12. Chapter Twelve

“Daddy, if I ask Santa for a pony, is he ob-gu-gated to bring me one?”

I glanced up from the book I was reading to see my daughter standing before me, paper and pencil in hand, thick winter jammies on, staring at me as if I held all the answers to the universe. Which I so did not. I didn’t even know how to tell my friends, teammates, and the head honchos of the Comets that I was in a serious relationship with Baskoro.

“Okay, that is a lot to unpack. Why don’t you come on up here?” I put my spy novel aside, patted my lap, and waited for her to scramble up over the sofa and her sire like I was a jungle gym. The girl had no care where her tiny little feet went, so I blocked my man bits with my hand and settled her on my lap. “Where are your slippers?”

“Aunty Zada is looking for them,” she informed me as the smell of sunshine wafted off her freshly scrubbed skin. “So, Daddy, the letter?” She shook the page of yellow legal pad under my nose. “I have a deadline.”

“Right, sorry.” Christmas was now a week away. The child had procrastinated big time due to the worry of how to decide between a pony and a dollhouse for her dolls. She simply couldn’t seem to make up her mind. “Well, first of all, I don’t think Santa is obligated to bring you anything. What you get depends on how good you’ve been.” Her face scrunched up. “Yeah, that’s the deal, right? So, have you been good enough to get a pony? Second, if Santa would bring a pony, where would we keep it?”

“In my bedroom,” she was quick to reply. Ah, I see she had put some thought into this.

“Nope, you cannot keep a horse in the house. They poop all over.”

She pursed her lips, then blew out a dramatic breath. The lights from the pine tree in the corner flashed red, blue, green, and yellow on her damp curls.

“Is they big poops or little poops?”

“Big poops.”

“Can the pony use Goldberry’s litter box?” she asked. The cat lifted its head at the mention of its name, yawned, and then tucked its pink nose back under its tail.

“I doubt it,” I replied as the cat went back to sleep, the tip of her tail twitching as she napped on the back of the sofa. “They’re too big. Also, we’re not allowed to have farm animals in town.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, because they make lots of noise and they take up lots of room, and they make all those big poops we talked about.” I heard my aunt coming down the stairs.

“I seen Mrs. Pepperman’s dog make a poop in the park that was as big as a horny dino poop like in the movie where the lady digs in the poop. Daddy, if I don’t get a pony, can I get a dinosaur instead?”

“They’re even bigger, baby. Also, the mayor would not be happy if we had a dinosaur in the backyard.” I tapped the end of her nose as Aunt Zada appeared with the missing slippers. “Mr. Minkman would be mad if the dino ate all their begonias. Remember last summer when you helped him garden by watering his flowers with bubble soap?”

Her little nose crinkled. I held up a little foot and my aunt slid a slipper onto it, then we repeated the action so both sets of tiny toes were warm and dry.

“Mr. Minkman was mad,” Kyleen whispered, ducking her head into my shoulder, her list lying on her lap. Lord knows where the crayon had gotten to. Between the sofa cushions, I would imagine.

“Mr. Minkman is a crusty old turd,” Aunt Zada commented as she lowered herself into her rocker and picked up her knitting. “You’d think he shipped them flowers over from the deepest, darkest rainforests in Tasmania the way he carried on. I bought him a new flat for ten dollars at Wal-Mart to replace them.”

The click-clack of her needles flowed over us, the soft sound a lullaby not only for Kyleen but for me. I’d not been sleeping all that well lately.

“Crusty turd,” Kyleen whispered as her head came to rest on my shoulder. “So no pony.” She sighed to herself, her eyelids growing heavier by the second. “Maybe a puppy…”

She drifted off. I rolled my eyes. Zada gave me a sideways smile. “A dog would be nice,” Zada commented, needles flying, the TV playing an old Disney movie that Kyleen had chosen, then forgot about when the Santa letter pressure had gotten to her.

“We have a cat,” I reminded her, jerking my chin at the feline a few feet away. “Goldberry would terrorize any dog that dared set paw in this house.”

“She is a bossy thing,” Zada agreed. I rose and shifted Kyleen up to my hip. “You going to put her down?”

I nodded. Playing at night so often, I missed out on putting her to bed so any chance I got to tuck her in I took it. Also, my aunt appeared to be comfy. It was much easier for me to scale the steps than it was for Zada. I climbed upward, moved into the smallest bedroom on the second floor, and gently laid Kyleen on her bed. She rolled into a little ball, her eyes never opening. I lingered in her room for a bit, putting away books and toys, and picking up socks and tops before venturing back downstairs to resume reading. Zada had flipped the channel to an old British mystery about an old British gal who always seemed to stumble over dead bodies just lying around.

