Page 26

BEDAZZLING

Sabrina

I might have returned the hoodie Tyler gave me on my wedding night, but it seems to have boomeranged back to me. When I wake up on Sunday morning, I find a peach-colored gift bag outside my door with a sweatshirt inside. The same one I returned months ago, I think.

I tug it out, and a note flutters onto the floor.

I don’t know if you have any Sea Dogs gear, but I know this—you need it tonight. Don’t break my heart by wearing anything but team gear, Snow.

P.S. If you like jerseys better, I left one of those too. The kids will wear theirs. Remember—matchy-matchy is cool. At least I just decided it is.

—T

A smile tugs at my lips as I slip my hand back into the bag, pulling out a jersey in royal blue with his number—forty-four—and his name emblazoned across the back.

My mind immediately whirs with plans for it. I can’t help but imagine ways to make it my own. But first, I pick up the note and head back into my apartment. Inside, I cross the small living room, already mentally filing the jersey gift under perfectly unexpected things Tyler does.

I set the note carefully into a journal I keep on my nightstand, the one I use to jot down a good thing that’s happened to me each day. The journal is pink and white with illustrations of sassy women in flouncy skirts and teetering heels crossing cobblestoned streets.

Isla picked it up for me for my birthday since she’s a notebook devotee too—though she’s hooked on planners. Well, that’s understandable. Planners look fun.

Sometimes I feel a little silly keeping one.

Do adults keep journals? But it’s a reclaiming of all the tracking I did when I was a teenager.

Rather than record the minutes I worked out—and really, in retrospect, would an extra fifteen minutes a day of squats have changed my fate at the Olympics? —I now write down one good thing.

Flipping it open, I tuck the new note beside the one from the sheets and the first one he left—the one from the hotel room that morning after. But I stop and reread it, the kind words hitting me right in the solar plexus all over again, especially this line— You deserve someone who lets you shine.

Then I flip forward a few pages and read last night’s good thing— we’ll be shopping for disco balls soon!

Closing the journal, I cross to my dresser and grab a pair of leggings, then throw them on as I mentally prepare for the day.

I have some fun plans for activities with the kids.

Leighton is an avid geocacher since her guy, Miles, is too, and they do it together.

But since Miles and Tyler have game prep, Leighton will take the kids and me on some of her favorite beginner routes.

When I head upstairs, the fading smell of pancakes drifts down the hall.

Tyler must have made them before he left for morning skate.

I find the kids already in the kitchen. Luna is perched on a stool, swinging her legs, making a playlist—from the looks of it, for her next skating routine—while Parker builds a wing on a Lego spaceship.

“Hey there!” I call, stepping into the kitchen and clocking in for nanny duty.

Luna points to a plate of pancakes. “Hi! Dad said to tell you he left some pancakes for you. They’re made with banana, hemp hearts, and whole-wheat flour, and the syrup is all natural.”

Tyler knows me well already. “Sounds delish,” I say, grabbing a fork, then greeting Parker. Before I dig in, I brandish the jersey. “Hey, Luna. I think this could use some sparkle.”

Her eyes widen as she gasps. “Can we add glitter too?”

Parker finally looks up, raising a skeptical eyebrow the jersey’s way. “You’re going to make that sparkly?”

“We are,” I say with a confident nod.

Luna’s eager eyes light up. “Can you do mine too?”

“Obviously.”

Later that day, after we geocache in Dolores Park—tracking down a Matchbox car in a tree, which Luna climbs like a little monkey to retrieve after Parker’s spotted it—I order a Lyft, since parking at the arena can be a huge pain, and take the kids to see the Sea Dogs.

Bedazzled.

But when we arrive, Luna and Parker tell me they want to hang out in the family suite instead of the stands .

Worry digs into me. Is that for wives and girlfriends and their kids? I’d be woefully out of place, wouldn’t I?

“Are you sure?” I ask.

“Yes! Mia’s always there now. Her dad pays for a sitter for every home game for all the kids, and it’s so fun. They have board games and everything. It’s kind of more fun than the stands,” she says.

“Not kind of. A lot ,” Parker adds.

“Okay, let’s go there,” I say, but I’m still a little apprehensive about being there myself, and I’m not sure if I’m supposed to just drop the kids off.

But I can’t call Tyler and ask him. They’ll be starting warmups any second.

My stomach twists with nerves, but then it hits me—I can call Tyler’s mom! She knows everything.

