Page 146 of Puck You Both

After that the ice stops being a rink and morphs into a yard. Families pour through the bench doors. Devon comes airborne into Ace. Mateo comes carrying a flag, Groover carrying Mateo. Jinx skates one lap touching every previously forbidden object in his vicinity, lifting each ban individually, and finishes by hugging the Cup with both arms. Mama Paws comes out with her whole face shining and a parrot on her shoulder.

Hendrix is wearing a tiny jersey, riding her through the confetti, an admiral reviewing his fleet. A broadcast crew swings past to film him, live mic, national feed.

"WHAT THE PUUUUCK," Hendrix tells America.

There will be complaints, I’m sure. The FCC will write somebody a letter, and Mama Paws will acquire it, frame it, and hang it over the kennels.

I'm still laughing when I reach the glass door, and my people are already there.

Mom first. She steps onto the ice in her sensible shoes, takes my face in both hands the second I bend down, and looks at me for a moment with her whole triage history behind her eyes. "Well, well," she says. "Finally something to put on the mantel."

"I love you too, Mom."

Behind her, holding the door frame, a Viper in enemy ink and a winger in a jersey with two names on it, both of them wearing the last hour on their faces, waiting to be asked.

As if there's a version of tonight where I don't ask.

I reach out and pull them onto the ice.

Theo hits me first, legs locking around my waist, hands on my ears, and kisses me in front of the team, the stands, the broadcast, and eleven million future views. The stands, mid-celebration, somehow find extra volume for it, a swell inside the roar, and Theo pulls back an inch and grins down at me with confetti in his curls. “Worth it,” he says.

I let him slide down, and then there's Patrick.

He comes to me slow across the ice, in street shoes, careful, and stops close. The noise pulls back, and for a second the only thing left is one face. "Good game," he says.

I kiss him. Long, sure, both gloves dropped somewhere behind me, his hand coming up to the back of my neck. We spent almost a decade giving the cameras the war. They can have this too.

When we break, his eyes are wet and his voice is level, and he gives me the most Patrick-sentence in existence. "Best save I’ve ever seen in person."

"I know."

A deep laugh cracks out of him, and my mom gathers all three of us in with an arm span that’s not enough for one. Over her head, I watch the rest of my life mill around on a sheet of championship ice. Becker attempts to put Hendrix in the Cup while Mama Paws referees. Petrov, cornered by a broadcast crew, delivers, from what floats over, a tribute to Washington, with clauses in it, structured and fluent. The reporter's face comes apart in real time. "Dmitri, your English—"

And Petrov grins, every tooth showing, and puffs his chest even more. “Why, thank you. I have been practicing.”

The crowd thins slowly, no one willing to be first to leave. Eventually, the confetti stops falling and starts settling, and the three of us end up at center ice in a space still glowing at the seams. Theo has the Cup's location memorized and keeps checking it like it might vanish. Patrick stands on the logo, hands in his pockets, surveying the rink from the exact middle, the one spot on any ice surface that belongs to no goalie.

"So," Theo says, to the rafters. "What does a guy have to do to get traded to Chicago?"

"Don't you dare," Patrick says. "We just got good."

They start arguing about it, quietly, happily, a two-man committee planning around a schedule that doesn’t exist, and I stand between them with an arm around each and let my eyes go all the way up, banners to rafters to the last drifting confetti, the whole glittering kingdom of it.

Why settle for one of anything?

Epilogue

WALL

THE LAKE HOUSE sits exactly halfway between Chicago and Milwaukee. I calculated it to the mile, cross-referenced against traffic patterns, and presented the findings one night over dinner. Theo listened to the whole thing, said nothing, and two weeks later, a doormat arrived.

GEOGRAPHICAL COMPROMISE, POP. 3.

It's seven in the morning, late August, and I'm on the porch with coffee, conducting my first audit of the day. Lake, present. Loons, accounted for. Boyfriend one, asleep upstairs with a fresh five-year contract and no alarm. Boyfriend two, standing on the end of the dock, stretching at the sunrise, wearing nothing.

And by nothing, I don’t mean swim-trunks-nothing. I mean nothing-nothing.

"There's a kayaker," I call down.