a wobbly voice: "—and this is the moment, folks, this is what it looks like when your community shows up, when your people—" She broke off, laughing at herself.
Her girlfriend reached over to wipe her cheek.
Coach had given up on pretending. He was crying openly now, shoulders shaking, one hand pressed over his heart like he was trying to keep it inside his chest. When someone clapped him on the back, he declared, "Allergies."
Nobody called him on it. Some lies were sacred.
And then Hog was here with us, pushing through the crowd. He held Rhett's hand. Rhett must have been watching from somewhere nearby, some secret location we hadn't known about.
Hog pulled his boyfriend into his chest and squeezed.
I heard Rhett's back crack from ten feet away.
"You did it," Hog said, or something like it. I couldn't quite read his lips.
Rhett said something back.
Hog kissed him to shut him up.
The bar roared its approval.
I whooped along with everyone else, my chest full of joy for them.
It was everything they deserved. Everything they'd worked for.
Hog had spent his whole career being underestimated, dismissed as mere muscle, and Rhett had spent years building something from nothing in a town that didn't always believe in its own potential—and now here they were.
Proof that you could be soft and strong. That you could build something real.
I cheered until my throat burned.
"STORM WARNING!"
A few heads turned.
"STORM WARNING!"
More this time. Jake's grin spread. Desrosiers stomped one foot.
"STORM! WARNING! STORM! WARNING!"
The bar picked it up like a wave catching a surfer—sudden, inevitable, building into something bigger than the sum of its parts. Feet pounded the floor. Fists hit tables. Someone in the back used an empty pitcher as a drum.
The stomping got so loud that dust actually rained from the rafters. Little flecks of it catching the light like the world's saddest snow globe.
I threw my head back and howled.
Not words—sound. Pure, stupid joy that didn't need to be anything else.
Someone shoved a plastic cup into my hand. I didn't check what was in it. Didn't matter. I raised it toward the ceiling, toward the water-stained tiles and the flickering light fixtures and whatever hockey gods might be watching from above.
"TO HOG AND RHETT!"
"TO HOG AND RHETT!" the bar bellowed back.
I drank. Something cheap and vaguely beer-adjacent. It burned going down in a good way.
Jake appeared at my right shoulder, still riding the high of his very public kiss with Evan, cheeks flushed and eyes bright. He bumped me.
I bumped back and threw an arm around Jake's shoulder.
"I love you, man."
"Pickle—"
"I love everyone. I love this bar. I love Biscuit even though he bit me last week—"
"He didn't bite you, he mouthed you. There's a difference."
"He put his teeth on my skin with intent!"
"He's a dog. He doesn't have intent. He has instincts and poor impulse control." Jake paused. "Actually, you two have a lot in common."
"Wow. Rude."
I grinned, and he grinned, and the celebration continued to roar around us like a living thing.
As the night wore on, the energy shifted. Not dying—settling. Finding a lower gear.
The crowd thinned. Booster club guys filtered out in twos and threes, calling goodbyes over their shoulders. The bartender wiped down the same spot on the counter over and over, willing us to take the hint.
I'd ended up in the corner booth somehow.
Hog's abandoned knitting was still there—that half-finished something in Storm colors, needles stuck through at awkward angles.
I picked it up without thinking, turning it over in my hands.
The stitches were tiny and even. Perfect little interlocking loops, each one exactly like the last.
How did he do that? Make something so orderly, so intentional, out of just... string and patience?
I set it down carefully. Didn't want to mess it up.
Across the room, Jake tried to convince Evan to do karaoke. Evan refused with his entire body, leaning away from the stage.
Hog and Rhett claimed a booth near the door, sitting on the same side. Rhett's head rested on Hog's shoulder, both of them looking exhausted and happy and completely, disgustingly in love.
Jake and Evan. Hog and Rhett. Juno and her girlfriend.
Everyone had their person tonight. I was… everybody’s extra.
The thought floated through, light and almost curious. Not bitter—noticing.
I wondered what that was like. Having someone who looked at you the way Hog looked at Rhett during that pitch. Like you were the only thing in the room worth seeing.
Probably pretty great, honestly.
I finished my drink, fished out an ice cube, and crunched it between my teeth. The cold was sharp, snapping me back to the present.
The bartender called the last round. I shook my head, left cash on the table, and headed for the door.
"Pickle!"
I turned. Hog had extracted himself from Rhett long enough to catch my eye.
"Good game tomorrow," he said. "Get some sleep."
"Yes, Dad."
He flipped me off, grinning. Rhett laughed into his shoulder.
I pushed out into the night.
Outside, Thunder Bay was doing its thing—cold and dark and smelling like woodsmoke and the slow slide into winter. The kind of cold that crawled inside your jacket and made itself at home. I shoved my hands in my pockets and started walking.
My apartment was twelve blocks away. Far enough to clear my head. Short enough that I wouldn't freeze to death. Probably.
The streets were quiet. A few cars, a dog barking somewhere in the distance, and the crunch of my boots on salted pavement. The echo of the celebration still buzzed under my skin.
I thought about Hog's face when Rhett said, "My partner." That look. Surprised and proud and a little bit wrecked, like he still couldn't believe someone had chosen him on purpose.
I thought about Jake kissing Evan in front of everyone. No hesitation. No apology.
Must be nice.
The thought wasn't sad, exactly. It was wonder. The way you wonder about places you've never been. What's the weather like there? Do people really live like that?
Maybe someday I'd find out.
I kicked a chunk of ice off the sidewalk. Watched it skitter into the street, spinning under a streetlight before disappearing into shadow.
For now, I had hockey. I had my team. I had a game tomorrow, a season ahead, and a life that was loud and messy and full of people who tolerated my chaos with something that looked a lot like love.
That was plenty. That was more than enough.
And if sometimes, late at night, walking home alone through the cold, I let myself want something I couldn't quite name—
Well.
That was just between Thunder Bay and me.