By the time the game started, my watch was warning me I was in a very loud place, and my heart rate was totally elevated. On either side of us were season ticket holders who chatted with each other. The puck was dropped, and Jeremy knew exactly what was happening while I was none the wiser. I needed a Hockey 101 course.
“Wait, do you think he’s super rich?” I asked, feeling suddenly like if there were so many people here to support, then maybe this was bigger than I anticipated by a large margin.
Jeremy peeled his eyes away from the game to look at me in utter disbelief. Kate also looked flummoxed.
“He’s a star defenseman, he wascaptainof his last team,” Jeremy said like I’d offended him.
“Then why would they trade him?” I asked.
“It was a big trade, the other team got like three people just for him. Columbus is in arebuild, Han.”
“Did you not google him?” Kate asked, shocked herself. “His contract is very public knowledge.”
I had googled him, just for the image search function, but I didn’t admit this.
“He’s a millionaire,” Kate clarified. “As in multiple millions millionaire, not just one.”
I blinked at this news, not quite understanding. Jeremy turned back to the ice, and when a mass of shouts came from around us, I turned back to look as well. The players were around our goal, passing the puck back and forth to each other. I tracked down the 33 and followed his movement around the other players.
“He’s staying in my basement,” I admitted to Jeremy.
“You’re making Barry Wright sleep in Grandma’s murder basement?” he said, way too loud for comfort at a crowded game where probably over eighty percent of them knew who Barry Wright was.
“He’s the one who asked to stay with me, I didn’t know he was a millionaire! I didn’t even know he was good at hockey.”
And then, as if he could hear me, Barry shouldered into another player as the puck was sent his way, then tapped the puck into the net.
The stadium erupted, everyone standing and screaming, the three of us included.
And when Barry’s teammates on the ice swarmed him excitedly, he looked right up at me.
Jeremy drove us home after the game, even though he kept asking us if we could wait at the stadium to talk to Barry.
“You’ll have at least eighteen years to talk to Barry,” I told him. “No need to start tonight.”
“Can I come over then? Since you’re making him sleep in the dungeon?”
“Not tonight,” I said, but didn’t defend the basement.
Jeremy sulked about it, but also told me to say thank you for the seats, the free food, the jersey, the hoodie he also convinced me to give him, and then to ask if we could please, please do it again sometime, particularly when playing Columbus at home.
I told him I would relay the message.
It was only an hour later that Barry showed up, using the key I gave him with the bright pink keychain to come through the back door in the kitchen, where I was already making some tea.
He was in the same outfit from earlier, but his hair looked like it had been washed since the sweaty post-game interview we saw where he was dripping, hair pushed back in a wet, sexy way that probably smelled horrible but translated to being really appealing on the stadium screen.
“Want tea?”
Barry scrunched his nose in a way that was deliriously cute and needed to be purged from my brain immediately. “Do you have hot chocolate?”
“How do you get away with eating so much damn sugar all the time? Do you have a million cavities?”
“I have a respectable number of cavities, thank you very much,” Barry said. “I just think tea tastes like sand.”
I laughed and shook my head but grabbed the hot chocolate tin and some stale mini marshmallows.
“Congrats on the star of the game,” I said. “Do you get a prize for that?”
