Page 142 of Changing the Playbook

The moment stretches between us, heavy with all the things we don’t need to say. I’m wiping tears from laughing when Mike catches my eye across the kitchen. He tilts his head toward the back door—a question, an invitation, a promise of a moment of quiet in the middle of chaos.

I grab his coat from the hook and follow him onto the porch.

The cold hits sharp enough to steal my breath. Snow falls in thick, lazy flakes that muffle sound until it feels like we’ve stepped into another world entirely. Mike pulls me back against his chest before I can shiver, his arms coming around me with the easy familiarity of someone who knows exactly how I fit against him.

“Your family’s certifiably insane,” he says, and I feel his smile pressed against my hair.

“You’re just figuring this out now?”

“No, I’ve known for a while.” His arms tighten, pulling me impossibly closer. “I love it. I love them.” A pause, his breath warm against my ear. “I love you.”

We stand there watching the snow erase the world beyond our porch, the muffled sounds of laughter floating from the kitchen. Perfect. Terrifying. Ending. My mom is getting sicker, the draft is getting closer, and I’m graduating in six months. Soon, all this will change.

“Hey.” He turns me in his arms, hands coming up to frame my face. His dark eyes are serious in the porch light. “I need to give you something.”

My heart stutters, then races. His hand moves to his pocket and for one wild, impossible second I think?—

He pulls out a key. Simple. Silver. Unremarkable except for how my entire world reorganizes around its presence.

“I’m not proposing,” he says, and there’s a wry twist to his mouth that doesn’t quite hide his nervousness. “We’re not there yet. But this—“ He presses the key into my palm, closing my fingers around metal that’s already warming from his touch. “This is a promise.”

“Mike—“

“Let me get this out while I still have the nerve.” His thumbs brush across my cheekbones, catching tears I didn’t realize were falling. “When June comes, when they call my name and ship me off to whatever city pulls my number out of a hat, the first thing I’m doing is finding a place. And you’ll have a key from day one.”

The key sits in my palm, such a small thing to carry such enormous weight. But that’s Mike, taking my biggest fears and breaking them down into tangible promises. Not a ring that says forever when we’re still becoming who we’ll be. Not a vow to never leave, because that’s not how his world works.

Just a key that saysyou’ll always have a place with me.

“I’m asking you to be my home team,” he continues, and his voice cracks just enough to make my chest ache. “My person. The one who has the key to wherever I am, whenever you need it or want it or just miss me too much to stay away.”

The words come out on a sob that tastes like pure joy. “Yes. God, yes.”

He kisses me then, deep and desperate and full of promises that don’t need words. His hands tangle in my hair, and I melt into him, into this moment, into the absolute certainty that whatever comes next, we’ll face it together. And when we finally break apart, we’re both covered in snow, and my toes have gone numb in my boots, but I’ve never felt warmer.

“Should we go back in?” I ask, though I make no move to leave the circle of his arms.

“In a minute.” He pulls me close again, chin resting on my head. “I just want to remember this exact moment.”

When we finally go back inside, the warmth hits like a wall. My dad glances up from where he’s mediating what appears to be a full-scale cookie decoration war between Hazel and Maine, takes in our joined hands and snow-covered hair, and gives me the smallest nod.

Just that—a tiny acknowledgment that says he sees us, that he approves, that his daughter found someone who’ll give her keys instead of cages. And, a second later, Andy materializes at my elbow while Mike gets pulled into judging the cookie contest.

“Did my brother just give you jewelry?” She eyes my clenched fist with laser focus. “Because if he went ring shopping without me, I’m going to murder him.”

I open my hand to show her the key. “Not quite...”

Understanding dawns across her face in stages—confusion, recognition, then something soft and knowing. “Oh,” she breathes. “Oh, that’s perfect. That’s the most Mike thing I’ve ever seen. You know he’s completely gone for you, right? Like, embarrassingly, write-terrible-poetry-about-it gone.”

“We’re going to be OK,” I say, testing the words, tasting their truth.

“Of course you are.” Andy loops her arm through mine with easy familiarity, which we’ve come to share since becoming friends. “Look at Dec and me. Paris is a hell of a lot farther than any NHL city, and we’re thriving. Well, exhausted and slightly insane from time zones, but thriving.”

“How?” The question escapes before I can swallow it back. “How do you stand it? The not knowing when you’ll see each other next, the time differences, the?—“

“The loving someone so much that distance becomes just another fact, like their height or middle name?” Andy finishes. “You schedule dates over video calls. You send too many texts about nothing. You save up all your stories for three-hour phone calls. You treasure every visit like it’s Christmas morning.”

She squeezes my arm, then leans in with a conspiratorial whisper. “Plus, think about the reunion sex. Absolutely elite tier. Like, clear-your-whole-weekend, warn-the-neighbors level amazing.”

“Andy!”

“What? I’m just saying, absence makes the penis grow harder. It’s science.”

“That’s not how the saying goes!”

“It is in my extensive personal research.”

We dissolve into the kind of laughter that makes your stomach hurt, and I realize this is what I’ve been missing. Not just Mike’s family becoming mine, and mine becoming his, but having a friend who understands the specific ache of loving someone whose dreams might carry them away.

Someone who knows that letting them go isn’t about loving them less—it’s about loving them enough to grow alongside their ambitions instead of despite them.