As I’m heading to the family suite, I ring Lauren Falcon and ask her if it’s okay that the kids stay there.

“Okay? It’s fabulous! Especially since I’m actually hanging out here with Harvey. The food’s better here, and we’re all about the snacks. Bring those monkeys my way.”

“Oh! Great!” I let out a relieved breath.

That was serendipitous. I head over to the family suite and say hi to Lauren and her husband Harvey as I survey the spacious room.

It’s a couple levels above the ice, but it’s stacked with food and fun.

So I can see why the kids like it. And yes, there are some wives and girlfriends, and kids, but also parents of hockey players from the looks of it.

I feel a little better about staying, even though I gaze at the ice longingly.

Lauren nods to it, giving me a knowing smile. “I’ve got this. You go enjoy the center-ice seats if you want.”

She’s such a mind reader. “Thanks. I do like being right near the boards.”

“Go, go,” she says, shooing me out.

I take off, then text my friends, who usually sit right near the center-ice seats Tyler gave me .

Leighton responds first, telling me to get my ass over there. When I make my way down the aisle toward their row, she eyes me up and down. She points to the back of my jersey, which she must have spotted as I maneuvered through the crowds.

“Well, hello, Rhinestones ,” she says, smirking as she christens me with a nickname.

Isla arches a well-groomed brow. Everything about Isla is perfectly put together. “I’m thinking Squirrel . Squirrels love shiny things,” she says.

“True,” adds the redhead next to Isla. That’s Skylar—she works at the same podcast studio as Isla.

Her show is design-centric, while Isla’s is a dating podcast. I’ve met Skylar a few times—she’s bold, outspoken, and resourceful.

Exactly the type of person you’d call to help DIY your way through canning fruit or painting the front door.

“But aren’t raccoons the ones really into shiny stuff? ”

“Are you all saying I look like a raccoon in this?” I gesture to my very shiny, very bedazzled jersey.

“A razzle-dazzle raccoon,” Maeve chimes in as she arrives, proudly sporting her Mrs. Callahan jersey—a custom one her husband, Asher, made for her a couple seasons ago.

Right next to her is Josie, sliding into her seat. She adjusts her black-and-white glasses as she says warmly, “Actually, she’s a bowerbird.”

I whip my gaze to Josie, the librarian and resident collector of random facts. Josie has never met a topic she didn’t like to research.

“This is going to be good,” Maeve says, settling into her seat in the row ahead of us, so we’re taking up the first and second rows. The only ones from our girl gang who aren’t here are Everly, who’s busy working the game as the team publicist, and Fable, who texted that she was on her way.

“Male bowerbirds use shiny or colorful objects to decorate their bowers to attract mates,” Josie explains. “They collect things like bottle caps, pieces of glass?—”

I raise a hand. “I think I speak for all of us when I ask: what the hell is a bower?”

Josie smooths a hand over her number sixteen jersey—for Wesley, her guy. “It’s a structure. Like a house, but fancier. The male builds it to court a mate.”

“So, basically,” Skylar cuts in with a gleam in her eyes, “a bowerbird would build you a house to get you to fuck him? Sounds like the perfect man. Another reason why I fully intend to take up birdwatching.”

After a theatrical pause, Maeve blows on her unpolished fingernails. “Asher built me an art studio.”

“Wesley built me a library,” Josie adds, in her own not-so-subtle brag.

Isla holds up her hands. “Okay, okay, we get it. Your men are obsessed with you.” Just then, Rowan skates by on the ice, glancing up at Isla. Is he bowerbirding for her? I’ll have to ask her sometime.

Leighton cuts in, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and meeting my eyes. “So…how is it working out living with a guy who’s been into you since last season?”

I jerk my face toward her. “What?”

“Oh, come on,” she says. “When you did your in-game performance, he could not take his eyes off you.”

“I was engaged,” I say, but inside my heart is beating fast. Is this true?

“Remember that picture I took of you after? The man was so eager to stand next to you…” Leighton grabs her phone and flicks through photos at Mach speed, finally landing on a shot of me in a blue—bedazzled—skating costume standing next to Tyler in the tunnel after a game.

I reshared the promo shot at the time, but I look with new eyes at the way his arm wraps around my shoulder .

“Really?” I wish I sounded less breathless.

Isla leans closer, tapping my knee. “So how is it, then, living with the guy you wanted to do unholy things to earlier in the summer? Who maybe still wants to do those things to you?”