I toss my shoulder pads into the stall. “I know.”
“Cosign,” Riggs says from his stall.
I point at him like a cocky fighter pilot in a slick film. “Thanks, Fanboy.”
He flips me the bird, but I’m pretty sure he digs the new name. So do my other teammates since the new chant becomes, “Fanboy, Fanboy, Fanboy.”
That amuses me, and I’m pretty sure it delights Riggs too.
When it ends, Miller calls out from the other side of the locker room. “Wait. Is Lake coming too? To the?—”
“The single dad club,” Lake says. “And yes, you assholes, this cat dad’ll be there. Since…well, food.”
I shower and get dressed, the good mood following me. Tomorrow night, I can set up the garage for Charlotte and some friends to watch a movie while the guys hang out in the yard with the cornhole board and some grub. The first week at the bakery went well. We hired a part-time employee to help us out—Zakiya’s little sister, Aisha, was looking for a job, and we needed the help. And…Mabel and I stuck to our no-touching plan. Fine, it was easy to do since I wasn’t there. But I won’t let details get me down.
We head to the team jet and make the quick trip back to San Francisco, where the bus takes us to the arena. After I grab a hoodie I left in my locker, I head toward my car, phone in hand, ready to go home and crash. Mabel just sent me a text—a pic of a cupcake with a candle on top.Ode to the firehouse—our special for tomorrow, the caption says, and I smile. She’s good.
But as I’m walking down the corridor toward the players’ lot, Theo swings around the corner, dark eyes lasered in on me. That’s odd. But maybe he’s stressed from all the late nights he’s putting in. He didn’t travel with us on this trip, though that’s not unusual—he doesn’t go to all the away games.
“You’re working late,” I say by way of greeting.
He doesn’t offer a fist bump, a clap on the back, or a “good game.” Instead, he points to the doors leading up to the second floor. “You. Me. Now.”
“Your office?” I ask.
A crisp nod is his answer.
That’s not good. I gulp but try not to show a shred of emotion. I follow my best friend up the stairs, and the click of his wingtips on the floor is ominous.
When we reach his office, he shuts the door with a decisive snap, and my gut twists. I tell myself to stay stoic. He has to have found out I’ve been messing around with his sister. Not once, not twice, not even three times.
My head swims with the realization that it’s been four times. For fuck’s sake, I’m addicted.
But more so, I’m a liar. I’ve been lying to my best friend about all these goddamn feelings for his sister. These emotions that claw at me. I haven’t been forthright with him. But how can I be forthright when Mabel and I aren’t a thing? Not really. What’s done is done, and the guilt over the lies of omission is mine to live with, and mine alone.
“I heard something, Corbin,” he says, jaw tight, tone sharp.
“What did you hear?” I ask, as nonchalantly as I can while dread swirls in me.
“I heard from my former first-grade teacher, who’s in the knitting club, who heard it from Zoe at the gym, who heard it from the barista at Rise and Grind, that you hooked up with my sister in the middle of the bakery.”
A laugh scrapes my throat because that is a serious game of small-town telephone. But still, the wordshooked uphang heavily in the air.
I scramble for an excuse. Except, hold on. The mental gymnastics he just went through tell me he doesn’t actually know what we did inthe kitchen, so he doesn’t know I’ve lied to him. Sure, he must know that I kissed his sister on opening night. But I did it in front of Ronnie, Tiffany, and Brittany.
I stay on the facts—just the facts.
“What did the barista see?” I ask, keeping my cool.
He huffs. “You guys were kissing. She saw it, and it was in front of that fucking flying asshat from Webflix.”
Must have been Joni who started this somehow. She probably lingered outside out of view. She probably saw that kiss.
Think fast. Think really fast. But then it hits me—I have to do what I do on the ice. Pivot and go with a new play. And that play just happens to be…the truth.
Orsomeof the truth.
“Dude,” I say in a conspiratorial tone. “Ronnie and his friends were coming at Mabel and saying stuff like, ‘Oh, you’re so sad about your ex talking shit about you on Webflix.’ So I claimed we were together. I wanted to shut down the idea that she opened the bakery because she was sad over Dax. I wanted to mess with them, change the narrative, as they say.”
