Page 65 of Cherry Picking

“Why coffee?”

“They met on her break. He’s recounted that meeting a hundred times.”

Murphy nods. “A good man, your father.”

“The best.”

The return trip passes in silence. He’s kept a single berry-pink stem and rolls it between his fingers the entire way back to the car.

At the trunk, he stops me before I can collapse the chair. “Come to the game tomorrow. Briggs left four tickets. One for you, one for Ray.”

The information sits between us. He told me he’d be heads down, and he still left me a ticket. I don’t know what to do with a man who behaves like that, so I’ve decided to do nothing at all.

“I can’t,” I say. “Got a date.”

Murphy’s eyebrows climb. He studies me for a split second, arriving at a verdict. “Good for you. Hope he’s a decent one.”

“He’s a lawyer.”

“Christ.” He passes me the dahlia and waits for me to load him in. “Well. Nobody’s perfect.”

CHAPTER 19

BRIGGS

The Aces splash my face across the jumbotron midway through warm-ups. HOMETOWN KID, the graphic announces, looming over a shot of younger me wearing a draft-day suit that was three sizes too large.

I focus on the edge of my blade and keep my head down. This arena is a new addition to Vegas, finished long after I’d made my exit. It’s made of black glass with gold trim, essentially a casino with a sheet of ice in the center.

Down at the far end, parked right against the glass, my father is a lone streak of brick-red in a bowl full of Vegas gold. He’s wearing my jersey, MAXWELL stretched across his shoulders, while Danny sits beside him in a windbreaker.

Four tickets sat at will call. Two got picked up.

I knew this already. The box office confirms these things if you ask, which I did because I have a penchant for punishment. I glide past the barrier and rap my stick twice against the partition in front of my father.

He’s standing upright in the middle of nineteen thousand people with his cane hooked uselessly over his forearm.

Augie pulls up beside me at the stripe. “Good turnout for the hometown hero.”

“They came to see us lose,” I mutter.

“Naturally.” He jerks his chin toward the glass. “Your old man made the trip to watch you ruin their night. Let’s give him a performance worth the ticket.”

I spend the opening frame playing with a jagged edge, and the aggression works. Six minutes in, Augie secures a draw and feeds me the puck. I walk the boards, cycle toward the high slot, and put a heavy wrister through a screen that catches the twine before their goalie can blink.

The arena goes quiet except for one pocket of glass where a sixty-year-old man is hammering his fist against the boards with a purely delighted grin. I point at him on the loop back. He raises a fist.

For a while, I’m actually useful. My legs are there, and I’m winning the foot races. I finish every check like it’s a personal debt, because it is—every gold jersey represents the organization that signed that predator Jake Mercer, and I have a great deal to say about that with my shoulder.

We’re leading by one in the second when the noise in my head suddenly ratchets up.

I’m mid-shift, coasting toward the bench, when I catch a hit of Carolina blue eight rows back. Ophelia is sitting perfectly still in a crowd that’s on its feet, her strawberry blonde curls catching the overheads. She’s watching me over the glass.

Whatever’s been holding my focus together goes all at once.

The next shift, I leave the zone early, looking for a breakaway that isn’t coming, and their defenseman walks into the space I vacated and puts it past Duval. Tie game. Two shifts after that, I do it again, drifting high while the play dies in our corner without me.

Bellan catches me by the jersey at the bench. “You’re cherry-picking, Maxwell. Get below the puck, or get comfortable at the end of the bench.”