Chapter one
Hog
The Drop smelled like three things: grease from whatever they called chicken wings, spilled beer mopped up with bleach, and the faint burn of Christmas lights past their prime. The karaoke machine wheezed out some tragic version of "Auld Lang Syne" while a guy in a Leafs jersey—a Leafs jersey in friggin' Thunder Bay—warbled into the mic like he was calling moose.
Perfect—the kind of gorgeous chaos I lived for.
I shouldered through the door hard enough to make it bang against the wall. "Ladies, gentlemen, and Jake Riley—your night just got better!"
The familiar chorus of groans and cheers hit me before the door even swung shut. Jake's voice cut through first, naturally: "Hog! You magnificent, late bastard!"
I yanked off my knit hat—midnight blue with tiny white Storm logos I'd stitched myself. It got stuffed into my coat pocket next to the small knitted pig I'd finished during the cab ride over. Stress-knitting. Sue me.
"Traffic was murder," I announced, spreading my arms wide. "Had to stop and help an old lady change her tire."
"In a snowstorm," Evan called from the corner booth, not looking up from whatever he was writing in that damn notebook of his. "On New Year's Eve."
"She was very grateful."
"She doesn't exist."
Jake cackled from his spot at the bar, already at least three beers in. "Nah, Hog was probably knitting Christmas presents for his yarn store lady. What's her name? Margie?"
"Margaret. And she's seventy-three and makes the best butter tarts in Ontario, so watch your mouth." I grabbed him in a headlock that was half-hug, half-warning.
"You're something," Coach Rusk muttered from his throne—the corner stool where he'd been nursing the same Molson Canadian since probably October. His backward ball cap was askew, and his scowl had that exceptional holiday warmth. "Hawkins, you're loud enough to wake the dead. Sit before you scare off the paying customers."
I looked around The Drop's collection of regulars: three guys in oil-stained Carhartt jackets playing cribbage, a woman with pink hair doing shots, and Pickle bouncing in his seat like someone had fed him an espresso cocktail.
The tension I'd carried since I left my apartment started to loosen. I was in my element: noisy people who knew precisely what they were getting with Connor "Hog" Hawkins. No surprises and no complications. Only me, too loud and too big.
Except I kept glancing at the door.
"Alright, listen up, you beautiful disasters," Jake announced, climbing onto his chair. His newly bleached hair caught the droopy Christmas lights, making him look like a discount angel cut from the nativity for bad behavior. "It's resolution time."
Evan failed to glance up from his notebook. "This should be good."
"I, Jacob Anthony Riley, do solemnly swear—"
"Anthony?" Pickle's voice cracked. "Your middle name is Anthony?"
"—to chirp less this year. To be a supportive, encouraging teammate who builds people up instead of tearing them down with my razor-sharp wit and devastating good looks."
The silence that followed was so profound I heard the ancient radiator wheezing in the corner.
Evan flipped a page in his notebook and said, without missing a beat, "You've chirped me six times since we got here an hour ago. That's one every ten minutes."
"That's not that bad!"
"Including calling my sweater aggressively beige and my posture like a librarian who lifts."
Jake's mouth fell open. "You were counting?"
"I count everything." Evan pursed his lips into a brittle smile. "It's been four months. I'm starting to see patterns."
"That's—that's actually really mean, Spreadsheet."
"Thank you."
