Page 80 of Cold Comeback
"Think he caught that?" Thatcher asked, nodding toward the door.
"Do you care?"
"Not even a little bit."
When we rejoined the celebration, we moved around each other with the easy familiarity of people who'd stopped pretending they weren't connected. Our teammates noticed immediately—Knox caught my eye and nodded approvingly, Pluto grinned like he'd won a long-term bet, and Linc made exaggerated gagging motions that were entirely for show.
Nobody made it awkward. They simply adjusted to the new reality of their captain and their teammate choosing to be honest about what everyone had suspected for weeks.
We worked side by side during cleanup, letting ourselves be seen without apology. When families thanked us personally for making their Christmas special, they addressed us as a unit—the way married couples get recognized as a package deal.
The last family left around seven. They offered warm thanks.
"About damn time," Knox said as we folded tables and stacked chairs. "Watching you two fight yourselves was exhausting for all of us."
"Fight ourselves?" I asked.
"You know what you were doing," Linc added, hefting a box of decorations. "Dancing around each other like middle schoolers with crushes. It was painful to watch."
"We weren't that obvious," Thatcher protested.
"Oh no, you were," Pluto called across the room. "I started a betting pool about when you'd figure it out. Knox won."
"I bet on this community catastrophe," Knox admitted. "Seemed appropriate. Good tidings and all that shit."
As the community center emptied and we finished restoring the space to its standard configuration, Thatcher appeared beside me.
"So," he said quietly. "What happens next?"
"We keep choosing each other." The answer was more straightforward than I'd expected. "We keep choosing to be real, even when it's scary. We trust that what we've built can handle honesty."
"And if we mess it up?"
"Then we figure out how to fix it together."
Outside, Richmond settled into the holiday season—porch lights twinkled against the winter darkness, families gathered around dinner tables, and children speculated about Santa's surprises. They were people choosing to take care of each other, one small moment at a time.
Walking to our cars in the community center parking lot, surrounded by our teammates, I realized this was what building something real looked like. Thatcher paused by his car, keys in hand, looking back at the community center where cleanup volunteers turned off lights and locked doors.
He turned toward me. "You know what the best part was?"
"What?"
"Nobody asked me what I learned, how I'd grown, or what this experience meant for my redemption arc." He smiled. "They let me exist and be useful, full stop."
Chapter nineteen
Thatcher
The coaching gear always gave them away. Something about how they positioned themselves in the stands, tracking plays instead of following the puck. Two days after Christmas, during our morning practice, this one sat alone in section B, forearms on his knees, reading our drills like flipping through pages in a textbook.
About thirty, athletic build. He wore a Richmond Juniors jacket. During my next lap, I saw Gideon looking up at the stranger, tense.
"Who's your friend?" I asked during a water break.
Gideon's water bottle slipped from his grasp, clattering against the boards.
"Fuck."
