"Yeah, Dad."
"Your mother's going to be unbearable about this. She called it in October."
"She calls everything."
"She called this." He pulls me into a hug, a second past where the line keeps moving. "Go. Go get your Cup. We'll talk when it stops hurting, which is going to be a while. I’m proud of you. Love you, kid."
"I love you, Dad."
"Go, Soren. It's yours. Take it."
He lets go of me and turns back to his own bench. The hardest night of his professional life. I watch him go. The two biggest moments of my life just happened in the same handshake.
I told my father I'm in love with a man and he was not surprised. The not-surprised was not performance. It was Karl, who is never surprised. For once that is not the whole problem. For once, it is enough.
They wheel it out under the lights, the oldest thing in the sport. The noise changes shape. Somebody is already arguing about who lifts it first.
"Captain gets it first, that's the rule, somebody tell Davis the rule."
"Forget the rule." Bodie, hoarse, both hands up. "Give it to the goalie. I don't care what the league says. Give it to the kid who stood on his head for this."
"You heard Bodie. Soucy. It's yours. Lift it."
I get it into his hands myself. I want my hands to be the ones. Both of his under it and both of mine under his for the half-second before I let go.
"Both hands. Over your head. Let the whole building see who did this."
"Is he crying? Is Soucy crying? The quiet guy is crying."
"Leave him alone, he earned every tear, let the man cry on the Cup."
He lifts it. The backup who came to this team to cost nothing. The goalie who spent a season being something the room worked around. He raises the first Cup this franchise has ever won over his head. Forty thousand pounds of building can see him. The building gives him his name back in one voice, over and over, the way you give something to someone who finally has somewhere to put it.
And then he looks for me. The whole place screaming his name. The oldest trophy in the sport over his head. His whole team's hands on his back. He does the thing he's done all season without knowing he does it, the scan that ends in one place, except tonight there's no bracing in front of it. No shoulders going up. No room he has to survive first. He just finds me in the crowd. The way I've spent a season being the thing his eyes land on. He holds the Cup an inch higher, at me, for me. A man who can't read his own story finally getting read his favorite lineout of someone else's. I don't need to go to him. He knows where I am. He's always known where I am. I stand a step back on a leg that can't carry me another inch. I let myself not be the one holding anything up. For once. For one chant. The man I love takes up all the room there is.
Chapter 33: Lundy
The Cup is on Avi’s kitchen counter next to a bag of ice and three beers, because that’s where the most famous trophy in the world is in July. And there is a cat asleep inside the bowl. I am at the stove because I want to be, helping cook for the crowd. That still catches me. The wanting.
"Make mine the spicy one," Soucy says, leaning on the counter where he can watch the pan.
"You want the spicy one?"
"I want the spicy one. The whole way spicy. Don't tone it down."
I look at him.
For a full season I made him the version without the heat. Every time. Without being asked. How I breathe.
"You've never once asked for the spicy one."
"I'm asking now. I've decided I like my food the way you actually make it. Stop protecting me from your own cooking."
So I make it how I make it for me. He eats the whole thing standing up at the counter. Doesn't flinch.
I file it. The asking. The way he reached across and took the thing he wanted.
Avi’s yard is full of people who were nobody's first choice.