“You look lost,” Zada commented as her show went to a commercial.

“Not lost just…” I couldn’t find the proper word. “Stuck? I feel like I’m spinning my wheels when it comes to my personal life.”

“This about the big Baskoro secret?”

“Yeah.” I stared at the screen as a bucolic British countryside was shown. Shit would be going down soon so those unsuspecting Brits had best be enjoying their tea while they could. A cold body was hidden somewhere amid the thatch-roofed cottages. “I know you’re tired of hearing me whine about it, and I know I shouldn’t, but it’s so frustrating to be locked in this holding pattern. I’m starting to wonder if he’s—”

“The first bit of advice I have for you is not to sit there wondering. Ask the man.” She shot a familiar look at me. It was the same expression that Kyleen got when she was being stubborn just to be stubborn. “Sitting around stewing on something that would be easily cleared up with a simple question seems silly to me.” I slid down on the sofa further so that my chin rested on my chest. “Your daughter gets that same look when I tell her something she doesn’t want to hear.”

“I’m not making a look of any kind.”

“Mm-hmm. If that lower lip were to stick out any further, a bird could land on it.” She sniffed as she knitted.

I pulled in my pouty lip and sat up straighter. Nothing like being compared to a kindergartener.

“Fine, I’ll call him and we can talk.” I rose, grabbed the now chilly cup of decaf peppermint tea I’d been sipping, and made my way up the stairs just as the wail of a European police car siren could be heard flowing out of the TV. Called it.

I took a few minutes after entering my room to sort and put away the clean laundry I’d done earlier. Man it was nice to have these nights off to be the domestic daddy that my child needed. If only there were more of them. After I took care of my clothes, I sat on the edge of my bed, stared down at my phone, and did my best to get my thoughts lined up. I had so many things that I wanted to say to Baskoro that they were jamming up like logs in a narrow flume.

I ran my thumb over the fingerprint reader and was bombarded by game scores. Shit, yes, the Gladiators were playing tonight. I scrolled through the app to find the Gladiators and smiled to see that they were handing the Providence Blues their asses. Basky was in net and had not allowed one puck to pass. Just like Gandolf. Excellent. Knowing that the man would be busy for another sixty minutes at least, I got comfy in bed, back resting on pillows, legs stretched out in front of me, ankles crossed, and I watched the Gladiators wreck the Blues. No lie, Watkins Glen was the team to beat this year. Granted, they had dropped a few games here and there—a couple against the Comets, I was proud to note—but they were a force. Liam and Baskoro had some insane stats that made my really good season look meh in comparison. If they kept rolling along as they were, they would be nearly impossible to knock out of first place. They now sat atop of the Atlantic Division with ten more points than us, which tweaked my competitive nature.

Over the course of the remaining periods, I dozed a little, waking up to find that the game had ended, and the Gladiators had won, and Baskoro had texted me. Rubbing at my sleepy eyes, I hit him back asking for a FaceTime to talk.

The call came through after about five minutes or so. He’d had to slip into the bathroom he shared with Liam for some privacy as his roomie was conversing with his boyfriend, who was doing some work on his home in Georgia. Was it Georgia? Well, somewhere down south.

I answered as soon as the call came in and smiled at my boyfriend resting on the floor, the shower stall behind him, his hair loose, phone propped up on the closed toilet, I assumed. Damn, but I did love that hair of his…

“Hey, what’s up?” Baskoro asked and took a sip of steaming coffee. How the man slept at night, I had no damn clue. “Are Kyleen and Zada okay?”

“They’re fine. I just wanted to hear your voice.”

He gave me the dopiest smile. “Aww, you are too goofy.”

“I know, ah-yup.” I chortled in my best cartoon dog imitation. Goofy was a dog, right? Didn’t matter really. There were bigger things to contemplate. “So, since I’m being goofy, I thought I’d float something by you.”

“Go for it. Did you see that we won?”

“I saw. The Blues had no response for your defense,” I said while wiggling my toes under the blanket. They’d gotten chilled while I’d dozed. “Also, your goalie did a decent job.”

“Asshole.” He laughed, his eyes glowing with emotion. Such a pretty man. And all mine. Which led me back to what I wanted to talk about. “Next week Ooni is having a little holiday dinner, all Finnish foods, which I’m not wholly sure about but hey, I once ate haggis.”

“Dude, haggis is good!”

I shuddered and got a snicker. “Yeah, not, anyway…I was wondering if you’d like to be my date for the dinner.”

All the humor fell from his face. “What?”

“Don’t get freaked out,” I said, regretting it as his expression hardened.

“I’m not freaking out, Marcus, I’m just trying to process.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound condescending. I know we’re both edgy about things.”

