Page 102 of Knottingley Ever After
His eyes — the green Irish eyes I have spent five years not letting myself remember the exact shade of — drop, for the briefest sliver of a second, to my mouth.
Up. Back to mine.
Oh.
Oh, you absolute son of a bitch.
“So. Are we having a spiritual break, or —”
The voice arrives from the ice behind me, easy and unhurried, and the small hot detonation that has been about to happen inside my chest gets, in the precise way it always gets, defused.
I turn.
Matteo Santori is standing on the rink-side of the boards in nothing but his skates, black running joggers, a tight grey long-sleeved compression top, the latest pair of sleek athletic gloves I have only seen him wear when he is going for a serious run, and the unmistakable expression of a man who has not been in the building long enough for his cheeks to lose the cold of the outside.
He is holding a bouquet of fresh-cut flowers.
And, in his other hand, a tall plastic cup of something thick and pink with a straw.
My entire face does the thing.
“Matteo. What are you doing here.”
“Someone,” he says, with the perfectly placid cheer of a man making polite morning conversation, his eyes sliding past me to land on Coach Declan with a smile that is, if not exactly weaponized, certainly publicly available, “decided this morning that training the goalie at four in the morning was more important than feeding her any actual breakfast first.”
Oh.
Oh, my winger is throwing hands. Professionally. At my coach.
I waddle the eight steps to the gate of the bench in the small ungainly hockey-pads waddle that is the only mobility setting available to me out of the crease, and I lean my forearms against the boards opposite him.
“Your obsession with my appetite,” I inform him, in the level voice of a woman determined to maintain her dignity, “will, at this rate, need to be the subject of a peer-reviewed medical study.”
“Hand it to academia.”
He offers the cup over the boards. I take it. The cold of the plastic against my bare palm is a small mercy. Strawberry banana. The smell of it, slow and creamy and ripe, climbs into my chest in a way that immediately confirms how empty my stomach has been since approximately yesterday evening.
“And these,” he says, lifting the bouquet, “were going to be a surprise for our actual first morning date. Which we will be having at some point, just for the record. But they are too fresh to keep in the car, so you have to at least smell them.”
I beam at him. I cannot help it.
The bouquet is small but extravagantly thought-out. Soft pink ranunculus. Sprigs of eucalyptus. A scatter of baby’s breath. Two coral-tipped roses I am almost certain were chosen because they roughly match my hair. The whole thing wrapped in cream-colored craft paper and tied with twine.
“How on earth did you get these. The campus florist is closed.”
“There is a small floral boutique on the corner of Main and Pine, between the rink and the diner. They do not officially open until six, but the owner has been there since five-thirty, decorating the front window. She was very confused when I rapped on the glass. She was less confused after I explained who they were for and offered cash. She wished me luck.”
“You actually bought me flowers.”
“Pinky.” He leans across the boards, threads one gloved hand under my jaw, and brushes his mouth against mine in the small light unhurried way a man who is intending many more kisses kisses you. “Flowers are the bare minimum.”
Oh.
Oh, that just landed in my chest like a brick.
My heart does an undignified flip. I duck my face into the bouquet to hide whatever it is doing on the outside, inhale, and the soft green sweetness of the eucalyptus and the ranunculus and the rose climb up into my nose in a way that is so disproportionately overwhelming I have to fight, with active discipline, not to make a sound.
I make a sound.
