Page 6 of Gave Proof Through the Night

It’s the white-haired man. Still beaming. Holding a bunch of yellow tulips. They’re slightly lopsided, like he just bought them from someone on the corner. Both his hands are extended toward me like an offering.

“I felt bad you wouldn’t take the cash,” he says cheerfully, pressing them closer. “Please. For an honest young woman.”

I look at the tulips. I look at him. I look at the tulips again.

“Thank you,” I say, and take them.

He walks away entirely satisfied, and I stand in Georgetown Waterfront Park on Cinco de Mayo holding a bouquet of yellow tulips, thinking about a man from Mexico City with fast reflexes and very warm hands.

I tuck the flowers under my arm and head for the warehouse. I’ve got a crew to assemble.

2

JEREMIAH

Chapter playlist:

American Woman — Lenny Kravitz

Idon’t look back as I leave the park.

My hand curls into a fist at my side, then opens again. Like that’ll get rid of the feel of her pulse against my palm.

It doesn’t.

She’d been cool. The kind of effortless punk rock cool without actually being a punk rocker.

She was also, clearly, a pickpocket.

Why is she in my head?

I genuinely don’t know.

“Tsk, tsk,” I’d said, as if her very proximity turned me into a smooth talker. “Sticky fingers.”

She’d looked down at her own hand like it belonged to someone else. Looked back up at me. She had freckles. A scatter of them across the bridge of her nose, like someone had flicked a paintbrush and walked away satisfied. I don’t know why I’m cataloguing that. Brown hair. Big brown eyes. And a slight scar across her eyebrow, so faint, I almost missed it.

I don’t banter with strangers on sidewalks. I definitely don’t banter with strangers who were, thirty seconds prior, actively robbing me. And yet there I was.

I’d leaned in close enough that my mouth was level with her ear. “Crime doesn’t pay,” I’d told her. Close enough to catch the coconut in her shampoo. My voice had dropped low. Slow, unhurried, because for reasons I still can’t explain, I wanted to watch her shiver. I’d never used my voice like that before. I definitely hadn’t planned on trying it out on a woman who’d just tried to rob me. Her breath had caught, and I’d felt it more than heard it.

“Maybe I just wanted your number,” she’d said, voice not quite steady, and mine hadn’t been much steadier when I answered.

I don’t know what happened, but I felt an odd sense of vertigo but in a good way. Like when you go over the crest of a roller coaster.

I’m not the kind of guy who gets taken in by a pretty face. Trust me, there are plenty of girls who come to all the games and get really friendly in the warm-up tunnel. But as the son of a TV producer, I’ve learned the art of extricating myself from those types of situations with ease. Furthermore, I don’t have time to date. Hockey is my life. I breathe it. Dream it. Become it.

So why did that little pickpocket make my heart stop for two seconds? I’ll chalk it up to lack of proper sleep. I didn’t get my nap today.

I had six hours of cameras today, and not one second of it was anything new. Big smile, Jeremiah. Hold it. Again.

But four minutes with a stranger who tried to steal my watch, and my pulse still hasn’t leveled out.

I used to be good at this. I’ve had more media training than the average person would know what to do with. But somewhere between the last photo this afternoon and my walk to the waterfront, I forgot how to just play it cool with a beautiful woman.

She had no idea who I was. Nothing about her was a performance. Not the watch, not the college, not whatever expression I make when I think I’m being smooth. She’d looked at me like she already had me pegged, and was mildly entertained anyway.

Funny thing is, the watch isn’t even worth much. Half the time, it doesn’t work at all. But it was a gift from my old teammates in the Jr. Kings program back in Mexico City. A few of my buddies picked it up at the fayuca when I got into University of Michigan. I didn’t have the heart to tell them it’s a knock-off.