The Hockey Star's Forgotten Baby Mama novel · Chapter 22 of 32

Chapter 22: Playoff Push

I looked out at the ice.

The captain was skating slow circles with my sleeping daughter's purple glove tucked in his belt so it wouldn't get lost.

"Then we fill them," I said.

The coach drank his coffee.

"I figured you'd say that," he said. "I told the GM to clear his calendar."

We filled the next one.

And the one after that.

Ice Box Night went from Tuesdays to every home game.

The food trucks came back on their own.

The brass band started showing up uninvited, and the arena stopped trying to keep them out.

Johnny played like a man with a meter running.

Seven goals in five games.

Two sellouts became four.

Somewhere in the middle of it, the retired couple below us moved to the coast.

They'd lived there thirty years and banged on the ceiling with a broom when Lulu jumped off the couch.

On the second Sunday in March, Johnny came up the stairs for dinner with grocery bags and a key on a purple ribbon.

He held it out to Lulu.

"What's this?"

"It's for downstairs," he said. "I live there now."

Lulu looked at the key. She looked at the floor under her feet.

"You live UNDER us?"

"Right under your room."

She ran to her bedroom, lay flat on the rug and banged on the floor three times with her fist.

There was a long pause.

Then, from somewhere far below, three knocks came back.

"How?" I said.

"I left the door open and asked the guys to listen," Johnny said. "The captain's down there. He's very committed."

Lulu screamed.

Stevie came out of the bathroom with a towel on her head.

"Oh good," she said. "Now she has a dad AND a drum."

He cooked lasagna that night.

His mother walked him through it on the tablet propped against the toaster, yelling in two languages.

It was good.

It was actually good.

Lulu ate two pieces and said it was the second-best thing in Portland, after the burnt spaghetti.

Johnny looked like he'd scored in overtime.

After dinner he gave Lulu her bath while I did the dishes.

I could hear them through the wall. He was doing voices for her rubber goalie. She was telling him the voices were wrong.

Then he read her three books. She asked for a fourth.

He read the fourth.

When I went to check, she was asleep with one hand on his sleeve.

He was sitting on the floor beside her bed, not moving, so he wouldn't wake her.

He looked up at me in the dark.

He didn't say anything.

He didn't have to.

Stevie was in the hallway with her coat on and an overnight bag over her shoulder.

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