“Yeah, we are, and we need to handle this well. Going to a party as your date is a big step. Did you tell anyone on the team about us?”

“Well, no…”

“Then maybe you should so they don’t lose their shit when we walk in together. When is that party? I might be playing.”

“You’re not. I already checked the schedule.” I sat up straighter. “Look, baby, I know it seems like a big step, but maybe it’s time we just did it, you know? The longer we put it off, the more lies we tell, and the harder it will be to come clean. My aunt thinks we just have to dive in and get it over with, and I’m starting to think she’s right.”

He glanced around the bathroom and took a moment to peel off his tee. I could see the steam on the glass doors behind him. It must be sultry in that small bath. Or he was trying to rattle my focus by flashing those sexy pecs of his.

“It’s easy to say just leap in when you’ve got nothing to lose,” he finally replied as he nervously used his fingers to comb his hair, his shirt serving as a phone stand of sorts.

“I get that. And I’m not suggesting we just throw our story out there and to hell with the fallout, but we need to take the initiative here, get a plan, and just do it.”

“You a spokesman for sneakers now?”

Some of the tension eased around his stunning eyes.

“I wish. Look, let’s just start small. We can do this party, right, and then move onto something else while we start informing our teams in our own ways.”

He stared at me openly, his gaze riddled with worry for a very long moment. Then, as if he had found a well of fortitude inside his massive Styrofoam cup, he nodded. Hand to God I nearly fell off the damn bed, I was that shocked. He’d been reluctant to let more people know, other than the handful who already did, and while I hated to push him on it, I really disliked lying all the time to every damn person who meant something to me. And I knew he did as well.

“Okay, yeah, we can do that,” he whispered. “You have to tell your closest friends. I don’t want to walk in and have someone punch me in the face.”

“No one would punch you in the face. I wouldn’t let them. Your face is too pretty to punch.”

“So says you,” he mumbled and took a noisy sip of coffee. “How about this? You tell the guys who will be at that dinner and I’ll tell the rest of my friends. Then we can maybe get some ideas on how to approach our respective teams. I’d like to have some reps with us when we talk to management, union reps…maybe the inclusivity reps as well. What do you think? We could plan it out over the holidays if you want. We have like eight days off between the twenty-first and the twenty-eighth. Maybe you could come up here for a few days? You and Kyleen, even your aunt if she wanted. We can make room. Liam will be with Tarcy, so we’d have his bedroom open and…are you okay? You look concussed.”

Was I okay? Hell yes, I was thrilled. Maybe a little shocked and a whole lot skittish but yeah, I was down for all of it.

“Nope, not concussed, just giddy.”

“Dude, we’re hockey players. We don’t get giddy, but if we did, I’d be giddy too.”

His soft smile undid me. “Good, okay, I can get with that idea. All those ideas. To be honest I thought you were going to fight the invite to the dinner party a lot more than you did.”

He shrugged a shoulder. A very sexy shoulder that was bared to my greedy gaze. “I’m a little scared to let others know, but man, I hate fucking lying.”

I pointed at the screen of my phone. “That. That right there is eating me up. I have no idea what will happen to me when I let the Comets know that we’re dating, but if they waive me, then so be it. I’ll go play somewhere else.”

“They can’t waive you for who you date,” he argued, shifting around to recenter his phone that had slid down. I got a peek at some pubes. Shit, was he totally nude? Now I was finding it hard to concentrate on our conversation.

“Are you naked?” I asked and got the slyest little look. My dick instantly got hard when he picked up his phone and flashed me a glance of his lower half, also bared to the world. “Holy fuck.”

The phone returned to his face. I knew that heavy-lidded look. “You want to watch me jerkoff?”

I mean, duh. What kind of silly question was that? I bobbed my head, reached into my flannel lounge pants, and enjoyed the living hell out of the end of our video chat. Hopefully the talk with my teammates goes as well as that call slash phone sex session had gone.

***

“What do you think of the herring?”

I glanced from the meat display case at Pihla’s Seafood and Vegetable Mart to Ooni staring at me as if I knew good herring from bad herring. I had heard of pickled herring, but other than that my knowledge was nil.

“It looks good?” I replied and got a flat look from my fellow goalie.

“You know that if the herring isn’t fresh, then the herring and beet soup will be disgusting,” he informed me.

“Yep, I know that.” He tipped his blond head to rake me with a look. “Okay, fine, I know nothing about herring. I wanted to talk to you about something,” I segued into the real reason I’d let him drag me along on this dinner party shopping trip to every small deli and fish market within fifty miles of Wilkes-Barre.

