I pick up my phone to call Kara mainly to reassure myself and see a text from Zach.
Zach
I’ve been trying to send this for two days and keep deleting it
I’m just going to rip the bandaid off and say it now before I lose my nerve
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the other night. specifically about what we did and how you felt
I’m sending this with my eyes closed. please tell me you’re almost here so I can stop staring at my phone waiting to see if you’re going to laugh at me
I pull into a visitor parking spot in his building’s garage and try not to laugh because even over text he still can’t quite say it. He typed the words and I can practically see him hovering over the send button, deleting and retyping, maybe closing the app entirely and opening it again. This is the same guy who rehearsed asking for my number in his car for twenty minutes.
Me
I’m in the parking garage
Zach
oh thank god
Me
Are you talking about my pussy?
Zach
jesus christ
Me
because I brought dinner, but if you had something else in mind…
I grab the bags and get out of the car. Okay. So I’m definitely not making up how much he likes me. But Kara’s right. I can see it now, sitting here with his text on my phone. He might be the most quietly observant person I’ve ever met but he is completely, genuinely oblivious to this one specific thing. And the guy who just typed that out with his eyes closed and his heart probably hammering in his chest definitely doesn’t know he sent it to his teammate’s daughter.
And I’m going to have to break it to him. Double fuck.
He opensthe door before I knock, which means he was watching for me through the peephole. His ears are red and he takes the bags from me without making eye contact and disappears into the kitchen. I stand in his hallway for a second watching him go, thinking about how this man sent me a text about fingering me and now can’t look at me.
We eat on the couch where he’s got game film pulled up on his laptop while he’s narrating a neutral zone sequence, breaking it down with his hands, and I can see the goalie brain working in real time, angles and probabilities, and I’m nodding along but Kara’s voice is so loud in my head it’s practically a third person sitting between us on this couch.
Tell him. Just tell him.
But he’s explaining a forecheck and his whole face is alive with it, the way it only gets when he’s talking about hockey. And I’ll tell him, I will. But not yet. Not while he looks like this, animated andunguarded, more words coming out of him in five minutes than he usually says in a whole day.
The film keeps rolling. A puck shoots across the rink and two guys race for it and without thinking I make the call. “Icing.”
The whistle blows on screen. Icing.
Zach glances at me. “Good eye.”
“My dad taught me.” I keep my voice casual. Testing the water. One toe in. “He’s a big hockey guy.”
“Oh yeah? Does he still play?”
“Yeah.”
I don’t elaborate. I’m staring at the screen and inside my head there’s a version of me that is screaming SAY IT, MACKIE, OPEN YOUR MOUTH AND SAY THE WORDS, and there’s another version of me that’s watching the way our knees are pressed together on his couch and thinking about how this might be the last time he lets me sit this close to him.
