Jeremy pulled an incredulous face and laughed out loud for added effect at how ludicrous he thought this concept was. I kept my face unmoving, waiting for him to be done.
“Hannah, I take back what I’ve always said about you, you are funny after all.” He turned to get out of the car, still chuckling.
“She’s serious,” Kate said from the back seat.
Jeremy paused again, then went silent as he studied both of our faces, waiting for us to break and tell him we were fucking with him. We didn’t.
“Holy shit,” he whispered. “You’re serious?”
I nodded again, then inclined my head as if to encompass, well, everything: the baby bump under my sweater, the deluxe parking spot, the free tickets.
“Hannah.”
“Wild, right?” Kate agreed, leaning between our seats from the back. “Baby is going to be really tall.”
“Barry Wright? You didn’t just sleep with a hockey player, you slept with a fuckingstar, Han.”
“Well, I didn’t know that at the time! Be normal when we go in there, please.” I got out of Jeremy’s car, manually locking the door before shutting it behind me.
“How can I be normal about this ever?” He followed me toward the door I saw others go through. Kate slid her arm into the crook of mine, and not to be left out, Jeremy did too, the pairof them flanking me. “Is he cool? Can I meet him? Oh my God, I can meet him.”
“He’s not cool,” I lied. He’s way, way damn cooler than me. “He’s weird and pushy, but also nice. Tall.”
“Tall,” he agreed, stars in his eyes. “I still can’t believe we got him in that trade, it’s like a miracle.”
The guard at the door scanned our tickets on my phone, and we paused to let them tell us where to go.
“I thought being traded meant you were bad,” I said. “Why would a team trade him if he was such a star?”
“You have so much to learn,” Jeremy said, his turn to sound solemn.
A team employee greeted us warmly before handing me a large bag with the team logo on the side but guided us down a long hall before I could peek inside. They introduced themself as Lee and brought us to a room with tables of catered food, people milling about and filling their plates buffet style with food that smelled delicious. Even nervous as I was, I could almost always eat a free meal.
Sitting at a table while my siblings finished their food, I pulled out the contents of the bag and found a tee shirt, two team hoodies, and a cream jersey with 33 WRIGHT on the back.
Jeremy gasped like I was holding a winning lottery ticket.
“Can I please have that?” he whispered, almost reverently.
I shrugged and handed him the jersey, which he did a little jig about before pulling it on over his hoodie. Kate and I donned the other items, ate full plates of deserts that were perfectly passable and more so delicious because they were free, then Jeremy led the charge to find our seats.
“There’re more people here than I thought,” I remarked when we settled in, fourteen rows up on the left side of the rink (insaaaaneseats, as Jeremy said).
“What do you mean? You think no one comes to professional hockey games?”
“I just assumed that maybe our team wasn’t very good.”
“Why?” Jeremy asked, offended at the misguided belief. I held up my hands in surrender.
“I thought I would’ve heard about it more if we were good.”
Also, I believed if Barry got traded here that must have meant both he and the team weren’t very good, but it appears I was wrong on both fronts.
“We are already holding down the wild card spot and like three of our best guys are injured, so, yeah, I would say we’re pretty fucking good.”
“Chill, Jer, she’s having a baby with one of them, I think she’s a bigger fan than you are.”
Jeremy didn’t dignify Kate’s joke with more than a raised middle finger as he settled back in his chair with his bag of popcorn and soda—both free, both given by Lee.
