Page 48 of Margo and the Faux Good Luck Beau
“Home?”
“Cobbiton is home.”
“I’ll need your help to fill in the blanks. By the way, I now understand cereal milk in coffee. Game changer.”
“I had to talk to my mother before we hadthistalk.”
“Is everything okay?” Concern flits across her features.
“It’s as okay as it’s ever been. I figured it would be best to tell her our plans in person.” And I had to pick up the engagement ring.
“Right. So what are our plans?”
“We’re getting married on St. Patrick’s Day.”
“That seems like bad luck. Weird luck. I don’t know what kind of luck.”
“I’m a recovering expert on superstitions and bad luck.”
She nearly sputters her coffee. “What does that mean?”
“It means that I struggle with things like that. For years, I had to check my gear in a particular order. My pregame meal was always the same: chicken, rice, and blueberries.”
“Blueberries.”
“Another Pierre influence.”
“Could be worse.”
I continue, “No shaving or even trimming the beard during playoffs. Tap the goalposts in a certain order when I’d get into position. The lucky socks, which is mostly what broke mebecause the brand stopped making them with the red and black lines on the top. I tried to get them custom-made, but it proved ridiculously involved.” Very few people know the extent of this. Heck, I didn’t realize it until something interrupted my patterns—holes in my last pair of triple-striped athletic socks.
“You’re not joking, are you?”
“I wouldn’t joke about this, Honey Butter.”
Her cheeks turn rosy.
“When you said that couple you called the Leprechauns canceled, I took it as a sign.”
“But wouldn’t signs fall under the category of superstitions and luck?”
“Let’s not complicate things.”
“Okay, we’ll play your way.”
More of the truth skates close, but I’m not sure how much to tell. “For a long time, I didn’t have much control over my life. So I formed habits, rituals, and that kind of thing to create the illusion that I had some agency. It became so second nature that I didn’t notice that it was consuming me. When I joined the team, Coach Badaszek noticed. Got me to talk to someone.”
“But you’re not a talker.”
“Exactly. But it planted a seed. In the same way it escalated, I eventually de-escalated it. Win by win, I gave up one of my habits. The game you watched in New York was the first one where I didn’t have on the supposedly lucky socks. That meant something.”
“You took that as a sign?” she echoes.
“More like a confirmation that my life was mine again. That I didn’t need to do certain things or risk my desired outcome.”
She smiles proudly. “You shut down that game.”
“It was a shutout,” I gently correct.