“Hey, look what I found over in aisle three,” Crispy announced as he sidestepped an old lady with a folding shopping cart wearing a bright babushka and a glower at my captain for cutting in line for fish. “Sorry, ma’am,” Crispy whispered, ducking his head. She flung something in a different language at him. Ooni quickly leapt in to soothe the elderly woman’s upset, the Finnish flowing over the piles of dead fish on ice. “I found some of those cookies you brought back last summer,” Crispy added as Ooni let the old gal get in front of him in line. “Sorry for losing your spot. But look! These things are to die for!”

I nodded as I studied the box of cookies. They looked to be some sort of toffee cookies. Since that was the only word on the box that I could read, I knew my assumption to be correct. Sherlock Holmes had nothing on me.

“Hey, so while we’re waiting in line, I have something to talk to you guys about.” I smoothly led us back to my huge announcement.

Crispy began picking at the glue holding the box top closed. Ooni gave him a dark look, and he stopped.

“Do you guys like lute fish? I see they have some that look better than the herring, although I really wanted to make herring and beetroot soup. Maybe I could substitute salmon for herring?” Ooni looked puzzled, tapping his chin, as the deli person—a stocky woman with red hair that I assumed to be Pihla as she was the only one working here—began talking to the babushka lady in Finnish.

“I’m not sure why it’s a problem if I dip into the cookies if I plan on paying for the box that I open plus the other ten in my basket,” Crispy stated with a wave at the basket resting by his feet that held at least a dozen boxes of toffee cookies.

“Because you are not four years old. Have some restraint,” Ooni countered, leaning down to eyeball a platter of something that looked like ground organ meats. Oh Lord, was he going to serve us paté? I wondered if he would be offended if I brought a dish to pass. Like good old macaroni and cheese or potato salad—“Oh, I think the herring looks better from this side of the case. One of the lights was out, and that made it look off.”

“Cool, yay herring, so I have something to tell you guys about the dinner party,” I said again as the old lady began dickering about the price of something called riisipuuro which looked like rice pudding to me.

“There are no signs anywhere saying you can’t dip into the groceries. I saw a kid in the fresh fruit section eating grapes and the Finnish army didn’t rush in and throw him out into the street.” Crispy tore into the box of toffee cookies with a flourish.

“So, about this thing that I wanted to talk to you two about…” I tried once more but was run over by Ooni spinning around to dress down Crispy.

“For one thing,” my fellow goalie barked while the rice pudding price debate raged on in front of us. “The Finnish army is not going to rush in to take your cookies or that child’s grapes. What they would do is shame you terribly for acting like that child instead of a man grown who is captaining a hockey team!”

Crispy looked stunned. The cookie he had taken out of the box hovered in front of his open mouth. I rolled my eyes. The volume of the rice pudding situation was growing as was the cookie snark fest. I glanced over at some old man sitting at a table in the corner napping, his white butcher bib stained with the day’s work. Perhaps that was Pihla? Or Mr. Pihla? Whoever he was, there was no help coming from that quarter.

The boys kept bickering about toffee cookies and the women kept fighting about the price of rice pudding.

“Baskoro Huda and I are in a serious relationship and I want to bring him to your dinner party as my date!” I shouted to be heard over the warring factions. Everyone fell silent. The old man in the corner snuffled awake. All eyes were on me. I cleared my throat. “So yeah, that’s my news.”

Crispy and Ooni looked nonplussed. The old woman finally agreed to take a half pound of the pricey rice pudding, and the old man stared at me for the longest time until his eyes drooped and he dozed back off.

“You owe me fifty dollars,” Ooni said to our captain before turning to the deli lady to order lute fish and herring and Lord only knows what else. Crispy muttered under his breath, ate a toffee cookie, and then glanced my way.

“What the hell?” I coughed out.

“What? We knew you were seeing someone secretly. There were signs. Then you and Huda got into that goalie fight.” He wiped his fingers on his jeans to throw up a quote around the word fight. “Which to anyone with eyes was more a grope and giggle than fisticuffs. We both figured you two were seeing each other, but we didn’t want to say anything because that’s something you should tell us about.”

“If you wish to bring Baskoro, that is fine. Maybe I can buy extra salmon and make a nice curry dish for him. He’s Thai right?”

I nodded and folded my arms over my chest. “Yeah, he’s Thai. So you both were cool enough to let me come to you when I was ready, which is incredible and thank you, but betting on me gave you no pause?”

He shrugged. “He said you’d tell us by Christmas, and I said it would take you until after the new year. You know I can never turn down a wager when it comes to a teammate’s crush. Want a cookie?”

I took the damn cookie, bit into it, and realized that Crispy had been right. Finnish toffee cookies were to die for.

And my friends were pretty damn righteous as well.