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For the next two hours, Briggs tries to fire every puck I pass him directly at my head.
By the time we finish, the garment bag waits inside my locker beside a rectangular box from Fragile.
I found the glass studio three days ago while walking back from lunch. The name on the window stopped me because Charm would have appreciated the contradiction of a store filled with objects heated, stretched, cut, and struck before anyone labeled them delicate.
Inside, glass hung from the ceiling in sheets of color. Bowls caught sunlight along the shelves. Flowers, animals, and abstract shapes covered every available surface while an artist worked behind a partition near the back.
The marbles I gave at the rehearsal dinner had been made there.
I recognized the style before the owner confirmed it.
An hour later, I had described Charm, her boutique, and enough of her personality for a stranger to tell me I looked sick with love. I didn’t argue. I commissioned a glass sculpture for the counter inside her shop.
The finished piece is a dress caught in movement.
Blush-pink glass forms the skirt, blown thin enough along the edges to appear like fabric lifting in a breeze. Liquid gold winds through the bodice and spills into the folds. Tiny crystals gather at the waist before scattering down one side, catching light with every shift of the box.
It is elegant, dramatic, expensive, and entirely incapable of becoming invisible.
It is Charm.
The artist engraved three words into the black glass base.
TAKE UP SPACE.
I run my thumb across them before closing the box.
The gift, jersey, and photographs already cover most of my dining table when Briggs enters my apartment without knocking.
“You own a key for emergencies.”
“This is an emergency.”
He places a stack of printed photographs beside the box.
I look through them.
Briggs took most of the pictures at camp. In one, I am sitting on the bench tightening my skate while the empty arena rises behind me. Another catches me laughing at something outside the frame. I don’t remember doing it, but Briggs stands near the boards in the background with his mask lifted, so he was probably insulting someone.
Several show the team on the ice and inside the locker room. Nobody is completely dressed in any of them, but nothing is visible that will force Charm to burn the photograph after enjoying it.
I lift the final picture.
Briggs and I stand in front of the windows inside my apartment with Milwaukee illuminated behind us. His arm is around my shoulders, and mine hooks around the back of his neck. We are both laughing, the city blurred beneath the glass while autumn rain streaks the windows behind us.
“You printed that one?” I ask.
“You told me to find pictures of your life.”
“I look drunk.”
“You were drunk.”
“So were you.”
“I remain photogenic through adversity.”
I place it beside the others.
