“It’s super early. I have to be up at six instead of seven-thirty.”
“Anything for you, even mornings,” I grumble as I drift off.
The sound of birds chirping before the sun even rises hurts my head. Their happiness over the dawn is awful. They’ve never been this loud before.
It’s like there’s a flock of them.
My eyes float open, and I realize the sound is coming from Mabel’s side of the bed.
What the hell? Her phone is chirping. It sounds sick. My head is a fog. The room is pitch black. Mabel looks so peaceful, sleeping soundly, so I reach across her and hit the snooze button.
Except sometime later—I don’t know how much later—she’s bolt upright, hopping around the room yanking on panties, muttering, “Shit, shit, shit!”
I push up in bed, groggy. “What’s wrong?”
“It’snine!” she shouts, one hand in her hair, the other grabbing her bra. “I was supposed to be up at six. So I could be at the bakery by seven. I have to get the cake in the oven right now or it’ll never cool in time for the event.”
Oh shit. My stomach craters. I didn’t hit snooze on her alarm. I hit off. This is my fault. Come to think of it, “Nine?”
She’s already running around, hunting for her shirt. “I set my alarm. I swear I did. I don’t know why it didn’t go off.”
Oh, I know why. Because I turned it off.
I just stare at her, my heart pounding with guilt as she yanks on her sweater, then grabs her phone. I want to sayI’m sorry,but she’s already halfway down the stairs, calling someone, then saying, “Aisha, can you come in early?” A brief pause. “Shoot. That’s right. What about Audrey?”
And it hits me that she’s holding everything together, and I’m the one unraveling it.
Like when I ordered the wrong pretzels and she saved the day. Like when I was late to the cookie swap but she set up everything without me.
She’s the one who fixes things.
And here she is, running out of my house because I fucked up. And she’s probably about to call a Lyft.
“Wait,” I shout, then pull on shorts and a T-shirt in record time. I fly down the stairs, and drive her to the bakery, where she left her car yesterday before we went to the studio.
She’s on the phone the whole time, then says the fastest of goodbyes, racing into the bakery.
As I drive back to my house all I can think is I’m…the hot mess.
And now I’m late for practice—for the first time in my career.
Don’t speed. Don’t speed. Don’t fucking speed.
But even if I wanted to race through the city, traffic is making an ass of me. I grit my teeth, swallowing down ten thousand gallons of self-loathing as the clock on the dashboard warns me of my fate. I avoid the clogged Embarcadero and maneuver through the side streets to the arena.
So much for that strategy though. They aren’t much faster.
Every muscle in my body is tight. I breathe out hard, barely relieved when the sign for the arena comes into view, along with the fox statue.
Never been so happy to see it—or so embarrassed.
And I’m showing up ten minutes after ten to the goddamn players’ lot. It’ll take me another five minutes to suit up.
I slam the car door, sprint to the players’ entrance, and run hard down the hall to the empty locker room. The silence is shameful. I should have done better. I can’t believe I was so…so high on sex and love and romance that I skipped an alarm. For both of us.
I tug off my shirt and jeans in record time, then pull on my pads, shorts, jersey, and skates, lacing them faster than I ever have before.
It’s just practice, but it’s more than that—it’s a rule. Coach’s rule. You can’t be late for practice.
