Page 86 of Cherry Picking

“Time. Money. The usual reasons people stop doing the thing they love.”

“Those are just the surface reasons,” Lily replies, handing me a glass of pink wine. “The real ones run deeper. But I won’t psychoanalyze someone I met four minutes ago. Come on—let’s meet the rest of the group. They’re much better company than my husband’s hockey buddies.”

She guides me back toward the kitchen, where two women are huddled around the island over wine. One is Lauren, a hairstylist sporting a bright streak of blue in her bangs, who’s here with someone named Halloran.

He’s Sam’s defensive partner, they tell me, a quiet Irishman who keeps to himself. The second woman, Zarah, recently got engaged to Duval, the Kings’ goaltender.

“Ah, so you’re the funeral home worker?” Zarah asks. “Your reputation precedes you.”

I catch myself smiling at the countertop. “That’s me.”

“Is it as bizarre as everyone thinks?”

“Most of the time, it’s just mountains of paperwork, dealing with grieving families, and coworkers who are a little eccentric.” I take a sip of the wine, secretly praying it isn’t another two-hundred-dollar bottle. That’d just be wasted on my palate. “What about you?”

“I’m a labor and delivery nurse,” Zarah replies.

“So we’re basically bookends,” I say. “You handle the arrivals, I handle the departures.”

All three woman laugh, delighted, and my chest goes warm at the sound.

“And how do you feel about being partnered with men who get paid to take a punch?”

“You build up a tolerance for the punching,” Lily says. It’s the losing that’s the real problem. He comes home after a bad game, and he’s like a ghost for forty-eight hours.”

“Every single one of them,” Zarah agrees, leaning against the counter. “You learn to give them their orbit until the frustration burns off.”

I think about Briggs retreating into silence after the Montréal loss, calling me from that hotel room just to find his way back to himself. But I don’t bother to share the thought. These women have years on me, and trying to relate would feel like an intrusion I haven’t earned.

When we’re called into the other room, dinner is waiting for us. Platters of it, spread across an antique formal table laid with mismatched linen and dozens of candles. We all crowd around it, elbows negotiating for space.

Sam carves a massive roast while Augie teases him mercilessly from a nearby barstool. “You’re hacking at it, Cap. It’s a roast, not a defensive clear.”

“Augie, have you ever operated a blade that didn’t have a boot attached to it?”

“Plenty of times.”

“Name a single instance.”

“. . . I carved a world-class jack-o’-lantern in 2009. It was a masterpiece.”

We eat and talk, and somebody spills a drink within four minutes, which nobody reacts to at all. None of them are treating me like a temporary guest, either. I keep waiting for it, and it doesn’t happen.

The table sorts itself into three conversations, and I’m in the middle of all of them.

Augie maneuvers a roasted potato right off the plate of one of the kids, who’s far too polite to stage a protest, and mimes a swoon of exaggerated gratitude with his fork. To my left, Charlie Foster is deep into the details of an Ontario fishing expedition that nobody in the room believes for a single heartbeat.

It’s a beautiful, vibrant sort of chaos. And through the middle of it, I keep catching Briggs—mid-laugh, mid-bite, mid-argument with Duval—looking my way. Every time our eyes lock, he holds the connection and offers a slow, stupidly handsome smile that makes the room feel a dozen degrees warmer.

Somewhere between the second helping of roast and the peach pie, his phone begins its performance against the wood. He silences it without looking, but a minute later, the vibration returns, the screen lighting up his knuckles in a persistent, buzzing circle.

“You’re in high demand,” I murmur.

He glances at the display, his mouth flattening into a thin line. “It’s just Ted.” He thumbs the screen dark again. “The man’s been at me since sunrise.”

I tilt my head, the curiosity getting the better of me. “Oh yeah?”

“Just trying to earn his commission, I guess.”