Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Sammie
The week between Christmas and New Year’s is a strange animal—half holiday, half hangover, all liminal space.
It smells like pine and leftover sugar and the kind of exhaustion that lets you tell the truth by accident.
The city wears fairy lights like jewelry it forgot to take off.
The rink keeps humming—kids’ clinics in the mornings, a charity skate that made the Zamboni driver cry, two practices where I didn’t have to avoid Triston’s eyes because avoiding isn’t who we are anymore.
Wayne has been… quiet. Not the sharp, surgical silence of a man collecting receipts—more like the wary stillness of someone learning a new map. He’s watching. I’m not performing for him. It feels like standing on my own legs for the first time after a long drive.
Tonight, there is no rink. No donors. No speeches.
Just a house that belongs to a teammate with more square footage than taste, a backyard strung with lights, a speaker that believes in bass, and a dozen people who make a living colliding with large men on blades and somehow turn into golden retrievers around a bowl of chips.
“Come on,” Triston says, fingers laced with mine as we climb the front steps. “They’re already two and a half drinks in and will be insulted if we’re not there to witness the bad decisions.”
“You’re the captain,” I sniff, teasing. “Aren’t you morally obligated to limit bad decisions?”
“I’m morally obligated to confiscate keys and pour water,” he says, grinning. “The rest I will film for leverage in March.”
The door opens too fast, like someone’s been hovering. It’s Jamie, one of the defensemen, cheeks already flushed, wearing a sweater with a screaming moose in a party hat. “They’re here!” he bellows into the house, and I swear the living room lifts an inch off its foundation.
“SAM-MIE,” a chorus roars, and then I’m swallowed—hugged, spun, handed a plastic flute of something bubbly that tastes like joy dressed as irresponsibility.
There’s glitter in the air. Someone’s dog is wearing a bow tie and stealing meatballs from the coffee table.
The kitchen smells like nachos and fresh-baked cookies because the goalie’s wife treats everyone like strays who wandered in from the cold.
Triston doesn’t let go of my hand, even as he’s pulled into half a dozen back slaps and chirps. The guys have been good since the gala—curious and kind, measuring their jokes before they throw them. Tonight, they decide measuring is for work.
“About time,” says Tyler, the smirking wing with a heart he pretends nobody can see. “Captain needed a W and he finally sealed the deal.”
“Count the rings,” another pipes up, pointing at my wrist. The ribbon is there, velvet tucked under my cuff, more habit than signal tonight. His girlfriend elbows him with precision. “Not that ring, idiot.”
“Language,” I scold, delighted, and the room laughs because nobody here believes I can weaponize a scold. They’re wrong, but I like being indulgent.
“Drink?” asks Mari, the PR lead who is off duty and wearing sneakers like a manifesto. She has glitter liner and the face of a woman who will not be answering emails until January third. “We made a punch that is technically legal.”
“Water first,” Triston inserts, because he’s himself, and I love him for being unsexy and right. He hands me a glass and a look that says be free in a language only we speak.
“Fine,” I huff. “Then a tiny cup of legality.”
We tour the house. Every surface holds something celebratory: bowls of chips, graham crackers, a tray of tiny hot dogs stabbed with toothpicks wearing foil stars.
The TV over the mantel streams the Times Square crowd, already freezing for the privilege of being part of a countdown that the rest of us can do from a couch.
Someone has hung a banner that reads NEW YEAR, SAME MENACE.
I don’t ask who made it. I suspect the rookie girlfriends with a Cricut and an agenda.
The music drops into a beat that begs bodies forward. I’m two sips in when Triston turns, the movement a clean, quiet orbit until he’s right in front of me, palm open.
“Dance with me, Samantha Michael,” he says like it’s a marriage proposal and a dare. The room hoots because the room hoots at everything. But the way he says my full name removes the walls, removes the house, removes the calendar.
I take his hand.
We’ve danced twice in rooms that wanted us to be other people.
Once at the team party, where the dance was a promise we were too cautious to cash.
Once at the gala, where the dance was the fuse and the kiss the explosion.
Tonight the dance is neither. It’s easy.
It’s what happens when your ribs remember how to expand and your feet remember how to carry joy without asking permission.
