Page 58 of My Pucking Perfect Goalie

“She was…” Sammy starts, then stops again, clearing his throat. “If I’m being honest, the two of you are complete opposites.”

I laugh without meaning to, and he glances at me, eyebrows raising.

“Sorry,” I say, laughing again. “I’m just—socurious to see where this is going.”

“Well, she was like, willowy? You know? Sometimes, when I was a kid, I kind of thought of her like a ghost. Like she would drift from room to room with this dreamy look on her face. She was a painter—back then, I didn’t realize it, but that’s actually so cool. You don’t hear a lot about the people who grow up and get to make a career from their art.”

“So, we’re opposites because she was an artist?”

“Do you have a secret hobby I’m unaware of?”

“No,” I admit, laughing again, “you have me pegged—there’s not a single creative bone in my body.”

“Not just the art,” he says, sighing. “My parents worked well together because my dad wassosolid. He always knew what to do, he was always where he needed to be. Loved schedules and plans. You’re more like him, I think. But my mom was very…soulful. She followed her heart even when it didn’t make sense.”

He pauses for a moment, thinking, then says, “You know those moments in your life when you realize you could do anything you want? That, like, you’re making certain choices because it makes sense, but you don’thaveto. Like, at any moment, you could put a shoe on your head. Or lie down on the floor. Or…do you get the point?”

“I think so,” I chuckle. “We can do whatever we want. But we just keep doing what we’ve always done.”

“Right. But my mom wasn’t like that—she did whatever she wanted. Once, she woke me up in the middle of the night. It was right after we moved to Minnesota, and I remember feeling just…like I didn’t belong. And she woke me up in the middle of the night, took me out to this lake near our new house. Spread out a blanket and we laid there and looked at the stars. It was…weird. But so much like her.”

“That sounds great,” I say, and I mean it. My chest feels tight. Sammy had great parents and lost them too soon. My parents gave up on me. I wonder if there’s anyone who has a normal relationship with the people who raised them.

“What did your dad think about the lake trip?” I ask.

“Oh,” Sammy laughs, deftly maneuvering around a plow truck, his face shadowed by the flashing yellow light. When I shiver, he reaches over and turns the heat higher, then taps on my heated seat. It all seems like a way to avoid the question.

“I think…he pretended not to know about it,” he says. “But he did. I think he had a lot of his own lake moments with Mom, too. Part of that balance.”

Without meaning to, I glance down at Sammy’s hand in mine, throat getting thick. My hand is perfectly warm now. Balance.

Sammy

I hear Clementine before I see her.

“Sam-my!”

Luckily Finn untangled herself from me last night and snuck back to her room. I hate that the bed is vacant, but it definitely would have made this situation awkward.

Clementine’s body catapults into my bed, immediately getting lost in the duvet. She’s all loose limbs and shrill giggles as I scramble, gasping loudly like I have no idea that it’s her.

I’ve never been very close with Coach Aldine—but his oldest is attached to me. I think it started when she was just a baby, and I held her for the entirety of a hockey mixer. Grey eventually found me, surprised that I was where his kid had ended up.

“Didn’t peg you as a baby guy,” he’d said, lifting Clementine’s warm body from my arms.

“Yeah, well,” I’d laughed, cheeks warming. “Nobody pegged you that way, either.”

He’d rolled his eyes, but after that, Ellie would often hand Clementine over to me when she was busy, and especially the season after that, when she was pregnant. As Clementine got older, that bond stuck. It got tighter when she discovered I could—and would—hold her up, helping her pretend to be an airplane. Now that she can talk, I think she likes that I listen to her. I think about my suitcase, and the bundle of books I got her for Christmas.

“Clem,” Ellie says, appearing in the doorway. Her other baby giggles on her hip, and she looks harried, but happy. “Don’t hurt him—Daddy says he’s very valuable to the team.”

“Ellie!” I say, feigning terror, and like I haven’t heard what she just said. “There’s something in my bed!” Clementine giggles when I bat at her with my pillow. “I think it’s some sort of bug! It’s huge!”

“Well, you’d better squish it,” Ellie says, raising her voice to be heard through the giggling. Clementine squeals with laughter, and I pull the pillow back, dropping my mouth open.

“It’s not a bug. It’s a little girl,” I say, turning to Ellie in shock.

“A little girl who needs to get to the kitchen if she wants pancakes,” Ellie says, efficiently ejecting Clementine from the room. “Sorry,” Ellie laughs, “she always has way too much energy in the mornings. Saw that Jeep in the driveway and Fal said it was you before I had a chance to stop her.”

---