I whooped along with everyone else, my chest full of joy for them. It was everything they deserved. Everything they'd worked for. Hog had spent his whole career being underestimated, dismissed as mere muscle, and Rhett had spent years building something from nothing in a town that didn't always believe in its own potential—and now here they were. Proof that you could be soft and strong. That you could build something real.
I cheered until my throat burned.
"STORM WARNING!"
A few heads turned.
"STORM WARNING!"
More this time. Jake's grin spread. Desrosiers stomped one foot.
"STORM! WARNING! STORM! WARNING!"
The bar picked it up like a wave catching a surfer—sudden, inevitable, building into something bigger than the sum of its parts. Feet pounded the floor. Fists hit tables. Someone in the back used an empty pitcher as a drum.
The stomping got so loud that dust actually rained from the rafters. Little flecks of it catching the light like the world's saddest snow globe.
I threw my head back and howled.
Not words—sound. Pure, stupid joy that didn't need to be anything else.
Someone shoved a plastic cup into my hand. I didn't check what was in it. Didn't matter. I raised it toward the ceiling, toward the water-stained tiles and the flickering light fixtures and whatever hockey gods might be watching from above.
"TO HOG AND RHETT!"
"TO HOG AND RHETT!" the bar bellowed back.
I drank. Something cheap and vaguely beer-adjacent. It burned going down in a good way.
Jake appeared at my right shoulder, still riding the high of his very public kiss with Evan, cheeks flushed and eyes bright. He bumped me.
I bumped back and threw an arm around Jake's shoulder.
"I love you, man."
"Pickle—"
"I love everyone. I love this bar. I love Biscuit even though he bit me last week—"
"He didn't bite you, he mouthed you. There's a difference."
"He put his teeth on my skin with intent!"
"He's a dog. He doesn't have intent. He has instincts and poor impulse control." Jake paused. "Actually, you two have a lot in common."
"Wow. Rude."
I grinned, and he grinned, and the celebration continued to roar around us like a living thing.
As the night wore on, the energy shifted. Not dying—settling. Finding a lower gear.
The crowd thinned. Booster club guys filtered out in twos and threes, calling goodbyes over their shoulders. The bartender wiped down the same spot on the counter over and over, willing us to take the hint.
I'd ended up in the corner booth somehow. Hog's abandoned knitting was still there—that half-finished something in Storm colors, needles stuck through at awkward angles. I picked it up without thinking, turning it over in my hands. The stitches were tiny and even. Perfect little interlocking loops, each one exactly like the last.
How did he do that? Make something so orderly, so intentional, out of just... string and patience?
I set it down carefully. Didn't want to mess it up.
