“Hey Zach! Can I get a quick clip for the socials? Maybe like thirty seconds on how you’re feeling heading into Game 6?”
“No, sorry, I can’t today.”
Her face falls before she catches it, the perky professional smile snapping back into place. I feel like an asshole. She’s just doing her job, and I’m usually fine with the media stuff. I actually don’t mind her—she never asks the bullshit gotcha questions unless Rodriguez puts her up to it. But today I can’t stand in front of a camera and pretend to be confident and prepared. I’m not.
“That’s okay,” she says, and her voice is still bright but I can hear the slight edge underneath it, the well-that’s-never-happened-before of it all. “Maybe after the game we can?—”
“Z! There he is, my guy, my brother, my perpetually single bestie who won’t return my texts!”
Rodriguez materializes and throws an arm around my shoulder, pulling me into his side as he turns to face the camera with the kind of grin that makes him the team’s media darling. He’s saying something about how they’re fired up, how the boys are feeling good. I slip out from under his arm and keep walking toward the plane.
I hear him ask if she wants him to do some trending little dance and I know he’s buying me time, covering for me the way he always does even though I’ve never once asked him to.
The plane is half-full when I board. Guys nod at me as I pass, a few shoulder claps, the quiet kind of support that’s somehow worse than if they just ignored me because it means they might be worried. And the only thing worse than being the guy who let in the goals is being the guy everyone’s tiptoeing around because of it.
I find my usual seat against the window near the back, away from the card games and the noise, and I’m starting to think I might get a few minutes alone when Jack Anderson sits next to me.
“This one taken?”
“No, go ahead.”
He settles in and I try not to look at him too long because every time I do my brain serves up the image of his daughter straddling me on my couch twelve hours ago, and I have to physically redirect my thoughts the way you’d yank your car from driving directly into oncoming traffic.
“How you holding up?” he asks, and his voice is so genuine that my skin crawls with it.
“I’m okay. Nervous, I guess.”
“That’s normal.” He takes a sip of his coffee and leans back. I don’t think I’ll ever understand how a person does that—how you play in this league for almost twenty years and still manage to becalm before playoff games. “You know what I’ve learned about nerves?”
“What’s that?”
“They don’t go away. You just get better at playing through them.” He shrugs, and it’s the same shrug Mackie does, the same easy roll of the shoulders. “Your body knows what to do. You’ve put in the work. Just gotta trust it.”
“Mm-hmm.” Which is all I can manage because he’s being kind to me and I am lying to his face every single day. “Thanks, Jack.”
“I mean it. The boys believe in you. I believe in you.” He claps me on the shoulder. His hand sits there for a second, the weight of it making me want to confess everything. I see myself opening my mouth and letting it all pour out, ready to accept whatever comes after. Anything to stop feeling like this. “We’re gonna be fine.”
He pulls out his phone and starts scrolling. I turn toward the window, focusing on my breathing.
My phone buzzes. I’m 99% certain it’s Mackie. I shouldn’t check it with her dad sitting right here, but my hands are already moving, pulling it out and tilting the screen away from him on pure instinct.
Mackie
good morning future game 6 hero
I woke up and you aren’t here and your bed smells like you and I’m big sad about it
anyway here’s some motivation for later
And then a photo.
I don’t open it. I can see the preview, and that’s enough. It’s her in my jersey, nothing else, taken from an angle that makes my whole body run hot. I fumble the phone so hard it nearly flies outof my hands.
“You good?” Jack asks, glancing over.
“Yep, fine, slippery case.”
I shove the phone under my thigh and stare straight ahead and try to bring my heart rate back down to something that won’t kill me.
