Page 4 of Puck Daddies
The security guard nods at me like he knows. Maybe he does.
The elevator whispers up and opens into a foyer with art I don’t love and a console table I had to move three inches to keep from bumping my hip every day. The apartment is quiet. Of course it is. Luke isn’t back yet. Maybe he’s smoothing things over. Maybe he’s telling Callie I’m “emotional” and they should be patient with me, like I could be coaxed to come back.
Not happening.
I go to the bedroom I don’t call ours and pack two suitcases. In the living room, there’s a photo of us on the mantel from a fundraiser—me in green, Luke in navy, my smile wide enough to sell something. I take it down and set it face down on the coffee table, not because I’m dramatic but because I don’t want it looking at me while I gather the pieces of myself.
I wheel one suitcase, then another, to the door. At the threshold, I look back once the way people do in books, to see if the house changes shape when you choose yourself. It doesn’t. It’s still beautiful and cold. I leave the fob on the console because I don’t want Luke to say I took something that wasn’t mine.
It’s still raining. Baltimore never does half measures when it decides to be wet. The roads gleam black and dangerous and weirdly friendly, the way city nights can be. Thankfully, the driver service waited for me, so I give him the address I know by heart. The wipers keep time while my brain replays Callie’s hand on Luke’s suit jacket, the wordourknifing the air, Luke’s mouth shapingboringlike he was dying to say it.
I could have been crueler. I could have thrown a drink. I could have truly embarrassed them. Maybe I should have.
By the time we turn onto their block, the worst of the shaking has stopped. The driver parks under the awning. “You want me to wait?” he asks, and I could hug him for the kindness of the question.
“No. Not this time. Thank you.”
I unload the suitcases myself because I need the ache in my arms. I drag them through the hallway to the door of their apartment and set them down with a thud that feels earned. Then I sit on the floor with my back to their door, the suitcases on either side of me like sleepy dogs, and listen to the rain drum on the awning and the elevator ding somewhere down the hall and my own heartbeat slow to something survivable.
2
HUDSON
Sticky’s isloud in an easy way—goal horns on the TV, fry grease that smells like a hug, wood tables carved up with initials from a decade of regulars. It sits two blocks from the arena like a little brother with a scar and a big mouth. Win or lose, the place makes room for us. Lately it’s been lose more than win. Baltimore loves us anyway. It’s not pity either. It’s pride.
Every time we drop a game, there’s somebody on the sidewalk afterward with a kid on their shoulders yelling, “Next time!” like it’s a prayer. The city knows we show up, even if we don’t win every game. We do charity skates, youth clinics, food drives, build days, reading to second graders who only sit still when we do the voices—there’s always something. The losing streak bites. The support doesn’t.
I’m at a high-top with a water and a basket of fries I keep stealing from myself. I could drink. I don’t. I like the edge clean when I need it. The team is scattered around—coats over chair backs, beanies and ball caps, the same jokes we’ve told for years coming out fresh because a rookie hasn’t heard them yet.
On the makeshift dance floor by the jukebox, Fitz and Rocco are doing that polite shuffle with a pair of puck bunnies. The women are laughing, hair shiny under neon, hands on forearms. Fitz smiles with his mouth, not his eyes. Rocco moves like a man who knows the beat but doesn’t want to be on it. I know my guys. From diapers to daycare and beyond—our families kept ending up in the same places like magnets. We were the trio who hogged the monkey bars, then the ice, then the back bench of the team bus. When billeting wasn’t required, we still lived together because we wanted to, not because we had to.
We still choose the same orbit on purpose. A big apartment, one shared calendar on the fridge, a rotation for dishes we ignore, and a standing rule that whoever has first wake-up gets the first shower. Living together isn’t arrested development; it’s a form of survival.
Around them, the bad part of my temper has nowhere to land. I remember I’m more than a player who skates angry—I’m a person who laughs loud, cooks when my hands won’t stop, and sleeps hard because the people I love are a room away.
“Hey, Hud,” someone says behind me. I don’t have to turn to know it’s one of ours. “You going to tell your boy Fitz to stop breaking hearts? That girl’s gonna think he’s in love.”
“Fitz is allergic. She’ll be fine.”
The jukebox flips to an old hit everybody pretends not to like, and Fitz throws his head back and laughs like someone just told him a secret he already knew. Rocco says something to his partner that makes her cover her mouth to hide a snort. He’ll play polite until he can find his exit.
My phone buzzes but I don’t check it. I’m trying to make a habit of being where my feet are. Besides, tonight is for the same ritual we do after every home game—we show up at Sticky’s, we let the city see that we’re not disappearing into our cars with our heads down. We tip too much, we put our hands on a hundred shoulders on our way through the door. One of the servers splits the check and pretends to mess it up so we all have to throw in extra. It’s a game inside a game.
The puck bunnies switch partners and end up with Fitz dipping one of them like we’re at prom. He’s strong as a roof beam and gentle as a lab with a baby, so it looks like a romance cover. He’s not into it. He’ll smile as long as it’s kind. He won’t take a number. He says “thank you” like he means it when they peel off to the bathroom in pairs.
A couple of the guys at our table start in with the usual: Why are you leaving early? It’s Thursday. Nobody has morning skate. Get wrecked with us. I have less patience for it when we’re losing, not because I’m mad at them, but because I don’t want to pretend I can outrun how much I hate not winning by drinking with people who love me whether I do or not.
“Got deliveries at dawn,” I say. “Old folks get mean when I’m late.”
“They get mean when you’re early too,” Rocco says, easing up beside me. He’s got his smile on the way you put a jacket back on when you step into wind.
“You done playing nice?”
“She liked my voice,” he says, like it’s a punch line to a joke only we tell. He taps his throat. “Said it sounded like whiskey in a church.”
“Gross,” I say, and grin. “Fitz?”
Fitz slides in on my other side, breathless like he’s been running. “She was pretty,” he says, honest as always. “Just not the right pretty.”