He fits me close, not proprietary, not performative, just… aligned. I hear us exhale at the same time. My temple finds his jaw. His breath finds my hair. The floor isn’t polished or lit by professionals. The song isn’t good. The moment is perfect.
“You’re smiling,” he murmurs, amused reverence.
“I forgot I had that setting,” I confess.
“Keep it,” he says softly. “I’ll maintain it for you.”
“Like a car?” I laugh into his throat.
“Like a cathedral,” he corrects, and my knees think about giving out because he is a ridiculous, earnest man who looks at me like I am something holy and somehow makes it feel accurate.
Tyler slides past with a tray of Jell-o shots like he’s auditioning for a frat musical; he pretends not to see us and obviously sees us. “All right, no making out near the snacks, save it for midnight.”
“Jealousy doesn’t suit you,” I tell him sweetly.
He clutches his heart. “She’s savage. Captain, control your woman.”
I start to bristle on principle and then the meaning catches up—your woman—and my insides do a dangerous, happy thing. Triston’s hand flexes at my waist, easy as saying yes. “I could not,” he says cheerfully. “I can only witness.”
The song flips. Someone howls lyrics by memory. We stay where we are, swaying, stealing kisses that are appropriate for kitchens but still make the room whoop. I taste apple something on his mouth and decide I like it because I like anything that ends on his tongue.
“Remember that you belong here,” he says into my ear when the volume peaks into chaos, and I have to close my eyes because belonging is a word that blooms from the inside and breaks things on its way out.
“I do,” I say. “I do tonight.”
“Then make a memory on purpose,” he says. “Pick a corner of this room and decide you’ll think of it when you’re sixty.”
I scan. The dog in the bow tie is asleep under the coffee table, snoring without shame.
Over the fireplace, someone taped a Polaroid from October—Andrew grinning with a cupcake, frosting on his thumb, my eyes smiling so hard they almost shut.
I pick both, the sleeping dog and the boy we still love, and file them under joy worth keeping.
The party bends toward the backyard as if gravity has a schedule.
The firepit is already flaming, a circle of cold-resistant fools gathered around, roasting marshmallows because humans are eight years old at their core.
I let myself be tugged among them. Triston drapes a blanket over my shoulders with the air of a man who will never again watch me shiver without doing something about it.
“Tell us something true,” Jamie challenges, cheeks bright, his beanie crooked over ear number two.
“About what?” I ask, amused.
“About love,” Tyler says in a theatrical swoon, then ruins it by choking on smoke.
“About yourselves,” Mari amends, far kinder. “We’ll go around.”
Around the flames, truths hop from mouth to mouth like sparks: I’m afraid of my contract year.
I can’t sleep on game nights. I fake a British accent when I cook pasta.
I keep the hospital bracelet from the day my daughter was born in my wallet.
The goalie’s wife says she wants a second baby, and her husband, startled, says “Okay,” like it’s a gift he never thought he’d deserve twice.
When it’s my turn, I look into the flame and say the smallest, largest thing. “I thought I had to be useful to be loved,” I confess. “I was wrong.”
Quiet. Not for long—these are people who can’t tolerate quiet—but long enough that I can hear the truth settle. Triston’s thumb strokes the back of my hand under the blanket like a seal pressed to wax. “I thought I had to be invulnerable to be worth anything,” he offers, voice low. “I was wrong.”
We do not clap. A fire crackles, the dog snorts, someone says “damn” with sincerity. The night leans in and stays.
Inside, the TV says 11:37. Time speeds up and slows down the way it always does when you decide to care.
Shots appear like magic on the kitchen island. I take one and smell it, and Triston switches it with his when I make a face. “Too sweet,” he diagnoses.
“Too dangerous,” I counter.
“Same difference,” he says, tossing it back and grimacing theatrically enough to earn a chant from the rookies. He hands me sparkling water with a slice of lime while they argue about whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie and Mari declares the conversation banned for the year.
In the living room, someone has commandeered the aux and is playing power ballads like we’re obligated to feel feelings before midnight.
We do. People sing badly and mean it. The goalie slow-dances with his wife while a toddler—of unknown origin, belonging to a neighbor perhaps—spins in circles until he falls and laughs like a drunk adult.
I dance with Triston and also with the dog, who is insulted by our romance and demands respect.