Page 78

Joey and Carrie are making out.

Everyone is full of joy, as they should be. We just won the championship. We are pioneers in the game.

God, Ashley is doing the worm on the plastic sheets the crew laid on the floor. She’s in her sports bra and leg pads.

Me? I’m a mope. I sit in my stall, pulling off my gear, trying not to sob.

I should be in the middle of this. I should be up on that bench with Ducky, letting champagne soak my hair, and feeling the thing I've chased my entire career. This is the dream. This is why I wrecked my body for fifteen years, sacrificed every relationship, and drove across three bridges at 5 AM every morning for ice time.

And I feel nothing.

Worse than nothing. I feel the yawning absence of the person who should be in the stands. Who wasn't there. Who I looked for during warm-ups and didn't find. I scanned the Fury section — Spinner, Howie, Rookie, Ella, an empty seat — and my chest caved in. I put my mouth guard in and played sixty minutes of hockey with a hole in my sternum.

I played well. That's the worst part. This morning, Odin told me I play like I'm trying to outwork my feelings. I told him that's the only setting I have.

He asked me what my off-season looks like. After I yelled at him for cursing our chances, I admitted I have zero plans beyond ice cream and pedicures with my sister. Then the smug bastard asked whether that was my life plan or a holding pattern.

A spray of champagne hits me in the side of the head.

"BB!" Ducky points the bottle at me, grinning, hair plastered to her face. "Get up! We won!"

"I know we won. I was there."

"You look like someone stole your dog." She aims the bottle again. "Come celebrate with your team."

"Ducky, I swear to god, if you spray me again⁠—"

"What? You'll sit there looking tragic? You're already doing that." She lowers the bottle.

Tate appears beside her, toweling off her hair. "Is this about Mayhem?” Tate asks.

"No."

"It's absolutely about him,” Ducky says.

"It's not—" I pull the last strip of tape and ball it in my fist. "Can we not?"

Ducky sits on the bench across from me. She's still dripping with champagne. Her eye black is smeared down one cheek, and she looks like a raccoon who just won the trashcan lottery. "He wasn't in the stands tonight."

"I noticed."

"Did you text him?"

"No."

"Why not?"

Because I don't know what I'd say. Because I have his cat. Because I told him his family treats him like an ATM, and he left, and he should have, and I don't know how to apologize for something that was both cruel and true. "I don't want to talk about it," I say.

Joey drops onto the bench beside Ducky, carrying her wife piggyback. Carrie slides off and settles onto Joey's lap. "Are we talking about the giant boyfriend?"

"Ex-boyfriend," I say, and the word tastes like poison.

"Good riddance," Tate says, and I look at her sharply. She holds up her hands. "I'm just saying. He's a lot. He's like ... enormous and intense, with all those tattoos, and he’s kind of boring⁠—“

“He’s just quiet because he pays attention.”

"—and he's always lurking around, fixing things, which is kind of weird if you think about it⁠—"