Page 82 of She Wolf

“He didn’t,” and a devilish smile splits his face.

“Mom, we’ve been taken over by crabs, look at the size of this!” Jack says whipping the air with a snow crab leg,

“I know. I think everyone has gotten excited and ordered one of everything on the menu, maybe more than one when it came to the seafood.” I motion around the table to show him how content everyone is.

And I think this is the epitome of this group. They earn millions of dollars every year with their contracts and endorsement deals, have more cars in storage than necessary and spend thousands on suits they only wear a few times, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Adam this happy; sitting in a Philadelphian chain restaurant, that he could probably buy outright, eating his weight in crustaceans.

***

Orange. It’s all orange. The Stanley Cup winner’s banners still hang proudly in front of the town hall and the immediate area surrounding it. I think it’s going to be a long time before this city forgets what happened here—and on home ice too.

I saw some of the parade on social media, especially having grown up with one or two of the players, it was all hard to miss. The boys had gotten it together for the final and I know Casey at least wanted the Flyers to win if it couldn’t be him.

“Rex has gone a little pale, I’m just gonna go check on him,” Chloe whispers and then heads over to her husband who seems to be staring so intently I think he might be trying to scorch the damn thing with his eyeballs.

“That banner is gonna be teal next year, you’ll see,” Gunner says to Jack who nods vehemently.

“I have utter faith in you, my love. Ah! That’s cute,” I say excitedly.

Might I have finally found a name for him?

Gunner tips his head from side to side. “It’s not too bad,” he concedes.

“Okay, I’ll try it on for size. Watch this space.”

Knox huffs as he marches over. “Can we go now? I feel like a fuckin’ creeper.”

“Yeah, let's get out of here. DC awaits!” Adam hoists Jack up like he might the Stanley Cup one day and heads back the way we came.

We get Jack back in the truck for this section of the journey and once he’s all buckled in I jump into the front.

“How long until the next stop Gunner?” Jack inquires.

“Just three hours little dude, but if you need to go to the bathroom just ask.”

“Okay, I’ll tell you straight away when I start to think I might need to go, that way I won’t have to hold it in too long.”

“Good plan,” Gunner nods.

“Wanna play my favorite things game?” Jack asks. We always play when we’ve been somewhere special together.

“I do, hit me with it,” I tell him.

“Okay, ummm.” He thinks on it. “Got it. Photos with the bell. Photos when we had the weird pretzels and photos at the adventure aquarium.”

“Your favorite parts were taking the photos?” Gunner asks. I can tell he wants to turn around but he’s concentrating on getting us out of Philly and onto I-95 south.

“Yeah, the three of us altogether. Do you think we can put them in a book?”

“A photo album?”

“Yeah, or a scrapbook. Summer said she does them all the time. I kept all this so we can remember our first trip together…the three of us.”

Stunned I nod. And then turn when he rustles something against my arm.

I take the carefully folded paper and find he’s kept a map, receipts and napkins from where we’ve eaten, and tickets for the places we visited including Independence Hall.

“You kept a hold of all of this?” Gunner asks looking at my lap out of the corner of his eye.

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