“Total bullshit,” Levi said, grinning so wide it looked like it hurt.
“Coach Shenanigan signed off on it,” I said, into the microphone, calmly.
That did not help.
Kelsey had both hands over her mouth. Her eyes were bright. I could see her working through the full implications of it in real time — the press conferences, the jersey sales, the completely unprecedented nature of what I’d just done — and then she lowered her hands and just laughed, the real kind, the kind that came from somewhere low and meant she was fully, completely happy.
“I am changing my name too,” Chris announced, to the room in general.
“I don’t think they need Moore Kingmans,” Trixie said, with the precision of a woman who had been waiting a long time for exactly this setup. “Just the Best one.”
The noise that followed was significant. I handed the microphone back and walked to my wife and kissed her in front of everyone, which I didn’t usually do, but it was our wedding and she was Kelsey Best and I had just changed my name and my jersey for her, so I figured this was the appropriate time to suspend my general policy.
“Declan Best Kingman,” she said against my mouth.
“Kelsey Best,” I said back. “Same team.”
We cut the cake at a table set up outside, which had been my specific request for reasons that I didn’t explain to Ciara and that she, professional that she was, had not questioned.
The cake was white chocolate coconut with raspberry cream filling and cream cheese frosting, made by the same Denver bakery that had made every Kingman birthday cake for as long as I could remember. My dad still ordered from them. He’d never stopped. When I was a kid I thought it was loyalty. Later I understood it was something else.
Kelsey had found out about the bakery somewhere in the months of planning and had made the call herself, and then tracked me down while I was in the weight room to tell me the cream cheese frosting was non-negotiable because she knew it was my favorite. A small thing. The kind of small thing she did constantly, the quiet paying-attention that lived underneath all of it.
It made me feel like my mom was here.
I didn’t say that out loud. I didn’t have to. Kelsey looked at me as she handed me the first slice and she knew. She knew the way she always knew the things I wasn’t saying, that specific talent of hers I had given up trying to explain or account for.
I ate the cake and it tasted like birthdays and love and home.
Then the fireworks started.
I’d arranged for them at the last minute, partly because the mountain at night deserved them and partly because Kelsey had mentioned once, on a car ride, that she’d loved the Fourth of July and New Years because of the fireworks. A small detail. Filed away for later.
The first crack and bloom lit the sky above the valley and she grabbed my arm and tipped her head back and whispered, “Ooh. Ahh. Oh.”
So fucking adorable. I joined in with her on the next round.
From the treeline came a different kind of crashing sound. Emerging from the dark into the edge of the patio lights, a woman rode in on — was that — a reindeer?
The reindeer was moving with the specific dignity of an animal who was very put-upon and wanted everyone to know it. The woman on its back was holding a wrapped present in one arm and the reindeer’s scruff at the neck in the other and looked like she had personally survived a significant amount of adventure in the last several hours.
“Jessica?” Kelsey said.
“Sven,” Flynn breathed, with the reverence of a man reunited with something precious. “You came back.”
Jessica dismounted with more grace than the situation perhaps called for and walked directly to Kelsey, present extended. Her shawl, or what remained of it, had been repurposed as a headband. There was a small pine branch in her hair that she appeared to be unaware of.
“I am so sorry I missed the ceremony,” she said. “I went back to the hotel for Great Aunt Yvaine’s shawl and then there was a misunderstanding with the bus schedule and then a tree, and then Sven.” She nodded at the reindeer, who was now eating something off the side of the building. “But this is Great-Grandma Best’s teapot. I hope it didn’t break.”
Kelsey pulled her cousin into a hug, branch and all. “I’m just glad you made it. Come get some cake.”
Flynn had already made his way over to the reindeer and was having what appeared to be a sincere conversation with it, possibly an apology, possibly a negotiation. Both parties seemed cautiously willing to move forward.
Dakota appeared from the treeline a moment later, a horn in one hand and an expression of profound relief on his face. He was Tex’s son, which made him a cousin of sorts by the particular math of extended Kingman family connections, andhe ran the wild animal rescue up on the mountain that had supplied us with Sven in the first place. He looked at the reindeer, and then at Jessica, and then back at the reindeer, in the way of a man recalculating something significant.
I had a feeling love was in the pine-filled air for more than just me and Kelsey.
Later,after the last dance and the final round of goodbyes, after Jules had hugged me for a moment too long and then immediately denied it, after Isak had made me promise the footage was for family only, after my dad had put his hand on my shoulder in that way he had that didn’t need any words to mean everything, we drove up the mountain road in the quiet.
