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“Cash told me three separate stories on the walk over and two of them were about you.” She glances at me. “One involved a traffic cone. I’m choosing to believe it was exaggerated.”

“It was not exaggerated.”

“That’s worse.”

“It’s much worse.” And there it is — the first one tonight that just happens, no performance under it, and I feel the corner of my mouth go before I’ve decided to let it. She catches it. She looks back at the sidewalk like she didn’t.

The Penalty Box is exactly what it is and nothing it isn’t, which is the whole appeal.

Sticky floors. Low ceiling. Decades of Whitmore hockey on the walls — team photos gone yellow, a cracked stick signed by somebody who went pro in the nineties, a penalty box bench bolted up over the bar that nobody’s allowed to explain the provenance of. Marco’s behind the bar, has been since before I got here, and he lifts two fingers at me when we come in, which is Marco for the usual and don’t make it weird. The place is already half-full of the post-game crowd, and a cheer goes up when the team walks in, the cheap kind of cheer that means nothing and feels good anyway.

We’ve got a booth. We’ve always got a booth. It’s understood.

And then there's the seating problem.

I haven't thought about the seating problem until I'm standing at the edge of the booth looking at it, and now it's the only thing in the world. And it's not just her anymore. It's her and three roommates, all of whom slid in while I was hanging up my coat, all of whom are now arranged around the table like a panel of judges who happen to be drinking milkshakes.

Margo's got the outside seat, because of course she does. Margo Ashby runs a room the way O'Grady runs a bench — all warmth on top and total control underneath — and she's already smiling at me in a way that tells me nothing and sees everything. Next to her, Wren, who plays for the women's team and watches me the way I watch tape, quiet, unhurried, filing it all somewhere. June's tucked into the corner with a paperback turned face-down by her water, and when she glances up she gives me a small, real smile that doesn't cost her anything, which is somehow the one that makes me nervous.

And then Sloane, down on the far bench, one spot open beside her.

So. Where do I sit? Do I sit next to her? Is sitting next to her too much, or is not sitting next to her the tell — the thing that makes Wren's eyes go a shade sharper and Margo's smile climb half a degree and the whole arrangement read as staged — and I'm standing there running it like a power play with two seconds on the clock, three women clocking every half-second I don't move, when Cash, who has the situational awareness of a heat-seeking missile and the subtlety of one too, plants a hand between my shoulder blades and shoves.

“Sit down, you absolute statue,” he mutters, low enough that only I catch it.

I go into the booth. Sloane’s already sliding in from the other end. We meet in the middle.

Our legs are touching.

Neither of us says anything about it.

Cash drops in across from us looking deeply pleased with himself, like he’s solved something, which he has, and which I am not going to thank him for ever. “There,” he says. “Cozy. Beckett, what are you drinking, it’s on Beau.”

“Is it?” I ask, a wry smile on my face.

“It’s the captain’s win, the captain buys. House rule.”

“That’s not a rule.”

“It’s a rule now. I just made it. That’s how rules fucking work, you say them and then they’re rules.” He’s looking at Sloane when he says it, grinning, and I watch her take his measure in about a second and a half and decide to play.

“Whiskey,” she says. “Neat. The good one, not the one you’d order.”

Cash puts a hand to his chest. “You don’t know what I’d order.”

“You’d order whatever’s loudest.” She doesn’t even pause. “Something with a name like an explosion. You strike me as a man who has, at least once, ordered a drink that was on fire.”

Wyatt, sliding in next to Cash, lets out a low whistle. Theo, folding himself into the end of the booth next to Margo like a deck chair being put away wrong, makes a sound that in another person would be a laugh.

“That was one time,” Cash says, “and it was a celebration, and the bartender said the shot wasn’t supposed to still be lit, so really that’s on him⁠—”

“He set his own eyebrow on fire,” Wyatt says, mild, to Sloane. “Sophomore year. We have photos.”

“I would like to see the photos,” Sloane says.

“You’ll get the photos.”

“Wyatt,” Cash says, betrayed.