Page 36 of Wild Card 13

“Yeah,” I admitted after a second. “Kinda.”

Lucy smiled slightly and rested her chin against her hand while she looked at me across the table.

“My dad used to bring me here after games sometimes,” Iexplained before I fully decided to say it out loud. “Especially after bad ones.”

Lucy stayed quiet, letting me continue naturally instead of jumping in to fill the silence.

“We’d sit over there usually.” I nodded toward a booth closer to the bar. “And he’d make me wait like ten full minutes before eating because otherwise the cheese would basically melt your face off.”

“That sounds medically dangerous.”

“It builds character.”

“It builds third-degree burns.”

“Worth it.”

Lucy laughed softly again, and I felt myself relax further into the booth without meaning to.

“That’s why everyone says ‘fear the cheese,’” I explained.

“People say that?”

“Marlene definitely says that.”

“Should I be concerned?”

“Yes.”

Lucy shook her head, smiling down at her hands before looking back up at me through her eyelashes.

I didn’t have to perform constantly. Didn’t have to be loud enough or funny enough or impressive enough to hold her attention.

She already looked at me like I mattered.

A lot of people knew hockey-me.

Teachers.

Coaches.

Teammates.

Parents.

The version of me who chirped too much and talked too loud and acted like everything rolled off my back because that was easier than admitting when things actually got under my skin.

But sitting here across from Lucy in a tiny booth at Matt’s while snow fell softly outside the windows and The Beatles still drifted low through the speakers overhead—I had this sudden terrifying feeling she might eventually know every version of me.

Marlene appeared beside the booth before my brain could spiral itself into complete emotional catastrophe.

“All right, Romeo,” she announced, setting two baskets down in front of us. “One Jucy Lucy for Lucy.”

Lucy immediately covered her face with one hand laughing.

“And one for the hockey menace currently staring at her like he forgot how restaurants work.”

“I’m literally sitting here normally.”