Page 16 of Puck You Both

"Exactly. All cardio, no sense. There are cookies in the office."

I look at Patrick over her shoulder. "I live here now."

She pats my cheek and turns to Patrick. "And you must be Patrick Gh—"

She pauses.

Patrick waits with neutral expression. He's good at this part. He's had thirty years of practice.

"Patrick," she finishes.

"Perfect."

A robotic voice breaks out from the folding tables: "Word of the day. Nemesis."

I turn to where a small group of Chicago Wolves are milling around. Petrov, the Russian Wolf, studies his phone screen for a moment, then lifts his gaze, looks around until his eyes stop at me, and points. “You are nemesis. No offense.”

"Moreau!" And there's Becker, strolling over with something behind his back. Becker and I have chirped each other across three seasons of Wolves–Vipers games. He once spent an entire power play calling me travel-sized, so I scored and blew him a kiss on the way past the bench. We're basically pen pals. “They sent the little one.”

I smile. “They sent you too, apparently. Budget cuts?”

He ignores it. "There's this shelter tradition for visiting Vipers." He produces a plastic dog cone with VISITING LOSER written across it in red marker.

Mama Paws opens her mouth to object, but I don’t give her the chance. I take the cone. "Absolutely."

Becker blinks. He planned for resistance. First mistake.

I strap the cone around my neck, climb onto a folding chair, and hold an empty donation jar above my head. "Attention, Chicago criminals! For every ten dollars in this jar, Becker performs one push-up and gives one sincere compliment about the Milwaukee Vipers!"

Becker's grin dies. "Wait."

Petrov arrives first and feeds a twenty into the jar.

“Traitor,” Becker says.

Petrov shrugs. “Is for charity.”

"Two push-ups," I announce. "Two compliments."

“That isn’t the tradition.”

"It is now."

Ace, Groover, and two shelter volunteers start digging out cash.

Becker points at Patrick. "Control your winger."

Patrick has already located the coffee. "No."

Within three minutes, Becker owes forty-seven push-ups, and has admitted, on the record, that our power play is "occasionally competent", our alternate jerseys are “not completely hideous,” and that Patrick's glove hand is "fine, whatever, statistically elite, fuck all of you."

I ring the donation jar against the table every time his form slips.

At push-up forty he looks up at me from the floor, sweaty and betrayed. "I've never been on this side of it."

I crouch down, cone bumping his forehead. "Growth is painful."

Behind me, the front door opens.