Page 61 of Triplets for the Pucking Playboys
“I played two weeks with a partial. Full tear, you can’t walk. Or piss, really.”
“That explains a lot,” she says.
We work in tandem, our pace almost synchronized, and by the third box we’re sorting tape and gauze with the grimefficiency of disaster relief workers. Occasionally, her elbow brushes my side when she reaches for a new roll, and I can feel the tension in her arm. Not nervousness—more like she’s trying to keep her hands from shaking. She’s careful not to let it show, but after a few more minutes, I catch her fingers trembling as she lines up the blue tape on the top shelf.
“You good?” I ask gruffly.
She stops, takes a breath, and sets her hands flat on the edge of the table. “I’m fine,” she says. “Just haven’t eaten. Or slept.” She glances over, and there’s a flicker of something in her eyes—irony, self-loathing, a little pride at how efficiently she’s killing herself for a job.
I reach into my pocket and toss her a ginger chew. She looks at it, then at me, then back at the candy, as if she’s never seen one before.
“I keep them for the bus rides,” I say, and to make the joke land, “Finn says they’re for pregnant women but they’re also great if you get concussed on an empty stomach.”
She laughs, actually laughs, and unwraps the chew. “Didn’t know you were the team nutritionist.”
“I’m more of a cautionary tale.”
She eats the ginger chew in one bite, and for a second, her face goes slack, eyes shut. When she opens them again, there’s a little shine around the edges, but she doesn’t wipe it away or acknowledge it. Just goes back to her list.
“Thanks,” she says, and the word is so soft I almost miss it.
“Anytime,” I say.
We finish the boxes and stack the tape, then collapse onto two battered folding chairs shoved against the wall. My thighs cramp up instantly, but I don’t mention it. Neither does she.
“Ryland will think we’re dating if we keep disappearing together,” she says, staring up at the flickering shop light overhead.
“Wouldn’t be the worst rumor,” I say. “My stock’s been tanking since the last playoff run.”
She grins at that, then rubs her hands over her eyes, thumb and forefinger pinching the bridge of her nose. “I should get back. There’s three rehab sessions and an intake with a new transfer from Calgary.”
We kill half an hour in the storage room, neither of us in a rush to reenter the habitat of cameras and overcaffeinated interns. After the initial crisis of tape logistics, we migrate to the two crates by the far wall—one labeledHydration Tablets, Lemon-Lime, the otherTourniquets, 2018-2022.There’s something perversely comforting about sitting on a crate of obsolete medical gear, like if the world ends, at least you’ll be able to MacGyver your own survival kit.
Sage pulls out her phone and scrolls through her email, but mostly we just sit in a silence that is marginally less awkward than the one before. I sense she’s trying to work up to something, so I head it off with, “You ever notice the new snack packs taste like melted Lego?”
She looks up, smirks. “That’s because they’re mostly plastic. If the apocalypse hits, they’ll outlive the rats.”
“Finn told me they’re designed to last three years. He eats them with ketchup.”
She makes a face, then leans back against the concrete wall. “Did I ever tell you about the time I had to design a meal plan for a decathlete with a shellfish allergy and a religious restriction against, like, half the food groups?”
“No, but I want to hear this.”
“He was training for Worlds and couldn’t eat anything that cast a shadow after four p.m. Which meant all-night training, and nothing but white rice and root vegetables.”
“Sounds bleak.”
“It gets better. His coach insisted on a protein supplement, but it had to be non-dairy, non-soy, and certified Halal. So I found this cricket protein powder on the dark web.”
“Cricket as in … bug?”
“Cricket as in the world’s most sustainable source of complete amino acids. I made a smoothie with it. It tasted like if you licked the floor of a pet store, but he drank it and got a PR in the 400.”
I think about this, trying to top it. “Finn once dared me to eat surströmming.”
Sage chokes on her own saliva. “The Swedish fermented fish? Isn’t that banned on airplanes?”
“It should be. The can hissed when I opened it. Smelled like something died in a tire fire. Finn said it builds character, so of course I had to finish the whole thing or lose a bet.”
